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which would authorize any objection upon the |

statute.

The Court unanimously repelled both objections.

After some steps of form, proclamation was then made by the cryer, and silence being ordered, Mr. Knapp desired Robert Watt to hold up his hand; upon which he read to him shortly the accusation for which he was tried, and said "To these charges you plead Not Guilty, and cast yourself upon God and your country; that country has found you Guilty.Have you any reason to assign why the sentence of the law, which is Death, should not pass against you?

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The same he recited to David Downie. Both prisoners remained silent.

The Lord President then addressed the prisoners as follows:

Robert Watt, David Downie;-That part of the duty which remains to be performed by this Court, is a most distressing one, but not the less necessary. You had the misfortune to be brought to that bar, under the heavy charge of high treason; and after the fullest inquiry, and most fair and impartial trial, you have each of you been convicted, by the unanimous voice of most respectable juries of your country, as guilty of that atrocious crime.

The evidence on which the verdicts proceeded, was such as left no room for doubt or hesitation; and the public must be completely satisfied, that the consequence was unavoidable.

Had your designs been carried into execution, by an actual insurrection of those deluded men, whose leaders you appear in a great measure to have been, although in the end you must have failed, yet, in the mean time, such a scene of unutterable distress, confusion, and bloodshed must have ensued, that the very idea of it is horrible.

Resistance to an established government can only be justified by the plea of absolute and indispensable necessity. And this can never exist without the most unequivocal proofs of it; and the most general concurrence in those measures which become necessary for obtaining relief.

Such was the situation of this country at the period of the Revolution in 1688; but no one can, with the smallest degree of truth or candour, state, that such necessity occurs at present, or in truth that there has been less ground of complaint, at any period since this country had an existence. No material circumstance has happened in the present reign, which should have given occasion for any degree of discontent; it is to be imputed alone to the wicked designs of bad and desperate men in this country, that such daring attempts have lately been made here, and in other parts of the British dominious, to destroy the tranquillity and happiness of the country; but it is to be hoped, that the vi

gilance of the executive government, and the strong arm of the law, will be sufficient for our protection; and I also hope and trust, that what has now befallen you, will be such an admonition to others, that there will be little danger of such execrable plans being again thought of, for a long period to come.

You have yet a little time to reflect seriously upon your past conduct, and to prepare for that awful change which is soon to follow. Let me exhort you to make the best use of your time, and to apply for assistance to those who can assist you in such important meditations.

It only remains to pronounce the sentence of the law, which is in these words:

SENTENCE.

The Court doth adjudge, that you, and each of you, be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution; that you be there hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; and that being alive, you, and each of you, be cut down, and your bowels taken out, and burnt before your face. That each of your heads be severed from your bodies; and your bodies divided into four parts; and that your heads and quarters be disposed of as the king shall think fit: and so the Lord have mercy upon your souls!

This is the sentence of the law; and I give farther notice to you, and to each of you, that this sentence will be carried into execution, upon Wednesday the 15th of October next, between the hours of twelve at noon, and four in the afternoon, in terms of a precept to that effect, which will be delivered to the sheriff; this notice I give you by order of the Court.

They received the dreadful sentence with much firmness and composure, and were immediately conducted to the Castle.

The following account of the execution of Robert Watt is taken from the New Annual Register for the year 1794:

Edinburgh, October 16. Yesterday, about half-past one o'clock, the two junior magistrates, with white rods in their hands, white gloves, &c., the Rev. Principal Baird, and a number of constables, attended by the town officers, and the city guard lining the streets, walked in procession from the council chamber to the east end of the Castle-hill, when a message was sent to the sheriff in the Castle, that they were there waiting to receive the prisoner, Robert Watt. immediately placed in a hurdle, with his back to the horse, and the executioner, with a large axe in his hand, took his seat opposite to him at the farther end of the hurdle.

ile was

"The procession then set out from the Castle, the sheriffs walking in front, with white rods in their hands, white gloves, &c.; a number of country constables surrounding the hurdle, and the military keeping off the

then spent in prayer and singing psalms; after which the prisoner mounted the drop board, and was launched into eternity.

