IRISH READINGS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 32, 26 August 1925, Page 7

IRISH READINGS

(Edited by A. M. Sullivan, M.P., and T. D. Sullivan, M.P.)

GURRAN IN DEFENCE OF THE PRESS.

*&i;ln the struggles of the Irish people for freedom they have always had journals to take a bold and fearless part —to denounce oppression, expose injustice, and claim the rights of the nation. On those journals the 3! vengeance of the Government was always sure to fall. Seizures, prosecutions, fines, and imprisonment were frequently resorted to for the purpose of stifling the voice of the complaint, hiding from the public gaze t, the misdeeds of the rulers of the country, and crushing-the hopes of the people. The list of Irish journals assailed and destroyed in this way by. the Government forms one of no inconsiderable length. The annexed extract is from a a speech of the distinguished patriot, orator, and advocate, John Philpot .•■Curran, spoken on December 22, 1797, in •defence of the Press newspaper, one of the organs of the United Irishmen, which was published at 62 Abbey-street, Dublin. A .. letter had appeared in that journal addres- | sed to the Lord Lieutenant in relation to the legal murder of William Orr, and this splendid and powerful document formed the . ground of the prosecution. A verdict of was returned against Mr. Peter Pinnerty, the publisher of the paper, and he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonvt ment, to stand in the pillory for an hour, \v to pay a fine of £lO, and, at the expiration v v of his imprisonment, to find heavy sureties.' for his future good behaviour. And now, gentlemen, let us come to the | immediate subject of the trial, as it is ■•" brought before you by the charge in the s indictment, v to which it ought to have been confined; and also, as it is presented to you % by the statement of the learned counsel, who i- has taken a much wider range than the mere limits of the accusation, and has endeavored ■{ to force upon your consideration extraneous ( and irrelevant facts, for reasons which it is not my duty to explain. The indictment states simply that Mr. Finnerty has pub- ; lished a false and scandalous libel upon the« Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, tending to . to 1 bring his government into disrepute," and to alienate the -affections of the people; and one would have expected, without stating any other matter, the counsel for the Crown would have gone directly to the proof . of this allegation; but he has not done so: > he. has gone to a most extraordinary length, indeed, of preliminary observation, and an allusion to facts, and sometimes an assertion Ifel facts, at which, I own, I was astonished, ' nntil I saw the drift of-these allusions and -.assertions. Whether you have been fairly . .dealt with by him, or are now honestly dealt

with by me, you must bo judges. Ho has been pleased to say that this prosecution is 1 brought against this letter signed “Marcus,” merely as a part of what he calls a. system of attack upon the Government by the paper called the Press. As to this I will only ask you whether you are fairly dealt with? whether it is fair treatment to men upon their oaths to insinuate to them that the general character of a newspaper (and that general character founded merely upon the assertion of the prosecutor) is to have any influence upon their minds when they are to judge of a particular publication I will only ask you what men you must be supposed to be, when it is thought that, even in a court of justice, and with the eyes of a nation upon you, you can be the dupes of that trite and exploded expedient, so scandalous of late in this country, of raising a vulgar and mercenary cry against whatever man, or whatever principle, it is thought necessary to put down; and I shall therefore, merely leave it to your own pride to suggest upon what foundation it could be hoped that a senseless clamor of that kind could be echoed back by the yell of a jury upon their oaths. I trust' you see that this has nothing to do with the question. Gentlemen of the jury, other matters have l>een mentioned, which I must repeat for the same purpose; that of showing you that they have nothing to do with the question. The learned counsel has been pleased to say that he comes forward in this prosecution as the real advocate for the liberty of the press, and to protect a. mild and a merciful Government from its licentiousness; and he has been pleased to add that the constitution can never be lost while its freedom remains, and that its licentiousness alone can destroy that freedom. As to that, gentlemen, he might as well have said that there is" only one mortal disease of which a. man can die —I can die the death inflicted by tyranny; and when he comes forward to extinguish this paper, in the ruin of the printer, by a State prosecution, in order to prevent its dying of licentiuosness, you must judge how candidly he is treating you, both in the fact and in the reasoning. Is it in Ireland, gentlemen, that we are told licentiousness is the only disease that can bo mortal to the press? Has he heard of nothing else that has been fatal to the freedom of publication ?. I know not whether the printer of the Northern - ■ Star, may have heard of such things in his captivity; but I know that his wife and children are well apprised that a press may be destroyed in the open day, not by its.own licentiousness,

