THE SPEECH.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,-Mr Kenyon having informed the Court that we propose to call no other witnesses, it is now my duty to address myself to you, as counsel for the noble prisoner at the bar, the whole evidence being closed. I use the word closed, because it is certainly not finished, since I have been obliged to leave the place in which I sat, to disentangle myself from the volumes of men's names which lay there under my feet, whose testimony, had it been necessary for the defence, would have con'firmed all the facts that are already in evidence before you.

Gentlemen, I feel myself entitled to expect, both from you and from the Court, the greatest indulgence and attention; I am, indeed, a greater object of your compassion than even my noble friend whom I am defending. He rests secure in conscious innocence, and in the well-placed assurance that it can suffer no stain in your hands: not so with ME; I stand up before you a troubled, I am afraid a guilty man, in having presumed to accept of the awful task which I am now called upon to perform,-a task which my learned friend who spoke before me, though he has justly risen by extraordinary capacity and experience to the highest rank in his profession, has spoken of with that distrust and diffidence which becomes every Christian in a cause of blood. If Mr Kenyon has such feelings, think what mine must be. gentlemen, who am I?-a young man of little experience, unused to the bar of criminal courts, and sinking under the dreadful consciousness of my defects. I have, however, this consolation, that no ignorance nor inattention on my part can possibly prevent you from seeing, under the direction of the Judges, that the Crown has established no case of treason.

Gentlemen, I did expect that the Attorney-General, in opening a great and solemn state prosecution, would have at least indulged the advocates for the prisoner with his notions on the law, as applied to the case before you, in less general terms. It is very common indeed, in little civil actions, to make such obscure introductions by way of trap; but in criminal cases, it is unusual and unbecoming; because the right of the Crown to reply, even where no witnesses are called by the prisoner, gives it thereby the advantage of replying, without having given scope for observations on the principles of the opening, with which the reply must be consistent.

One observation he has, however, made on the subject, in the truth of which I heartily concur-viz., that the crime of which the noble person at your bar stands accused is the very highest and

*

Afterwards Lord Kenyon, and Chief-Justice of the Court of King's Bench.

Mr Erskine sat originally in the front row, under which there were immense piles of papers, and he retired back before he began to address the jury.

most atrocious that a member of civil life can possibly commit; because it is not, like all other crimes, merely an injury to society from the breach of some of its reciprocal relations, but is an attempt to utterly dissolve and destroy society altogether.

In nothing, therefore, is the wisdom and justice of our laws so strongly and eminently manifested, as in the rigid, accurate, cautious, explicit, unequivocal definition of what shall constitute this high offence; for, high treason consisting in the breach and dissolution of that allegiance which binds society together, if it were left ambiguous, uncertain, or undefined, all the other laws established for the personal security of the subject would be utterly useless; since this offence, which, from its nature, is so capable of being created and judged of by rules of political expediency on the spur of the occasion, would be a rod at will to bruise the most virtuous members of the community, whenever virtue might become troublesome or obnoxious to a bad Government.

Injuries to the persons and properties of our neighbours, considered as individuals, which are the subjects of all other criminal prosecutions, are not only capable of greater precision, but the powers of the state can be but rarely interested in straining them beyond their legal interpretation; but if treason, where the Government itself is directly offended, were left to the judgment of its ministers, without any boundaries,-nay, without the most broad, distinct, and inviolable boundaries marked out by law, there could be no public freedom, and the condition of an Englishman would be no better than a slave's at the foot of a sultan; since there is little difference whether a man dies by the stroke of a sabre, without the forms of a trial, or by the most pompous ceremonies of justice, if the crime could be made at pleasure by the state to fit the fact that was to be tried.

