omit from his enumeration that mighty power of public opinion, embodied in a free press, which pervades, and checks, and, perhaps, in the last resort, nearly governs the whole; such a man would, surely, give but an imperfect view of the government of England as it is now modified, and would greatly underrate the counteracting influences against which that of the executive power has to contend.

XV.-ERSKINE'S DEFENCE OF THE DEAN OF ST. ASAPH.

GENTLEMEN of the Jury,-My learned friend having informed the Court that he means to call no other witnesses to support the prosecution, you are now in possession of the whole of the evidence; and on this evidence the prosecutor has ventured to charge my reverend client, the Dean of St. Asaph, with a seditious purpose to excite disloyalty and disaffection to the person of the king, and an armed rebellion against the state and constitution of his country.

Gentlemen, the only difficulty I shall feel in resisting this false and malevolent accusation, is, to repress my feelings, excited by its folly and injustice, within those bounds which leave the faculties their natural and unclouded operation; for I solemnly declare to you, that if he had been indicted for a libeller of our holy religion, only for publishing that the world was made by its almighty Author, my astonishment could not have been greater than to see this little book presented to a grand jury of English subjects, as a libel upon the government of England. Every sentence contained in it, if the interpretation of words is to be settled not according to fancy, but by the common rule of language, is to be found in the brightest pages of English literature, and in the most sacred volumes of English law; if any one sentiment from the beginning to the end of it be seditious, or libellous, the Bill of Rights was a seditious libel; the Revolution was a wicked rebellion; the existing government is a traitorous conspiracy against the hereditary monarchy of

England; and our gracious sovereign, whose title I am persuaded we are all of us prepared to defend with our blood, is a usurper of the crown of these kingdoms.

Gentlemen, in thus declaring my opinion, I place it as my own opinion in front of my address to you, and I wish you not to mistake for the mere zeal of professional duty the energies of truth and freedom. For although, in ordinary cases, the advocate and the private man ought in sound discretion to be kept asunder, yet there are occasions where such separation would be treachery and meanness. In a case where the dearest rights of society are to be supported by resisting a prosecution of which the party accused is but a mere name; where the whole community is to be wounded through the sides of that party; and where the conviction of the individual will be the subversion or surrender of public privileges; the advocate has a more extensive charge. The duty of the patriot citizen then mingles itself with his obligation to his client, and he disgraces himself, dishonours his profession, and betrays his country, if he does not step forth in his genuine character, and vindicate the rights of his fellowcitizens, which are attacked through the medium of the man he is defending. Gentlemen, I do not shrink from that responsibility upon this occasion, but desire to be considered the fellow-criminal of the defendant, if by your verdict he shall be found a criminal.

XVI.-ERSKINE ON EVIDENCE AND PRECEDENTS.

BEFORE you can adjudge a fact, you must believe it;not suspect it, or imagine it, or fancy it, but believe it: and it is impossible to impress the human mind with such a reasonable and certain belief, as is necessary to be impressed, before a Christian man can adjudge his neighbour to the smallest penalty, much less to the pains of death, without having such evidence as a reasonable mind will accept of as the infallible test of truth. And what is that evidence? Neither more nor less than that which

the Constitution has established in the courts for the general administration of justice: namely, that the evidence convince the jury, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the criminal intention, constituting the crime, existed in the mind of the man upon trial, and was the mainspring of his conduct. The rules of evidence, as they are settled by law, and adopted in its general administration, are not to be overruled or tampered with. They are founded in the charities of religion-in the philosophy of nature-in the truths of history-and in the experience of common life; and whoever ventures rashly to depart from them, let him remember that it will be meted to him in the same measure, and that both God and man will judge him accordingly.

