had to contend with them when a cloud of prejudices covered every person whose name could be mentioned or thought of in the course of my defenceprejudices not only propagated by honest, though mistaken zeal, but fomented in other quarters by wickedness beyond the power of language to express -and all directed against the Societies of which the Prisoners were members; only because they had presumed to do what those who prosecuted them had done before them in other times; and from the doing of which they had raised their fortunes, and acquired the very power to prosecute and to oppress.

I had to contend too with all this in a most fearful season; when the light and humanity, even of an English public, was with no certainty to be reckoned on-when the face of the earth was drawn into convulsions-when bad men were trembling for what ought to follow, and good men for what ought not-and when all the principles of our free constitution, under the dominion of a delusive or wickedly infused terror, seemed to be trampled under foot. Gentlemen, when we reflect, however, upon the sound principles of the law of England, and the exalted history of its justice, I might, under other circumstances, have looked even those dangers in the face. There would have still remained that which is paramount to the ordinary law, and the corrector of its abuses ;-there would still have remained that great tribunal, raised by the wisdom of our ancestors, for the support of the people's rights;

-that tribunal which has made the law itself, and which has given me you to look at--that tribunal, which, from age to age, has been the champion of public liberty, and which has so long, and so often, been planted before it as a shield in the day of trouble. But looking to that quarter,-instead of this friendly shield of the subject, I found a sharp and destroying sword in the hand of an enemy: THE PROTECTING COMMONS WAS ITSELF THE ACCUSER OF MY CLIENT, AND ACTED AS A SOLICITOR TO PREPARE THE VERY BRIEFS FOR THE PROSE

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CUTION. I am not making complaints, but stating the facts as they existed. The very briefs, I say, without which my Learned Friends (as they themselves agree) could not have travelled through the cause, were prepared by the Commons of Great Britain-came before the Jury stamped with all its influence and authority, preceded by proclamations, and the publications of authoritative Reports, in every part of the kingdom, that the influence of the prejudgment might be co-extensive with the island.

I had, therefore, to contend with an impeachment, without the justice belonging to such a proceeding. When a subject is impeached by the Commons of Great Britain, he is not tried by a Jury of his country; why ?-because the benevolent institutions of our wise forefathers forbad it. They considered, that, when the Commons were the accusers, the Jury were the accusers also.-They

considered the Commons in Parliament, and the Commons at large, to be one and the same thing, though one would think, from the proceedings we are now engaged in, and every thing connected with them, that they had no connexion with one another; but that, on the contrary, the House of Commons was holding out a siege against its constituents, and supporting its authority against the privileges of the people, whose representatives they are and ought to be. Upon an impeachment besides, the Lords in Parliament, upon the same principle, form a criminal court of justice for all the subjects of England. A common man is not forced before that high assembly, but flies to it for refuge; because, as Mr. Justice Blackstone well expresses it, all the rest of the nation is supposed, by the law, to be engaged in the prosecution of their representatives. But did the Lords in Parliament stand in that situation in the case of the Prisoners at this bar? Though not formally arraigned before the great men of the realm, could they look up to them for countenance and support? Gentlemen, the Lords united themselves with the Commons in the accusation, and, like the Commons, prejudged the cause by the publication of Reports, which contain the whole mass of the criminating evidence.

I had, besides all this, to wade through a mass of matter beyond the reach of the human understanding to disentangle or comprehend, and which no strength of body could communicate if understood;

a situation so new and unparalleled in the criminal. justice of the country, that the Judges were obliged to make new experiments upon our legal constitution, to invent the means of trial: I go along with the decision of the Court as to the adjournment, though I waive no privilege for my Client; but what shall we say of a decision, which nothing but necessity could have justified, yet which starts up for the first time in the year 1794, after the constitution has endured for so many centuries; and which brings the Judges of the land in consultation together, to consider how by device, indulgence, or consent, or how at last, by the compulsion of authority, they might be able to deal with a case, which had not only no parallel, but nothing even analogous to it in the records or traditions of our country?

I had lastly to contend with all that array of ability and learning which is now before me, though with this consolation, that the contention was with honourable men. It is the glory of the English Bar, that the integrity and independence of its members is no mean security of the subject.

When, in spite of all this mighty, and seemingly insuperable pressure, I recollect that an humble and obscure individual was not merely acquitted, but delivered with triumph from the dangers which surrounded him;-when I call to mind that his deliverance was sealed by a verdict, not obtained by cabal, or legal artifice, but supported by principles which every man who has a heart in his bosom must ap

prove, and which accordingly HAS obtained the most marked and public approbation; when I consider all this-it raises up a whirlwind of emotions in my mind, which none but He who rides upon the whirlwind could give utterance to express. In that season of danger, when I thought a combination of circumstances existed which no innocence could overcome, and having no strength of my own to rely on, I could only desire to place the Jury under the protection of that benevolent Providence, which has so long peculiarly watched over the fortunes of this favoured island: sincerely, and from the bottom of my heart, I wished that a verdict should be given, such as a Jury might look up to God, as well as around them to man, when they pronounced it. Gentlemen, that verdict is given; -it is recorded,-and the honour and justice of the men who, as the instruments of Providence, pronounced it, are recorded, I trust, for ever along with it.

It may be said that this way of considering the subject is the result of a warm enthusiastic temper, under the influence of a religious education, and it may be so but there is another point of view in which men of all tempers, and however educated, must consider it. All men must agree in considering the decision as a great and solid advantage to the country, because they must see in it that our institutions are sound. All men must acknowledge that no event could be more fortunate than a public