but by the licentiousness of a military force... As to the sincerity of the declaration that ?, the State has prosecuted in order to assert the freedom of the press, it starts : a >train ,' of thought—of melancholy \retrospect and \ direful prospect—to which I did not; think, the learned counsel would have wished, you to commit your minds. It leads you natur- ■ ally' to reflect at what times, from what motives, and with what consequences, .the Government has displayed its patriotism by prosecutions of this sort. to the. motives, does history give you a single instance -in , which the State has been provoked to these conflicts except by the fear of truth and by the love of vengeance? Have you ever seen | the rulers of any country bring forward a \ prosecution from motives of filial piety, for libels upon their departed ancestors? Do you 1 read that Elizabeth directed any of those .State prosecutions against the .libels which : the divines of her times had written against her Catholic sister, or against the other libels which the same gentlemen had written against her Protestant father? No, gentle-; men, we read of no such thing; but we know she did bring forward a prosecution from motives of personal resentment; and we know that a jury was found time-serving and I mean enough to give a verdict which she was' ashamed to carry, into effect. I said the learned counsel drew you back to the times that have been marked by these miserable conflicts. I see you turn your thoughts • to the reign of the second James. I see' you turn your eyes to those pages of governmental abandonment, of popular degradation, of expiring liberty, of merciless and sanguinary prosecutions—to that miserable period, in which the fallen and abject state of man might have been almost an argument in the < mouth of the atheist and the blasphemer against the existence of an all-just and an all-wise First Cause, if the glorious era of the Revolution that, followed it had not refuted the impious inference, by showing that if a man descends it is not in his own proper motion; that it is with labor and pain; that he can continue to sink only until, by the force and pressure of the de-, scent, the > spring of his immortal faculties, acquires that recuperative energy and,effort that hurries him many miles aloft;. that hei sinks but to rise again. It is at that period the State seeks for shelter in the destruction of the press; it is in a period like that that the tyrant prepares for an attack upon the people by destroying the liberty of the press-**—by taking away that shield of wisdom and of virtue behind which the people are invulnerable; in whoso pure and polished convex, ere the lifted blow has fallen, he beholds his own image, and-is turned into stone. It is at those periods the honest man dares not speak, because truth is too dreadful to be told; it is,then humanity has no ears, because; humanity has no tongue. It is then that the proud man.scorns to speak, but, like a physician /baffled by the wayward excesses' of a dying patient, retires indignantly'from the bed of an unhappy wretch whose ear is too fastidious to bear the sophd of wholesome advice, whose palate is too debauched to bear , the salutary bitter of the medicine that might redeem him, and therefore leaves him to the • felonious piety of the slaves that talk to

him of life, and strip him before he is cold. I do ' not 1 care, gentlemen, to exhaust too ; much of your attention by following this subject through the last century with much minuteness; but the facts are too recent in ylpr minds not to show you that the liberty ■he press and the liberty of the people sink and rise together that the liberty of speaking and the liberty of acting have shared, exactly the same fate. You must have observed in England that their fate

i - i - -ii-- .- ■ ■■ .v has been the same in the successive vicissitudes of their late depression and. sorry I am to add that this country has exhibited a melancholy proof of their inseparable destiny, through', the. various and fitful stages of deterioration, down to the period of their final extinction, AA r hen the constitution has given place to the Sword, and the only printer ill Ireland who dares to speak for the people is now in the dock.