been the uniform and zealous tenour of his opinions and conduct; yet in the teeth of this evidence of a whole life, you are called upon, on your oaths, to shed his blood, by the verdict you are to give in this place.

Gentlemen, I cannot conclude without observing that the conduct of this abused and unfortunate gentleman, throughout the whole of the trial, has certainly entitled him to admiration and respect; I had undoubtedly prepared myself to conduct his cause in a manner totally different from that which I have pursued; it was my purpose to have selected those parts of the evidence only by which he was affected, and, by a minute attention to the particular entries, to have separated him from the rest. By such a course I could have steered his vessel safely out of the storm, and brought her, without damage, into a harbour of safety, while the other unfortunate Prisoners were left to ride out this awful tempest. But he insisted on holding out a rope to save the innocent from danger-he would not suffer his defence to be put upon the footing which discretion would have suggested. On the contrary, though not implicated himself in the alleged conspiracy, he has charged me to waste and destroy my strength to prove that no such guilt can be brought home to others. I rejoice in having been made the humble instrument of so much good-my 'heart was never so much in a cause.

You may see that I am tearing myself to pieces

by exertions beyond my powers-I have neither voice nor strength to proceed further-I do not, indeed, desire to conciliate your favour, nor to captivate your judgments by elocution in the close of my discourse ;-but I conclude this cause, as I concluded the former, by imploring that you may be enlightened by that Power which can alone unerringly direct the human mind in the pursuit of Truth and Justice.

THE PROCEEDINGS

AGAINST

SACKVILLE, EARL OF THANET,

AND OTHERS,

FOR

A Misdemeanor ;

Tried at the Bar of the Court of King's Bench, April 25, 1799.

THE following Proceedings against the Earl of Thanet and others, as taken in short-hand by Mr. William Ramsay, an eminent short-hand writer, and published after the Trial by Robert Fergusson, Esq. one of the Defendants, requires no Preface. Lord Erskine's Speech for that Nobleman, and for Mr. Fergusson and Mr. O'Brien, would have lost all its force and interest if any part of the Trial had been abridged, because it is entirely a Speech upon viva voce evidence, and upon a subject, too, which was a constant appeal to a variety of facts and minute circumstances related by a great number of witnesses; a species of forensic eloquence, as was most justly observed in the brilliant and interesting ericism of the former volumes in the Edinburgh

Review, of which we have no examples in the ancient world; but of which every day, or, rather, every hour, in the British Courts of Justice might furnish instances worthy of preservation and admiration.

To relieve the reader from attending to the precise form of the Indictment, which is prefixed to the Proceedings, we cannot better or more correctly state the substance of it than in Lord Ere ine's own words, in the prefatory part of his Address to the Jury.

"In adverti g to what the charge is, I need not "have recourse to the abstract I have made of this "Information.-The substance and common sense of "it is this:-that Mr. Arthur O'Connor had been "brought by legal process into the custody of the "sheriff of Kent; that a special commission had "assembled at Maidstone to try him and others for

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high treason; that upon the opening of the com"mission he had been again committed by the Court "to the same custody; that he was afterwards again "brought up to the bar, and found not guilty; and "that after he was so acquitted, but before he was "in strict form discharged by the order of the "Court, the Defendants conspired together to rescue "him. This is the essence of the charge. The dis"turbance of the Court, and the assaults stated in "the different counts of the Information, are only "the overt acts charged to have been done in pur

suance of the purpose to rescue the Prisoner."

This Trial was at the time a great subject of political animosity; but, faithful to the plan of this