The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 704 pages of information about The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Complete.

The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 704 pages of information about The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Complete.
same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn’t a man in the mob didn’t cheer him, which was the more civil, because few of them knew a word of English, and the others thought he was a play-actor.  But it all went off well, nevertheless, for Peter was a clever fellow; and although he liked money well, he liked popularity more, and he never went any where special that he hadn’t a public meeting of some kind or other, either to abolish rents, or suppress parsons, or some such popular and beneficial scheme, which always made him a great favourite with the people, and got him plenty of clients.  But I am wandering from the record.  Purcell came down, as I said before, special for Mills; and when he looked over his brief, and thought of the case, he determined to have it tried by a gentlemen jury, for although he was a great man with the mob, he liked the country gentlemen better in the jury box, for he was always coming out with quotations from the classics, which, whether the grand jury understood or not, they always applauded very much.  Well, when he came into court that morning, you may guess his surprise and mortification to find that the same jury that had tried a common ejectment case, were still in the box, and waiting, by the chief justice’s direction, to try Mills versus Mulcahy, the great case of the assizes.

“I hear they were a set of common clod-hopping wretches, with frize coats and brogues, that no man could get round at all, for they were as cunning as foxes, and could tell blarney from good sense, rather better than people with better coats on them.

“Now, the moment that Mr. Purcell came into the court, after bowing politely to the judge, he looked up to the box, and when he saw the dirty faces of the dealers in pork and potatoes, and the unshaven chins of the small farmers, his heart fell within him, and he knew in a minute how little they’d care for the classics—­if he quoted Caesar’s Commentaries itself for them—­ignorant creatures as they were!

“Well, the cause was called, and up gets Peter, and he began to ‘express’, (as he always called it himself,) ’the great distress his client and himself would labour under, if the patient and most intelligent jury then on the panel should come to the consideration of so very tedious a case as this promised to be, after their already most fatiguing exertions;’ he commented upon their absence from their wives and families, their farms neglected, their crops hazarded, and in about fifteen minutes he showed them they were, if not speedily released and sent home, worse treated and harder used than many of the prisoners condemned to three months imprisonment; and actually so far worked upon the feelings of the chief himself, that he turned to the foreman of the jury, and said, ’that although it was a great deviation from his habitual practice, if at this pressing season their prospects were involved to the extent

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The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.