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of reform justified in coming forward with a fair statement of grievances? If it is alleged, that the pecuniary interest which the proprietors have in a newspaper, ought to subject them to a severe responsibility for its contents, let it be recollected, that they have only an interest in common with the public. I again call upon Mr. Attorney General to state, whether the fact appears to him clearly established, that the writers of this paper were influenced by seditious motives. I put it to you, Gentlemen of the Jury, as honest men, as candid judges of the conduct, as fair interpreters of the sentiments of others, whether you do not in your hearts and consciences believe, that these men felt as they wrote; that they complained of grievances which they actually experienced, and expressed sentiments with the truth of which they were deeply impressed. If you grant thisif you give them the credit of honest feelings and upright intentions, on my part any farther defence is unnecessary; we are already in possession of your verdict; you have already pronounced them not guilty; for you will not condemn the conduct when you have acquitted the heart. You will rather desire that British justice should resemble that attribute of Heaven which looks not to the outward act, but the principle from which it proceeds to the intention by which it is directed.

In summing up for the Crown, I would never wish to carry the principles of liberty farther than Mr. Attorney General has done, when he asserted the right of political discussion, and desired you only to look to the temper and spirit with which such discussion was made;-when he asserted, that it was right to expose abuses, to complain of grievances, provided always that it were done with an honest and fair intention. Upon this principle, I appeal to you, whether this advertisement might not be written with a bona fide intention, and inserted among a thousand others, without any seditious purpose, or desire to disturb the public peace.

Undoubtedly our first duty is the love of our country; but this love of our country does not consist in a servile attachment and blind adulation to authority. It was not so that our ancestors loved their country; because they loved it, they sought to discover the defects of its government; because they loved it, they endeavoured to apply the remedy. They regarded the constitution not as slaves with a constrained and involuntary homage, but they loved it with the generous and enlightened ardour of freemen. Their attachment was founded upon a conviction of its ex

cellence, and they secured its permanence by freeing it from blemish. Such was the love of our ancestors for the constitution, and their posterity surely do not become criminal by emulating their example. I appeal to you, whether the abuses stated in this paper do not exist in the constitution, and whether their existence has not been admitted by all parties, both by the friends and enemies of reform. Both, I have no doubt, are honest in their opinions, and God forbid that honest opinion in either party, should over become a crime. In their opinion of the necessity of a reform, as the best and perhaps only remedy of the abuses of the constitution, the writers of this paper coincide with the most eminent and enlightened men. On this ground I leave the question,-secure that your verdict will be agreeable to the dictates of your consciences, and be directed by a sound and unbiassed judgment.

1840

Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL.-There are some propositions which my Learned Friend (Mr. Erskine) has brought forward for the Defendants, which not only I do not mean to dispute, as an officer of the Crown, carrying on this prosecution, but which I will also admit to their full extent. Every individual is certainly in a considerable degree interested in this prosecution; at the same time I must observe, that I should have, in my own opinion, betrayed my duty to the Crown, if I had not brought this subject for the consideration of a Jury. Considering, however, every individual as under my protection, I think it a duty which I owe to the Defendants, to acknowledge, that in no one instance before this time were they brought to the bar of any Court, to answer for any offence either against Government or a private individual. This is the only solitary instance in which they have given occasion for such charge to be brought against them. In every thing, therefore, that I know of the Defendants, you are to take them as men standing perfectly free from any imputation but the present; and I will also say, from all I have ever heard of the Defendants, and from all I have ever observed of their morals in the conduct of their paper, I honestly and candidly believe them to be men incapable of wilfully publishing any slander on individuals, or of prostituting their paper to defamation or indecency. But my Learned Friend, Mr. Erskine, has stated some points, which my duty calls upon me to take notice of. I bound myself by the contents of the paper only; I

did not know the author of it. I did not know any Society from which the paper purported to have originated; it is said to be the production of a man of great abilities; I do not know that he is the author: at any rate, this is the first time I ever heard of that circumstance. There is one fact, on which we are all agreed, that the paper itself was dated on the 16th of July 1792, and that it appeared in the Morning Chronicle on the 25th of December 1792. It was then presented to the public with a variety of other advertisements, which it will be proper for you to peruse, and for that purpose you will carry out the paper with you, if you find it necessary to withdraw, in order to see what the intent of the Defendants was in publishing this paper. A bill, I also admit, passed into a law, the last session of Parliament, upon the subject of libels; but it would be exceedingly unfortunate for the subjects of this country, if my Learned Friend and myself were to be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice of what was our intention in passing that bill. The bill has now become a solemn act of the Legislature, and must speak for itself by its contents; but, however, it has, in my opinion, done what it was intended to do. It refers the question of guilt to the Jury in cases of libels, precisely as in every other criminal case. My Learned Friend has insisted, that criminal intention is matter of fact mixed with matter of law. Þ agree to this description; but then the law says that such and such facts are evidence of such and such intention. Treason, for instance, depends upon intention; but such and such acts are evidence of a criminal intention; and if the Jury entertain any doubts upon any part of the charge, his Lordship will only do his duty by giving them his advice and direction, which will be, that he who does such and such things, if he does them with a criminal intention, is amenable to the law, and that such and such acts are evidence of the criminal intention; and then the Jury must decide upon that evidence, and upon that advice, whether the Defendant was or was not guilty so says Mr. Erskine, and so I say; for it is a matter of plain common sense, coming home to the understanding of every man. Mr. Erskine has contended, that the Jury must not draw the inference of criminal intention from the mere fact of publishing a paper. Certainly not; but they may draw the inference of guilty intention, if they discover in the contents of the paper a wicked and malicious spirit, evidently pursuing a bad object by unwarrantable means. If I should put a paper into the hands of the Jury, desiring them to put my Learned Friend to death, would not that prove an evil in