These are arguments addressed to your reason and your consciences; not to be shaken in upright minds by any precedent, for no precedents can sanctify injustice: if they could, every human right would long ago have been extinct upon the earth. If the State Trials in bad times are to be searched for precedents, what murders may you not commit-what law of humanity may you not trample upon-what rule of justice may you not violate and what maxim of wise policy may you not abrogate and confound? If precedents in bad times are to be implicitly followed, why should we have heard any evidence at all? You might have convicted without any evidence; for many have been so convicted-and, in this manner, murdered-even by acts of Parliament. If precedents in bad times are to be followed, why should the Lords and Commons have investigated these charges, and the Crown have put them into this course of judicial trial ?-since without such a trial, and even after an acquittal upon one, they might have attainted all the prisoners by act of Parliament:-they did so in the case of Lord Strafford.

There are precedents, therefore, for all such things! but such precedents as could not for a moment survive the times of madness and distraction which gave them birth; but which, as soon as the spurs of the occasions were blunted, were repealed and execrated even by Parliaments which

(little as I may think of the present) ought not to be compared with it: Parliaments-sitting in the darkness of former times-in the night of freedom-before the principles of government were developed, and before the Constitution became fixed. The last of these precedents, and all the proceedings upon it, were ordered to be taken off the file and burnt, to the intent that the same might no longer be visible to after ages; an order dictated, no doubt, by a pious tenderness for national honour, and meant as a charitable covering for the crimes of our fathers. But it was a sin against posterity-it was a treason against society; for, instead of commanding them to be burnt, they should rather have directed them to be blazoned in large letters upon the walls of our Courts of Justice, that, like the characters deciphered by the prophet of God to the Eastern tyrant, they might enlarge and blacken in your sight to terrify you from acts of injustice.

XVII.-LORD BROUGHAM ON THE REFORM

BILL.

You stand, my Lords, on the brink of a great event. You are in the crisis of a whole nation's hopes and fears. An awful importance hangs over your decision. Pause, ere you plunge! There may not be any retreat! It behoves you to shape your conduct by the mighty occasion. They tell you not to be afraid of personal consequences in discharging your duty: I, too, would ask you to banish all fears; but, above all, that most mischievous, most despicable the fear of being thought afraid. If you won't take counsel from me, take example from the statesmanlike conduct of the noble Duke; while you also look back, as you may, with satisfaction on your own. was told, and you were told, that the impatience of Ireland for equality of civil rights was partial, the clamour transient, likely to pass away with its temporary occasion; and that yielding to it would be conceding to intimidation. I recollect hearing this topic urged within this

He

hall in July 1828; less regularly I heard it than I have now done, for I belonged not to your number; but I heard it urged in the self-same terms. The burden of the cry was: 'It is no time for concession; the people are turbulent, and the Association dangerous.' That summer passed, and the ferment subsided not. Autumn came, and brought not the precious fruit of peace; on the contrary, all Ireland was convulsed with the unprecedented conflict which returned the great chief of the Catholics to sit in a Protestant parliament. Winter bound the earth in chains, but it controlled not the popular fury, whose surge, more deafening than the tempest, lashed the frail bulwarks of law, founded upon injustice. Spring came, but no ethereal mildness was its harbinger, or followed in its train: the Catholics became stronger by every month's delay; displayed a deadlier resolution, and proclaimed their wrongs in a tone of louder defiance than before. And what course did you, at this moment of greatest excitement, and peril, and menace, deem it most fitting to pursue? Eight months before, you had been told how unworthy it would be to yield when men clamoured and threatened. No change had happened in the interval, save that the clamours were become far more deafening, and the threats, beyond comparison, more overbearing. What, nevertheless, did your Lordships do? Your duty! for you despised the cuckoo note of the season, 'not to be intimidated.' You granted all that the Irish demanded, and you saved your country. Was there, in April, a single argument advanced, which had not held good in July? None! absolutely none; except the new height to which the dangers of longer delay had risen, and the increased vehemence with which justice was demanded. And yet the appeal to your pride, which had prevailed in July, was in vain made in April; and you wisely and patriotically granted what was asked, and ran the risk of being supposed to yield through fear. But the history of the Catholic claims conveys another important lesson. Though in right, and policy, and justice, the measure of relief could not be too ample, half as much as was received with little gratitude, when so late wrung from you,