crowd. In this manner they proceeded till they joined the magistrates, when the military returned to the Castle, and then the procession was conducted in the following "When the body was taken down, it was order-The city constables; town officers stretched upon a table, and the executioner, bare-headed; bailie Lothian, and bailie Dal- with two blows of the axe, severed off the rymple; Rev. Principal Baird; Mr. Sheriff head, which was received into a basket, and Clerk, and Mr. Sheriff Davidson; a number then held up to the multitude, while the of country constables; the hurdle painted executioner called aloud This is the head of a black, and drawn by a white horse; a num-'traitor, and so perish all traitors.” ”—New ber of country constables. The city guard, lined the streets to keep off the crowd.

"When they had reached the Tolbooth door, the prisoner was taken from the hurdle, and conducted into the prison, where a considerable time was spent in devotional exercises. The prisoner then came out upon the platform, attended by the magistrates, the sheriffs, Principal Baird, &c. Some time was

Ann. Reg., 1794, p. 58. That part of the sentence which relates to being quartered, &c. had been previously remitted.

David Downie, in consequence of the recommendation of the jury by whom he was tried, received his Majesty's Pardon.

604. The Trial of THOMAS HARDY for High Treason, before the Court holden under a Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer, at the Sessions House in the Old Bailey, on the 28th, 29th, 30th, and 31st days of October, and the 1st, 3d, 4th, and 5th days of November: 35 GEORGE III. A. D. 1794.*

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Present, the right honourable sir James Eyre, knt., lord chief justice of his majesty's court of Common pleas; the right honourable sir Archibald Macdonald, knt. lord chief baron of his majesty's court of Exchequer; the honourable sir Beaumont Hotham, knt. one of the barons of his majesty's court of Exchequer; the honourable sir Francis Buller, bt. one of the justices of his majesty's court of Common pleas; the honourable sir Nash Grose, knt. one of the justices of his majesty's Court of King's-bench; the honourable sir Soulden Lawrence, knt. one of the justices of his majesty's court of King's-bench; and others his majesty's justices, &c.

After the commission had been read, the sheriff delivered in the panel of the grand jury, which was called over, when the following gentlemen were sworn :

• Taken in short-hand by Joseph Gurney.

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Lord Chief Justice Eyre.-Gentlemen of the Grand Inquest; -You are assembled under the authority of the king's commission, which has been issued for the hearing and determining of the offences of high treason, and misprisions of treason against the person and authority of the king.

That which hath given occasion for this commission is that which is declared by a late statute, namely, " That a traitorous and detestable conspiracy has been formed for subverting the existing laws and constitution, and for introducing the system of anarchy and confusion, which has so lately prevailed in France;" a crime of that deep malignity which loudly calls upon the justice of the nation to interpose, "for the better preservation of his majesty's sacred person, and for securing the peace and the laws and liberties of this kingdom."

The first and effective step in this, as in the ordinary criminal proceedings, is, that a grand jury of the country should make public inquisition for the king, should diligently inquire, discover, and bring forward to the view of the criminal magistrate, those offences which it is the object of this special commis- | sion to hear and to determine.

You are jurors for our sovereign lord the king; you are so styled in every indictment which is presented; but let the true nature of this service be understood. The king commands you to enter upon this inquiry; but the royal authority in this, as in all its other functions, is exerted, and operates ultimately for the benefit of his people. It is the king's object, his duty, to vindicate his peace, his crown, and dignity, because his peace, his crown, and dignity, are the subjects' protection, their security, and their happiness.

It is ultimately for them that the laws have thrown extraordinary fences around the person and authority of the king, and that all attempts against the one or the other are considered as the highest crimes which can be committed, and are punished with a severity which nothing but the salus populi can justify.

The business of this day calls upon me (in order that you may the better understand the subject which is to come before you) to open to you the nature of that offence, which I have before spoken of in general.