tention against my Friend's life? In all cases of publication, containing any thing improper, the bad intention of the person publishing was clear, unless on his own part he could prove the contrary. Such has always been the law of England, in criminal cases of this description. Mr. Erskine has desired you to carry out the paper, and look at the other advertisements; upon this I am bound to remark, that there is not one of them, except that in question, which is not dated in the month of December, while this advertisement is dated on the16th of July, though it did not find its way into the Morning Chronicle until the end of the month of December. How that came to happen I cannot tell; it must be left to you to determine; but it does appear that at a very critical moment to the constitution of this country, it was brought out to counteract the intention and effect of all the other declarations in support of Government. At what time the Defendants received the paper in question, they had not attempted to prove. Why, if they received it in July, they did not then insert it, they did not say. They had brought no exculpatory evidence whatever to account for the delay. It was urged that the Defendants only published it in the way of business, as an advertisement, and therefore they could not be said to be guilty; if I should be brought to admit this as a sufficient answer, and never institute a prosecution where such was the case, I should, in so doing, deliver the Jury, and every man in this country, to the mercy of every newspaper printer in this kingdom, to be traduced and vilified, just as the malice of any man, who chose to pay for vending his own scandal, should dictate; I therefore entreat you to bring the case home to your own bosoms, and to act for the public, as in such an instance you would wish to act for yourselves. I must likewise say, that if you are to look at the intention of the Defendants in the other matter contained in the same paper, you will find various strong and even intemperate things. Among others, you will find the following, which, if it did not show a seditious, did not breathe a very temperate spirit; "Well might Mr. Fox "call this the most momentous crisis that he ever heard of in "the history of England; for we will venture to say, there is "not any one species of tyranny, which might not, in the present day, be tried with impunity; no sort of oppression "which would not find, not merely advocates, but supporters; and never, never in the most agitated moments of our his"tory, were men so universally tame, or so despicably feeble." This paragraph is no advertisement; it came from no Society; and will, I take it for granted, not be disavowed by the Defendant.

Upon the question of a reform of Parliament, I remain of the same opinion which I have always entertained; and whatever may have been said or thought by Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, the Duke of Richmond, the late Earl of Chatham, or the late Sir George Saville, or by any man, let his authority have been ever so great, never while I live will I consent to vote for a reform in Parliament, until I see something specific to be done, and can be very sure that the good to be gained will make it worth while to hazard the experiment.

In this way of thinking I am the more confirmed, from the circumstance, that of all the wise and excellent men who have at different times agitated the question of reform, none of them have ever been able to agree upon any one specific plan. And I declare, that I would rather suffer death than consent to open a door for such alterations in the government of this country, as chance or bad men might direct; or even good men, misled by bad, might, in the first instance, be inclined to adopt. I shudder, indeed, when I reflect on what have been the consequences of innovation in a neighbouring country. The many excellent men who there began to try experiments on government, confining their views within certain limits of moderation, and having no other object than the public good, little did they foresee in their outset the excesses and crimes which would follow in the progress of that revolution, of which they were the authors, and of which they were themselves destined to become the victims. They are now lying in the sepulchres of the dead, and the tombs of mortality; and most willingly, I am persuaded, would they have consigned themselves to their fate, if, by their death, they could have saved their unhappy country from the horrors and miseries of that dreadful anarchy into which it has fallen. Never, with such examples before my eyes, will I stake the blessings which we possess under the government of this country, upon the precarious consequences of innovation; nor consent to any alteration, of which, whatever may be stated as its object, the precise effects can never be ascertained. Indeed, I must think that my friend Mr. Erskine, in his propositions with respect to a reform, allows himself to talk like a child, and does not sufficiently consult that excellent judgment which he displays upon every other occasion. But let me entreat him to reflect on the situation in which both of us are now placed, and which, if, twenty years ago, any person told me I should have attained, I should have regarded it as madness. If we, by our industry (my Friend, indeed, with the advantage of his superior talents), have acquired a degree of opulence and dis