The same principles apply likewise to all actions of tort founded on injuries to property; the measure of damages in such actions being equally certain. As much as the plaintiff's property is diminished in value by the act of the defendant, so much shall the defendant pay; for he must place the plaintiff in the same condition as if the wrong had not been committed. In such discussions there must be, likewise, many shades of difference in the judgments of men respecting the loss and inconvenience suffered by acts injurious to property, and, as far as these differences can have any reasonable operation, juries have an uncontrolled jurisdiction; as the Court will never set aside their verdict for a difference which might fairly subsist upon the evidence between intelligent and unprejudiced men: but here, too, when they go beyond the utmost limits of discreet judgment, the Court interferes, because there is in all cases of injury to property a pecuniary calculation to govern the jurisdiction it exercises; all attacks on property resolving themselves into pecuniary loss, pecuniary damages are easily adjusted.

But there is a catalogue of wrongs over which juries, where neither favour nor corruption can be alleged against them, ought to have an uncontrolled dominion; not because the Court has not the same superintending jurisdiction in these as in other cases, but because it can rarely have any standard by which to correct the error of the verdict.

There are other rights which society is instituted to protect as well as the right of property, which are much more valuable than property, and for the deprivation of which no adequate compensation in money can be made. What Court, for instance, shall say, in an action for slandering an honest and virtuous character, that a jury has overrated the wrong which honour and sensibility endure at the very shadow of reproach? If a wife is seduced by the adulterer from her husband, or a daughter from the protection of her father, can the Court say this or that sum of money is too much for villainy to pay, or for misery to receive? In neither of these instances can the jury compel the defendant to make an adequate atonement, for neither honour nor happiness can be estimated in gold; and the law has only recourse to pecuniary compensation from the want of power to make the sufferer any other.

These principles apply, in a strong degree, to the case before the Court. It is, indeed, a suit for breach of a contract, but not of a pecuniary contract; injury to property is an ingredient—but not the sole ingredient of the action: there is much personal wrong; and of a sort that is irreparable. There is, upon the evidence reported by your Lordship, loss of health, loss of happiness, loss of protection from relations and friends, loss of honour which had been before maintained (in itself the full measure of ruin to a woman); and, added to all these, there is loss of property in the

disappointment of a permanent settlement for life: and for all this, the jury have given two thousand pounds, not more than a year's interest of the defendant's property.

I am, therefore, at a loss to discover any circumstance on the face of your Lordship's report, from which alone the Court must judge of the evidence, that can warrant a judgment that the jury have done wrong; for independent of their exclusive right to settle the degrees of credit due to the witnesses, what was there at the trial, or what is there now, to bring their credit into question ? Their characters stood before the jury, and stand before the Court, unimpeached; and Mr Wallace's whole argument, if indeed, jest is to be considered as reason, hangs upon the inadmissible supposition that the witnesses exaggerated the case. But the jury have decided on their veracity; and, therefore, before the Court can grant a new trial, it must say, that the verdict is excessive and illegal upon the facts as reported by your Lordship, taking them to be literally as they proceeded from the mouths of the witnesses. Upon this state of the case, and it is impossible to remove me from it, I think it is not very difficult to make up the defendant's bill for two thousand pounds.

The plaintiff appears to be the daughter of a clergyman, and to have been bred up with the notions of a gentlewoman; she had been before respectably married, in which condition, and during her widowhood, she had preserved her character, and had been protected and respected by her relations and friends. It is probable that her circumstances were very low, from the character in which she was introduced to the defendant, who, being an old and infirm man, was desirous of some elderly person as a housekeeper: and no imputation can justly be cast upon the plaintiff for consenting to such an introduction; for, by Mr Wallace's favour, the jury had a view of this defendant, and the very sight of him rebutted every suspicion that could possibly fall upon a woman of any age, constitution, or complexion. I am sure everybody who was in court must agree with me, that all the diseases catalogued in the dispensatory seemed to be running a race for his life, though the asthma appeared to have completely distanced his competitors, as the fellow was blowing like a smith's bellows the whole time of the trial, His teeth being all gone, I shall say nothing of his gums; and, as to his shape, to be sure a bass-fiddle is perfect gentility compared with it. I was surprised, therefore, that Mr Wallace should be the first to point out this mummy to the jury, and to comment on his imperfections; because they proved to a demonstration that the plaintiff could have no other possible inducement or temptation to cohabit with him, but that express and solemn promise of marriage which was the foundation of the action and the aggravation of the wrong. But besides such plain presumption, it is directly in proof that she never DID cohabit with him before, nor until

