the government, to depose, and to put to death the King, published them for the express purpose of exciting others to join them in the accomplishment of their treason. It does not charge the publication of libellous matter, which, peradventure, or even in all probability, might excite others to originate such a conspiracy; but directly charges the criminal purpose of exciting others to assist in the accomplishment of one already hatched in the mind and intention of the Prisoner.

Gentlemen, I should not further enlarge upon matter which appears to be so self-evident, more especially as I perceive that I have the assent of the Court to the meaning and construction of the Indictment as I have stated it, were it not that on the former trial it was directly questioned by the Solicitor General, in an argument which I cannot possibly reconcile with any one principle or precedent of English law. I am persuaded that he will not consider this observation as a personal attack upon his integrity, or any depreciation of his professional learning, for both of which I have always had a great respect. The truth is, when the mind has long been engaged upon a particular subject, and has happened to look at it in a particular point of view, it is its natural infirmity to draw into the vortex of its own ideas, whatever it can lay hold of, however unsuited to their support. I cannot account upon any other principle for the doctrine maintained by so very learned a person, in his late

reply in this place; a doctrine so extraordinary, that I would not venture to quote it from my own memory, and which I shall, therefore, read to you from the note I have been furnished with by my Learned Friend who sits near me*: a doctrine which I am persuaded the Solicitor General would not, upon reflection, re-maintain to be the law; and which if it were the law, I would not live in the country longer than to finish my address to you. He says roundly, that the law upon this subject is perfectly clear; namely, that any act done (attend, I beseech you, to the expression), “that any "act done which MAY endanger the life of the King, "is, in the judgment of the law, an act done in

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pursuance of an intent to compass his death."That the act is, in point of law, demonstrative of "the purpose, and constitutes the crime of high "treason; that the imagination of personal harm "to the King forms no part of it; and that it is.

not material whether the person charged had in "contemplation the consequences that might follow from what he did, it being sufficient, independently

of all intention, if the death of the King was a "PROBABLE CONSEQUENCE of what he was about to "do."

Gentlemen, one hardly knows where one is after reading so strange and confounding a proposition. The argument, in short, is neither more nor less than this-That if I do an act, though with the

* Mr. Gurney.

most innocent mind, and without contemplating that any danger can possibly touch the King; nay more, if from a mistaken zeal I do an act from which the Jury are convinced that I honestly conceived his person would be safer, and his reign more secure and illustrious; yet, if not in the event, but only in the opinion of lawyers my conduct led to the direct contrary consequence, I am to be adjudged in law a compasser of the King's death;-I am to be found, in point of law, to have intended what I never thought of; and a Jury, whose province is to declare the FACT, is to be bound in conscience to find me guilty of designing the King's death, though their consciences inform them, from the whole evidence, that I sought nothing but the health of his person, and the honour of his Crown. Gentlemen, this is such a monstrous, horrible proposition, that I would rather, at the end of all these causes, when I had finished my duty to their unfortunate objects, die upon my knees, thanking God that, for the protection of innocence, and the safety of my country, I had been made the instrument of denying and reprobating it, than live to the age of Methusalem for letting it pass unexposed and unrebuked.

It

may be curious to examine to what conclusions this doctrine of a lawyer's speculation upon probable consequences, shutting out the examination of actual intention, might lead. It is part of the evidence before you against the honourable Gentleman at

your bar, that a proposition was made to, and adopted by, the Constitutional Society to send a delegate to the Convention at Edinburgh; and you have been desired, from this measure, and others of a similar bearing, to find an intention to destroy the King, from the probable consequence of such proceedings. Let us try the validity of this logicThe Society of the Friends of the People (some of whose proceedings are in evidence) had a similar proposition made to them to send a delegate to this same Convention, and the measure was only rejected, after a considerable degree of debate. Suppose, then, on the contrary, they had agreed to send one, and that I, who am now speaking to you, had been of the number who consented, I should then have been in a worse predicament than my Client, who appears to have opposed it; I should have been found to have consented to an act, which, according to some legal casuists, had a tendency to destroy the King; and although my life was laboriously devoted to the duties of my profession, which cut me off from attending to the particular conduct of reformers, though approving of their general and avowed object, Mr. Yorke's speech at Sheffield, and all the matter besides which has consumed our time and patience for three days past, would have been read to establish my conspiracy with people whom I never saw or heard of in the course of my existence. It is, besides, equally high treason to compass and imagine the death of the Heir Ap

parent, as the death of the King; and if the nature of the conspiracy was to reach the King's life, by subverting the government, its subversion would lead as directly, in its consequence, to the destruction of his successor, and consequently would, upon the acknowledged principles of law, be a compassing of the death of the Prince of Wales. See, then, to what monstrous conclusions it would lead, if an act could be considered as legally conclusive of an intention, instead of examining it with the eye of reason, and as a fact from the circumstances attending it. It so happened that at this very time, and though a member of this society of reformers, I was Attorney General to the Prince; sworn of his Privy Council; high in his personal confidence; and full of that affection for him which I yet retain. -Would it have been said, Gentlemen, (I am not seeking credit with you for my integrity), but would it have been said without ridicule, that a man, placed as I was in a high situation about the Heir Apparent of the Crown, who had at once the will and the privilege to reward my services; that I, who was serving him at the very moment in terms of confidence and regard, was to be taken conclusively, as a judgment of abstract law, to be plotting his political destruction, and his natural death?

This doctrine, so absurd and irrational, does not appear to me to be supported by any thing like legal authority.

In the first place, let it be recollected that this is