Would to God, gentlemen of the jury, that this were an observation of theory alone, and that the page of our history was not blotted with so many melancholy, disgraceful proofs of its truth; but these proofs, melancholy and disgraceful as they are, have become glorious monuments of the wisdom of our fathers, and ought to be a theme of rejoicing and emulation to us. For from the mischief constantly arising to the state from every extension of the ancient law of treason, the ancient law of treason has been always restored, and the constitution at different periods washed clean, though, unhappily, with the blood of oppressed and innocent men.

When I speak of the ancient law of treason, I mean the venerable statute of King Edward III., on which the indictment you are now trying is framed, a statute made, as its preamble sets forth, for the more precise definition of this crime, which had not, by the common law, been sufficiently explained; and consisting of different and distinct members, the plain unextended letter of which was thought to be a sufficient protection to the person and honour of

the Sovereign, and an adequate security to the laws committed to his execution. I shall mention only two of the number, the others not being in the remotest degree applicable to the present accusation.

To compass or imagine the death of the King; such imagination, or purpose of the mind (visible only to its great Author), being manifested by some open act; an institution obviously directed, not only to the security of his natural person, but to the stability of the Government, the life of the prince being so interwoven with the constitution of the state that an attempt to destroy the one is justly held to be a rebellious conspiracy against the other.

Secondly, which is the crime charged in the indictment, To levy war against him in his realm;· -a term that one would think could require no explanation, nor admit of any ambiguous construction amongst men who are willing to read laws according to the plain signification of the language in which they are written, but which has nevertheless been an abundant source of that constructive cavil which this sacred and valuable Act was made expressly to prevent. The real meaning of this branch of it-as it is bottomed in policy, reason, and justice, as it is ordained in plain, unambiguous words, as it is confirmed by the precedents of justice, and illustrated by the writings of the great lights of the law, in different ages of our history-I shall, before I sit down, impress upon your minds as a safe, unerring standard by which to measure the evidence you have heard. At present, I shall only say that, far and wide as judicial decisions have strained the construction of levying war beyond the warrant of the statute, to the discontent of some of the greatest ornaments of the profession, they hurt not me. As a citizen, I may disapprove of them; but as advocate for the noble person at your bar, I need not impeach their authority, because none of them have said more than this: that war may be levied against the King in his realm, not only by an insurrection to change or to destroy the fundamental constitution of the Government itself by rebellious war, but, by the same war, to endeavour to suppress the execution of the laws it has enacted, or to violate and overbear the protection they afford, not to individuals (which is a private wrong), but to any general class or description of the community, BY PREMEDITATED OPEN ACTS OF VIOLENCE, HOSTILITY, AND force.

Gentlemen, I repeat these words, and call solemnly on the Judges to attend to what I say, and to contradict me if I mistake the law: BY PREMEDITATED, OPEN ACTS OF VIOLENCE, HOSTILITY, AND FORCE;— nothing equivocal; nothing ambiguous; no intimidations, or overawings, which signify nothing precise or certain, because what frightens one man, or set of men, may have no effect upon another; but that which COMPELS and COERCES; OPEN VIOLENCE AND FORCE. Gentlemen, this is not only the whole text; but I submit it to the learned Judges, under whose correction I am happy to speak, an accurate explanation of the statute of treason, as far as it relates

to the present subject, taken in its utmost extent of judicial construction, and which you cannot but see, not only in its letter, but in its most strained signification, is confined to acts which immediately, openly, and unambiguously strike at the very root and being of government, and not to any other offences, however injurious to its peace.

Such were the boundaries of high treason marked out in the reign of Edward III.; and as often as the vices of bad princes, assisted by weak submissive parliaments, extended state offences beyond the strict letter of that Act, so often the virtue of better princes and wiser parliaments brought them back again.