An ancient statute, 25 Edward 3rd, has declared and defined it. I shall state to you so much of that declaration and definition as appears to me to have any probable relation to the business of this day.

By that statute it is declared to be high treason to compass or imagine the death of the king, provided such compassing and imagination be manifested by some act or acts proved (by two witnesses) to have been done by the party accused in prosecution of that compassing and imagination; that is, from the moment that this wicked imagination of the heart is acted upon, that any steps are taken in any manner conducing to the bring ing about and effecting the design, the inteňtion becomes the crime, and the measure of it is full.

These acts or steps are technically denominated overt acts; and the forms of proceeding in cases of this nature, require that these overt acts should be particularly set forth in every indictment of treason; and, from the nature of them, they must constitute the principal head of inquiry for the grand jury.

These overt acts involve them in two distinct considerations; 1st, the matter of fact, of which they consist; in the next place, the relation of that fact to the design.

With respect to the mere matter of fact, it will be for the grand jury to inquire into the true state of it; and I can have very little to offer to your consideration respecting it: and,

with respect to the question, whether the fact has relation to the design, so as to constitute an overt act of this species of treason, which involves considerations both of fact and of law, it is impossible that any certain rule should be laid down for your government; overt acts being in their nature all the possible means which may be used in the prosecution of the end proposed; they can be no otherwise defined, and must remain for ever infinitely various.

Thus far, I can inform you: that occasions have unhappily, but too frequently, brought overt acts of this species of treason under consideration; in consequence of which we are furnished with judicial opinions upon many of them? and we are also furnished with opinions (drawn from these sources) of text writers-some of the wisest and most enlightened men of their time, whose integrity has been always considered as the most prominent feature of their character, and whose doctrines do now form great land-marks, by which posterity will be enabled to trace, with a great degree of certainty, the boundary lines between high treason, and offences of a lower order and degree.

It is a fortunate circumstance that we are thus assisted; for it is not to be dissembled that, though the crime of high treason is "the greatest crime against faith, duty, and human society," and though," the public is deeply interested in every prosecution of this kind well founded," there hath been, in the best times, a considerable degree of jealousy on the subject of prosecutions for high treason; they are state prosecutions, and the consequences to the party accused are penal in the extreme.

Jurors and judges ought to feel an extraordinary anxiety that prosecutions of this nature should proceed upon solid grounds. I can easily conceive, therefore, that it must be a great relief to jurors placed in the responsible situation in which you now stand bound to do justice to their country and to the persons accused, and anxious to discharge this trust faithfully; sure I am that it is consolation and comfort to us, who have upon us the responsibility of declaring what the law is, in cases in which the public and the individual are so deeply interested; to have such men as the great sir Matthew Hale, and an eminent judge of our own times, who, with the experience of a century concurs with him in opinion, sir Michael Foster, for our guides.

To proceed by steps: from these writers upon the law of treason (who speak, as 1 have before observed, upon the authority of adjudged cases) we learn, that not only acts of immediate aud direct attempt against the king's life are overt acts of compassing his death, but that all the remoter steps, taken with a view to assist, to bring about the actual attempt, are equally overt acts of this species of treason; even the meeting and the consulting what steps should be taken in order to

bring about the end proposed, has been always deemed to be an act done in prosecution of the design, and as such an overt act of this treason-This is our first step in the present inquiry. I proceed to observe that the overt acts I have been now speaking of have reference, nearer or more remote, to a direct and immediate attempt upon the life of the king; but that the same authority informs us that they who aim directly at the life of the king (such, for instance, as the persons who were concerned in the assassination plot, in the reign of king William) are not the only persons who can be said to compass or imagine the death of the king. The entering into measures which, in the nature of things, or in the common experience of mankind, do obviously tend to bring the life of the king into danger, is also compassing and imagining the death of the king; and the measures which are taken will be at once evidence of the compassing, and overt acts of it.

