sinuated, by his different petitions, and by the publication in question, that they were introduced to these offices for their election services to the Earl of, as freeholders of Huntingdonshire.

He alleged further, that he had appealed from time to time to the Council of the Hospital and to the Directors without effect, and that he had been equally unsuccessful with the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty during the presidency of the Earl of Sandwich; that, in consequence of these failures, he resolved to attract the notice of the General Governors, and, as he thought them too numerous as a body for a convenient examination in the first instance, and besides had no means of assembling them, a statement of the facts through the medium of this appeal, drawn up exclusively for their use, and distributed solely among the members of their body, appeared to him the most eligible mode of obtaining redress on the subject.

*

In this composition, which was written with great zeal and with some asperity, the names of the landmen, intruded into the offices for seamen, were enumerated; the contractors also were held forth and reprobated, and the First Lord of the Admiralty himself was not spared.

On the circulation of the book becoming general, the Board of Admiralty suspended Captain Baillie from his office; and the different officers, contractors, &c., in the Hospital, who were animadverted upon, applied to the Court of King's Bench, in Trinity Term, 1778, and obtained a rule upon Captain Baillie to show cause in the Michaelmas Term following why an information should not be exhibited against him for a libel.

All Captain Baillie's leading counsel having spoken on the 23d of November, and, owing to the lateness of the hour, the Court having adjourned the argument till the morning of the 24th, Mr Erskine spoke as follows, from the back row of the Court, we believe for the first time, as he had only been called to the bar on the last day of the term preceding.

!

THE SPEECH.

MY LORD,-I am likewise of the counsel for the author of this supposed libel; and if the matter for consideration had been merely a question of private wrong, in which the interests of society were no farther concerned than in the protection of the innocent, I should have thought myself well justified, after the very able defence made by the learned gentlemen who have spoken before me, in sparing your Lordship, already fatigued with the subject, and in leaving my client to the prosecutor's counsel and the judgment of the Court.

But upon an occasion of this serious and dangerous complexion, when a British subject is brought before a court of justice only for having ventured to attack abuses which owe their continuance to

The foundation for it we do not mean to enter into, the editor being a stranger to all the circumstances, and the preface being only introduced as explanatory of the speech.

the danger of attacking them; when, without any motives but benevolence, justice, and public spirit, he has ventured to attack them, though supported by power, and in that department, too, where it was the duty of his office to detect and expose them, I cannot relinquish the high privilege of defending such a character; I will not give up even my small share of the honour of repelling and of exposing so odious a prosecution.

No man, my Lord, respects more than I do the authority of the laws, and I trust I shall not let fall a single word to weaken the ground I mean to tread, by advancing propositions which shall oppose or even evade the strictest rules laid down by the Court in questions of this nature.

Indeed, it would be as unnecessary as it would be indecent; it will be sufficient for me to call your Lordship's attention to the marked and striking difference between the writing before you, and I may venture to say almost every other, that has been the subject of argument on a rule for a criminal information.

The writings or publications which have been brought before this Court, or before grand juries, as libels on individuals, have been attacks on the characters of private men, by writers stimulated sometimes by resentment, sometimes, perhaps, by a mistaken zeal; or they have been severe and unfounded strictures on the characters of public men, proceeding from officious persons taking upon themselves the censorial office, without temperance or due information, and without any call of duty to examine into the particular department of which they choose to become the voluntary guardians-a guardianship which they generally content themselves with holding in a newspaper for two or three posts, and then, with a generosity which shines on all mankind alike, correct every department of the state, and find at the end of their lucubrations that they themselves are the only honest men in the community. When men of this description suffer, however we may be occasionally sorry for their misdirected zeal, it is impossible to argue against the law that censures them.

But I beseech your Lordship to compare these men and their works with my client and the publication before the Court.

Who is he?-What is his duty?-What has he written?-To whom has he written?—And what motive induced him to write?

He is Lieutenant-Governor of the Royal Hospital of Greenwich, a palace built for the reception of aged and disabled men who have maintained the empire of England on the seas, and into the offices and emoluments of which, by the express words of the charter, as well as by the evident spirit of the institution, no landmen are to be admitted.

HIS DUTY- in the treble capacity of Lieutenant-Governor, Director, and a General Governor-is, in conjunction with others, to watch over the internal economy of this sacred charity, to see that

the setting days of these brave and godlike men are spent in comfort and peace, and that the ample revenues appropriated by this generous nation to their support are not perverted and misapplied.

HE HAS WRITTEN, that this benevolent and politic institution has degenerated from the system established by its wise and munificent founders; that its Governors consist, indeed, of a great number of illustrious names and reverend characters, but whose different labours and destinations in the most important offices of civil life rendered a deputation indispensably necessary for the ordinary government of the Hospital; that the difficulty of convening this splendid corporation had gradually brought the management of its affairs more particularly under the direction of the Admiralty; that a new charter has been surreptitiously obtained, in repugnance to the original institution, which enlarges and confirms that dependence; that the present First Lord of the Admiralty (who, for reasons sufficiently obvious, does not appear publicly in this prosecution) has, to serve the base and worthless purposes of corruption, introduced his prostituted freeholders of Huntingdon into places destined for the honest freeholders of the seas; that these men (among whom are the prosecutors) are not only landmen, in defiance of the charter, and wholly dependent on the Admiralty in their views and situations, but, to the reproach of all order and government, are suffered to act as Directors and officers of Greenwich, while they themselves hold the very subordinate offices, the control of which is the object of that direction; and inferring from thence (as a general proposition) that men in such situations cannot, as human nature is constituted, act with that freedom and singleness which their duty requires, he justly attributes to these causes the grievances which his gallant brethren actually suffer, and which are the generous subject of his complaint.