A long list of new treasons, accumulated in the wretched reign of Richard II., from which (to use the language of the Act that repealed them) "no man knew what to do or say for doubt of the pains of death," were swept away in the first year of Henry IV., his successor; and many more, which had again sprung up in the following distracted arbitrary reigns, putting tumults and riots on a footing with armed rebellion were again levelled in the first year of Queen Mary, and the statute of Edward made once more the standard of treasons. The Acts, indeed, for securing his present Majesty's illustrious house from the machinations of those very Papists who are now so highly in favour, have since that time added to the list; but these not being applicable to the present case, the ancient statute is still our only guide, which is so plain and simple in its object, so explicit and correct in its terms, as to leave no room for intrinsic error; and the wisdom of its authors has shut the door against all extension of its plain letter; declaring in the very body of the Act itself, that nothing out of that plain letter should be brought within the pale of treason by inference or construction; but that, if any such cases happened, they should be referred to the Parliament.

This wise restriction has been the subject of much just eulogium by all the most celebrated writers on the criminal law of England. Lord Coke says, "The Parliament that made it was on that account called Benedictum or Blessed;" and the learned and virtuous Judge Hale, a bitter enemy and opposer of constructive treasons, speaks of this sacred institution with that enthusiasm which it cannot but inspire in the breast of every lover of the just privileges of mankind. Gentlemen, in these mild days, when juries are so free and judges so independent, perhaps all these observations might have been spared as unnecessary; but they can do no harm; and this history of treason, so honourable to England, cannot (even imperfectly as I have given it) be unpleasant to Englishmen. At all events, it cannot be thought an inapplicable introduction to saying that Lord George Gordon, who stands before you indicted for that crime, is not, cannot be guilty of it, unless he has levied war against the King in his realm, contrary to the plain letter, spirit, and inten

tion of the Act of 25th Edward III.; to be extended by no new or occasional constructions; to be strained by no fancied analogies; to be measured by no rules of political expediency; to be judged of by no theory; to be determined by the wisdom of no individual, however wise-but to be expounded by the simple genuine LETTER of the law.

Gentlemen, the only overt act charged in the indictment is-the assembling the multitude, which we all of us remember went up with the petition of the Associated Protestants on the second day of last June; and in addressing myself to a humane and sensible jury of Englishmen, sitting in judgment on the life of a fellow-citizen, more especially under the direction of a Court so filled as this is, I trust I need not remind you that the purposes of that multitude, as originally assembled on that day, and the purposes and acts of him who assembled them, are the sole objects of investigation; and that all the dismal consequences which followed, and which naturally link themselves with this subject in the firmest minds, must be altogether cut off and abstracted from your attention, further than the evidence warrants their admission. Indeed, if the evidence had been coextensive with these consequences,-if it had been proved that the same multitude, under the direction of Lord George Gordon, had afterwards attacked the bank, broke open the prisons, and set London in a conflagration,-I should not now be addressing you. Do me the justice to believe that I am neither so foolish as to imagine I could have defended him, nor so profligate as to wish it, if I could. But when it has appeared, not only by the evidence in the cause, but by the evidence of the thing itself,

BY THE ISSUES OF LIFE, WHICH MAY BE CALLED THE EVIDENCE OF

HEAVEN, that these dreadful events were either entirely unconnected with the assembling of that multitude to attend the petition of the Protestants, or, at the very worst, the unforeseen, undesigned, unabetted, and deeply regretted consequences of it, I confess the seriousness and solemnity of this trial sink and dwindle away. Only abstract from your minds all that misfortune, accident, and the wickedness of others have brought upon the scene,--and the cause requires no advocate. When I say that it requires no advocate, I mean that it requires no argument to screen it from the guilt of treason. For though I am perfectly convinced of the purity of my noble friend's intentions, yet I am not bound to defend his prudence, nor to set it up as a pattern for imitation; since you are not trying him for imprudence, for indiscreet zeal, or for want of foresight and precaution,—but for a deliberate and malicious predetermination to overpower the laws and government of his country, by HOSTILE, REBELLIOUS FORCE.

The indictment, therefore, first charges that the multitude, assembled on the 2d of June, "WERE ARMED AND ARRAYED IN A WARLIKE MANNER: " which indeed, if it had omitted to charge, we