Memoirs of the Legal, Literary, and Political Life of John Philpot Curran

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1817. Excerpt: ... of his defence is a gross aggravation of his conduct, and a gross insult upon you. Look upon the different subjects of his defence, as you ought, and let him profit by them as he deserves. Vainly presumptuous upon his rank, he wishes to overawe you by the despicable consideration. He next resorts to a cruel aspersion upon the character of the unhappy plaintiff, whom he had already wounded beyond the possibility of reparation; he has ventured to charge him with connivance. As to that, I will only say, gentlemen of the jury, do not give this vain boaster a pretext for saying, that if the husband connived in the offence, the jury also connived in the reparation. But he has pressed another curious topic upon you: After the plaintiff had cause to suspect his designs, and the likelihood of their being fatally successful, he did not then act precisely as he ought. Gracious God, .what an argument for him to dare to advance! It is saying this to him: I abused your confidence, your hospitality; I laid a base plan for the seduction of the wife of your bosom; I succeeded at last, so as to throw in upon you that most dreadful of all suspicions to a man fondly attached, proud of his wife's honour, and tremblingly alive to his own; that you were possibly a dupe to the confidence in the wife, as much as in the guest: in this so pitiable distress, which I myself had studiously and deliberately contrived for you, between hope and fear, and doubt and love, and jealousy and shame: one moment shrinking from the cruelty of your suspicion; the next fired with indignation at the facility and credulity of your acquittal; in this labyrinth of doubt, in this phrensy of suffering, you were not collected and composed; you did not act as you might have done if I had not worked ytou to...