He has written this, my Lord, not to the public at large, which has no jurisdiction to reform the abuses he complains of, but to those only whose express duty it is to hear and to correct them, and I trust they will be solemnly heard and corrected. He has not PUBLISHED, but only distributed his book among the Governors, to produce inquiry, and not to calumniate.

THE MOTIVE WHICH INDUCED HIM TO WRITE, and to which I shall by and by claim the more particular attention of the Court, was to produce reformation-a reformation which it was his most pointed duty to attempt, which he has laboured with the most indefatigable zeal to accomplish, and against which every other channel was blocked up.

My Lord, I will point to the proof of all this; I will show your Lordship that it was his duty to investigate; that the abuses he has investigated do really exist and arise from the ascribed causes; that he has presented them to a competent jurisdiction, and not to the public; and that he was under the indispensable necessity of

5

taking the step he has done to save Greenwich Hospital from ruin.

Your Lordship will observe, by this subdivision, that I do not wish to form a specious desultory defence, because, feeling that every link of such subdivision will, in the investigation, produce both law and fact in my favour, I have spread the subject open before the eye of the Court, and invite the strictest scrutiny. Your Lordship will likewise observe by this arrangement that I mean to confine myself to the general lines of his defence; the various affidavits have already been so ably and judiciously commented on by my learned leaders-to whom, I am sure, Captain Baillie must ever feel himself under the highest obligations-that my duty has become narrowed to the province of throwing his defence within the closest compass, that it may leave a distinct and decided impression.

And first, my Lord, as to its being his particular duty to inquire into the different matters which are the subject of his publication, and of the prosecutors' complaint, I believe, my Lords, I need say little on this head to convince your Lordships, who are yourselves Governors of Greenwich Hospital, that the defendant, in the double capacity of Lieutenant-Governor and Director, is most indispensably bound to superintend everything that can affect the prosperity of the institution, either in internal economy or appropriation of revenue; but I cannot help reading two copies of letters from the Admiralty in the year 1742. I read them from the publication, because their authenticity is sworn to by the defendant in his affidavit; and I read them to show the sense of that Board with regard to the right of inquiry and complaint in all officers of the Hospital, even in the departments not allotted to them by their commissions.

"To Sir John Jennings, Governor of Greenwich Hospital.

"ADMIRALTY OFFICE, April 19, 1742. "SIR, The Directors of Greenwich Hospital having acquainted my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, upon complaint made to them, that the men have been defrauded of part of their just allowance of broth and pease-soup, by the smallness of the pewter dishes, which in their opinion have been artificially beaten flat, and that there are other frauds and abuses attending this affair, to the prejudice of the poor men, I am commanded by their Lordships to desire you to call the officers together in Council, and to let them know that their Lordships think them very blamable for suffering such abuses to be practised, which could not have been done without their extreme indolence in not looking into the affairs of the Hospital; that their own establishment in the Hospital is for the care and protection of the poor men, and that it is their duty to look daily into everything, and to remedy every disorder, and not

to discharge themselves by throwing it upon the under-officers and servants; and that their Lordships, being determined to go to the bottom of this complaint, do charge them to find out and inform them at whose door the fraud ought to be laid, that their Lordships may give such directions herein as they shall judge proper.—I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, THOS. CORBET."

"ADMIRALTY OFFICE, May 7, 1742.

"SIR, My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having referred to the Directors of Greenwich Hospital the report made by yourself and officers of the said Hospital in Council, dated the 23d past, relating to the flatness of the pewter dishes made use of to hold the broth and pease-pottage served out to the pensioners, the said Directors have returned hither a reply, a copy of which I am ordered to send you enclosed: they have herein set forth a fact which has a very fraudulent appearance, and it imports little by what means the dishes became shallow; but if it be true, what they assert, that the dishes hold but little more than half the quantity they ought to do, the poor men must have been greatly injured; and the allegations in the officers' report, that the pensioners have made no complaint, does rather aggravate their conduct in suffering the men's patience to be so long imposed upon.

'My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty do command me to express myself in such a manner as may show their wrath and displeasure at such a proceeding. You will please to communicate this to the officers of the house in Council.

"Their Lordships do very well know that the Directors have no power but in the management of the revenue and estates of the Hospital, and in carrying on the works of the building, nor did they assume any on this occasion; but their Lordships shall always take well of them any informations that tend to rectify any mistakes or omissions whatsoever concerning the state of the Hospital.-I am, Sir, your obedient servant, THOS. CORBET.

"To Sir John Jennings,

"Governor of Greenwich Hospital."

From these passages it is plain that the Admiralty then was sensible of the danger of abuses in so extensive an institution, that it encouraged complaints from all quarters, and instantly redressed them; for although corruption was not then an infant, yet the idea of making a job of Greenwich Hospital never entered her head ; and indeed if it had, she could, hardly have found at that time of day, a man with a heart callous enough to consent to such a scheme, or with forehead enough to carry it into public execution.

Secondly, my Lord, that the abuses he has investigated do in truth exist, and arise from the ascribed causes.