The instances which are put by sir Matthew Hale and sir Michael Foster (and upon which there have been adjudged cases) are of conspiracies to depose the king; to imprison him; to get his person into the power of the conspirators; to procure an invasion of the kingdom. The first of these, apparently the strongest case, and coming the nearest to the direct attempt against the life of the king; the last, the farthest removed from that direct attempt, but being a measure tending to destroy the public peace of the country to introduce hostilities, and the necessity of resisting force by force, and where it is obvious, that the conflict has an ultimate tendency to bring the person and life of the king into jeopardy; it is taken to be a sound construction of the statute 25 Edward 3rd, and the clear law of the land, that this is also compassing and imagining the death of the king.

If a conspiracy to depose or to imprison the king, to get his person into the power of the conspirators, or to procure an invasion of the kingdom, involves in it the compassing and imagining of his death and if steps taken in prosecution of such a conspiracy are rightly deemed overt acts of the treason of imagining and compassing the king's death: need I add, that if it should appear that it has entered into the heart of any man who is a subject of this country, to design, to overthrow the whole government of the country, to pull down and to subvert from its very foundations the British monarchy, that glorious fabric which it has been the work of ages to erect, maintain and support, which has been cemented with the best blood of our ancestors; to design such a horrible ruin and devastation, which no king could survive, a crime of such a magnitude that no lawgiver in this country hath ever ventured to contemplate it in its whole extent; need I add, I say, that the complication and the enormous extent of such a design will not prevent its being distinctly seen, that the compassing and imagining the death

of the king is involved in it, is, in truth, of its very essence.

This is too plain a case to require farther illustration from me. If any man of plain sense, but not conversant with subjects of this nature, should feel himself disposed to ask whether a conspiracy of this nature is to be reached by this medium only; whether it is a specific treason to compass and imagine the death of the king, and not a specific treason to conspire to subvert the monarchy itself; I answer, that the statute of Edward 3rd, by which we are governed, hath not declared this (which in all just theory of treason is the greatest of all treasons) to be high treason.

I said no lawgiver had ever ventured to contemplate it in its whole extent; the seditio regni, spoken of by some of our ancient writers, comes the nearest to it, but falls far short of it; perhaps if it were now a question whether such a conspiracy should be made a specific treason, it might be argued to be unnecessary: that in securing the person and authority of the king from all danger, the monarchy, the religion and laws of our country are incidentally secured; that the constitution of our government is so framed, that the imperial crown of the realm is the common centre of the whole; that all traitorous attempts upon any part of it are instantly communicated to that centre, and felt there; and that, as upon every principle of public policy and justice they are punishable as traitorous attempts against the king's person or authority, and will, according to the particular nature of the traitorous attempt, fail within one or other of the specific treasons against the king, declared by the statute of 25 Edward 3rd; this greatest of all treasons is sufficiently provided against by law.

Gentlemen, I presume, I hardly need give you this caution, that though it has been expressly declared, by the highest authority,. that there do exist in this country men capable of meditating the destruction of the constitution under which we live; that declaration, being extrajudicial, is not a ground upon which you ought to proceed.

In consequence of that declaration it became a public and indispensable duty of his majesty to institute this solemn proceeding, and to impose upon you the painful task of examining the accusations which shall be brought before you; but it will be your duty to examine them in a regular judicial course, that is, by hearing the evidence, and forming your own judgment upon it.

And here, as I do not think it necessary to trouble you with observations upon the other branches of the statute 25 Edward 3rd, the charge to the grand inquest might conclude; had not the particular nature of the conspiracy, alleged to have been formed against the state, been disclosed, and made matter of public notoriety by the reports of the two houses of parliament, now in every one's

hands: but that being the case, I am apprehensive that I shall not be thought to have fulfilled the duty, which the judge owes to the grand jury, when questions in the criminal law arise on new and extraordinary cases of fact, if I did not plainly and distinctly state what I conceive the law to be, or what doubts I conceive may arise in law, upon the facts which are likely to be laid before you, according to the different points of view in which those facts may appear to you.

