the general principles of English law, that he who is accused of this crime, which consists in the invisible operations of the mind, should have it distinctly disclosed to him upon the same records, what acts the Crown intends to establish, upon the trial, as indicative of the treason; which acts do not constitute the crime, but are charged upon the record as the means employed by the Prisoner to accomplish the intention against the King's life, which is the treason under the first branch of the statute.

The record therefore goes on to charge, that, "in "order to fulfil, perfect, and bring to effect their "most evil and treasonable compassings and imagi"nations," (that is to say, the compassings and imaginations antecedently averred, viz. to bring and put the King to death,) they met, consulted, conspired, and agreed among themselves, and others, "to the Jurors unknown, to cause and procure a "convention and meeting of divers subjects of the' "realm, to be held and assembled within this king

66

dom." Now, in order to elucidate the true essence of this anomalous crime, and to prevent the possibility of confounding the treason with the OVERT ACT, which is only charged as the manifestation of it, let us pause here a little, and see what would have been the consequence if the charge had finished here, without further connecting the OVERT ACT with the TREASON, by directly charging the convention to have been assembled FOR THE PURPOSE OF BRINGING THE KING TO DEATH. I

shall not be put to argue that no proceedings could have been had upon such a defective indictment; since common sense must inform the most unlettered mind, that merely to hold a convention of the people, which might be for VARIOUS PURPOSES, without alleging for WHAT PURPOSE it was assembled, would not only not amount to high treason, but to NO CRIME WHatsoever. The Indictment, therefore, of necessity, proceeds to aver, that they conspired to hold this convention, WITH INTENT, and in order, that the persons so to be assembled at such convention and meeting, should "and might, wickedly and traitorously, without and "in defiance of the authority, and against the will of the Parliament of this kingdom, subvert and

alter, and cause to be subverted and altered, the legislature, rule, and government of the king"dom." What then is the charge in this first count of the Indictment, when its members are connected together, and taken as one whole? It is, that the Prisoner conspired, and confederated, with others, to subvert the rule and government of the kingdom, and to depose the King, and TO BRING AND PUT HIM TO DEATH; which last of the three is the only essential charge: for I shall not be put to argue that the Indictment would have been equally complete without the two former, and wholly and radically defective without the latter; since it has been, and will again be conceded to me, THAT THE COMPASSING THE KING'S DEATH IS THE GIST OF THE IN

DICTMENT, WHICH NOTHING CAN ADD TO, AND THE OMISSION OF WHICH NOTHING CAN SUPPLY.

The Indictment, therefore, having charged the traitorous compassing, proceeds, in conformity to the statute, to state the act charged to have been committed in fulfilment of it; which, you observe, is not an armed assembly to seize and destroy at once the person of the King, but a conspiracy to effect the same purpose through the medium of a convention; the Indictment, therefore, charges their design to assemble this convention, not as a meeting to petition for the reform of Parliament, or to deliberate upon the grievances of the country, but with the fixed and rooted intent in the mind, that this convention, when got together, whatever might be its external pretext, should depose the King, AND PUT HIM TO DEATH. It is impossible therefore to separate the members of this charge without destroying its whole existence; because the charge of the compassing would be utterly void without the overt act which the statute requires to be charged as the means employed by the Prisoner to accomplish it, because no other acts can be resorted to for its establishment; and because the overt act would be equally nugatory if separated from the compassing; SINCE THE OVERT ACT DOES

NOT

SUBSTANTIVELY CONSTITUTE THE TREASON WHEN SEPARATED FROM THE TRAITOROUS PURPOSE OF THE MIND WHICH PRODUCED IT, BUT IS ONLY THE VISIBLE MANIFESTATION OF THE TRAITOROUS

INTENTION, WHICH IS ADMITTED, ON ALL HANDS, TO BE THE CRIME.-Your office, therefore, Gentlemen-(I defy the wit, or wisdom, or artifice of man, to remove me from the position)-your office is to try whether the record, inseparable as I have shown it to be in its members, BE TRUE, OR FALSE; -or, to sum up its contents in a word, whether the Prisoner conspired, with others, to hold a convention or meeting, with the design that, under the mask of reform of Parliament, it should depose the King from his royal office, and DESTROY HIS LIFE.

There are several other overt acts charged in the Indictment, to which, however, you will see, at a glance, that the same principle will uniformly apply; since the compassing the death of the King is alike the charge in all of them; the overt acts only differing from one another, as the Indictment charges different acts connected with the assembling of this convention-such as how it was to be held-who were to form committees for projecting its meeting —and so on—which I do not particularize just now, because I shall have occasion, to consider them distinctly when I come to the particulars of the evidence. There is one of the counts, however, that has been so strongly relied on in argument, and to which so large a portion of the evidence has been thought to apply, that it is necessary, in this place, to attend to its structure. I mean the count which charges the circulation of papers. We have heard a great many of them read, and they will be a

lesson to me never again to destroy old newspapers as useless wrappings, but to treasure them up as pré-cious manuscripts for the discovery of plots, and secrets of conspirators: for, with a very few exceptions, the whole of the written evidence-by which so deep laid and detestable a conspiracy is supposed to have been developed by the seizure of the persons and correspondences of traitors-has been to be found, for two years past, upon the public file of every common newspaper, and retailed, over and over again, in every town and country magazine in the kingdom; and that too with the implied consent of His Majesty's Attorney General, who could not help seeing them, yet who never thought of prosecuting any man for their publication. Yet these said old newspapers have been on a sudden collected together, and their circulation charged as an overt act of high treason against the honourable Gentleman before you; although, with a very few and perfectly harmless exceptions, it has not been shown that he either wrote them, or published them, or read them, or even knew of their existence.

But supposing him to have been the author of all the volumes which have been read, let us examine how they are charged, in order to erect their circulation into treason.

The Indictment states, that further to fulfil their traitorous intention as aforesaid" (referring to the antecedent charge of compassing in the former count), they maliciously and traitorously did