It is matter of public notoriety that there have been associations formed in this county, and in other parts of the kingdom, the professed purpose of which has been a change in the constitution of the Commons House of Parliament, and the obtaining of annual parliaments; and that to some of these associations other purposes, hidden under this veil, purposes the most traitorous, have been imputed; and that some of these associations have been supposed to have actually adopted measures of such a nature, and to have gone into such excesses, as will amount to the crime of high treason.

If there be ground to consider the professed purpose of any of these associations, a reform in parliament, as mere colour, and as a pretext held out in order to cover deeper designs designs against the whole constitution and government of the country; the case of those embarked in such designs is that which I have already considered. Whether this be so, or not, is mere matter of fact; as to which I shall only remind you, that an inquiry into a charge of this nature, which undertakes to make out that the ostensible purpose is a mere veil, under which is concealed a traitorous conspiracy, requires cool and deliberate examination, and the most attentive consideration; and that the result should be perfectly clear and satisfactory. In the affairs of common life, no man is justified in imputing to another a meaning contrary to what he himself expresses, but upon the fullest evidence. On the other hand, where the charge can be made out, it is adding to the crime meditated the deepest dissimulation and treachery, with respect to those individuals, who may be drawn in to embark in the ostensible purpose, as well as to the public, against which this dark mystery of wickedness is fabricated.

rally engage attention, and provoke speculation. The power of communication of thoughts and opinions is the gift of God, and the freedom of it is the source of all science, the first fruits and the ultimate happiness of society; and therefore it seems to follow, that human laws ought not to interpose, nay, cannot interpose, to prevent the communication of sentiments and opinions in voluntary assemblies of men ; all which is truc, with this single reservation, that those assemblies are to be so composed, and so conducted, as not to endanger the public peace and good order of the government under which they live; and I shall not state to you that associations and assemblies of men, for the purpose of obtaining a reform in the interior constitution of the British parliament, are simply unlawful; but, on the other hand, I must state to you, that they may but too easily degenerate, and become unlawful, in the highest degree, even to the enormous extent of the crime of high treason.

The process is very simple: let us imagine to ourselves this case: a few well meaning men conceive that they and their fellow subjects labour under some grievance; they assemble peaceably to deliberate on the means of obtaining redress; the numbers increase; the discussion grows animated, eager, and violent; a rash measure is proposed, adopted, and acted upon; who can say where this shall stop, and that these men, who originally assembled peaceably, shall not finally, and suddenly too, involve themselves in the crime of high treason? It is apparent how easily an impetuous man may precipitate such assemblies into crimes of unforeseen magnitude, and danger to the state; but, let it be considered, that bad men may also find their way into such assemblies, and use the innocent purposes of their association as the stalking horse to their purposes of a very different complexion. How easy for such men to practise upon the credulity and the enthusiasm of honest men, lovers of their country, loyal to their prince, but eagerly bent upon some speculative improvements in the frame, and internal mechanism of the government? If we suppose bad men to have once gained an ascendancy in an assembly of this description, popular in its constitution, and having popular objects; how easy is it for such men to plunge such an assembly into the most criminal excesses? Thus far I am speaking in general, merely to illustrate the proposition, that men who assemble in order to procure a reform of parliament may involve themselves in the guilt of high treason.

But if we suppose these associations to adhere to the professed purpose, and to have no other primary object, it may be asked, is it possible, and (if it be possible) by what process is it, that an association for the reform of parliament can work itself up to the crime of high treason? All men may, nay, all men The notoriety to which I have alluded leads must, if they possess the faculty of thinking, me to suppose, that the project of a convention reason upon every thing which sufficiently of the people to be assembled under the interests them to become objects of their advice and direction of some of these societies, attention, and among the objects of the atten- or of delegations from them, will be the leadtion of free men, the principles of govern- ing fact, which will be laid before you in eviment, the constitution of particular govern- dence, respecting the conduct, and measures ments, and, above all, the constitution of the of these associations; a project, which pergovernment under which they live, will natu-haps, in better times, would have been hardly

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