under this express promise and condition; so that the whole argument is, that disease and infirmity are excuses for villainy, and extinction of vigour an apology for debauchery. The age of the plaintiff, who is a woman towards fifty, was another topic; so that a crime is argued to be less in proportion as the temptation to commit it is diminished.

It would be in the defendant's favour if the promise had been improvident and thoughtless, suddenly given, and as suddenly repented; but the very reverse is in evidence, as she lived with him on these terms for several months, and at the end of them, he repeated his promises, and expressed the fullest approbation of her conduct. It is further in proof, that she fell into bad health on her discovering the imposition practised on her, and his disposition to abandon her. He himself admitted her vexation on that account to be the cause of her illness, and his behaviour under that impression was base having determined to get rid of her, he smuggled her out of his own house to her sister's, under pretence that change of air would recover her; and continued to amuse the poor creature with fresh promises and protestations, till, without provocation, and without notice or apology, he married another woman, young enough to be his daughter, and who, I hope, will manifest her affection by furnishing him with a pair of horns, sufficient to defend himself against the sheriff when he comes to levy the money upon

this verdict.

By this marriage, the poor woman is abandoned to poverty and disgrace, cut off from the society of her relations and friends, and shut out from every prospect of a future settlement in life suitable to her education and her birth: for having neither beauty nor youth to recommend her, she could have no pretensions but in that good conduct and discretion which, by trusting to the honour of the defendant, she has forfeited and lost.

On all these circumstances, no doubt, the jury calculated the damages, and how can your Lordship unravel or impeach the calculation? They are not like the items in a tradesman's account, or the entries in a banker's book; it is

For loss of character, so much;

For loss of health, so much;

For loss of the society and protection of relations and friends, so much;

And for the loss of a settlement for life, so much.

How is the Court to audit this account, so as to say, that, in every possible state of it, the jury has done wrong? How, my Lord, are my observations, weak as they are as proceeding from me, but strong as supported by the subject, to be answered ?-only by ridicule, which the facts do not furnish, and at which even folly, when coupled with humanity or justice, cannot smile. We are, besides, not in a theatre, but in a court of law; and when judges

are to draw grave conclusions from facts, which not being under re-examination, cannot be distorted by observation, they will hardly be turned aside from justice by a jest.

I therefore claim for the plaintiff the damages which the jury gave her der these directions from your Lordship, "That they were so entirely within their province, that you would not lead their judgments by a single observation."

The rule for a new trial was discharged.

SPEECH at Shrewsbury, 6th August 1784, for the Rev. WILLIAM DAVIES SHIPLEY, Dean of St Asaph, on his Trial for Publishing a Seditious Libel.

THE SUBJECT.

IN the year 1783, soon after the conclusion of the calamitous war in America, the public attention was very warmly and generally turned throughout this country towards the necessity of a reform in the representation of the people in the House of Commons. Several societies were formed in different parts of England and Wales for the promotion of it; and the Duke of Richmond and Mr Pitt, then the Minister, took the lead in bringing the subject before Parliament.

To render this great national object intelligible to the ordinary ranks of the people, Sir William Jones, then an eminent barrister in London, and afterwards one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Bengal, composed a dialogue between a scholar and a farmer as a vehicle for explaining to common capacities the great principles of society and government, and for showing the defects in the representation of the people in the British Parliament. Sir William Jones having married a sister of the Dean of St Asaph, he became acquainted with and interested in this dialogue, and recommended it strongly to a committee of gentlemen of Flintshire who were at that time associated for the object of reform, where it was read, and made the subject of a vote of approbation. The Court party, on the other hand, having made a violent attack upon this committee for the countenance thus given to the dialogue, the Dean of St Asaph, considering (as he himself expressed it) that the best means of justifying the composition, and those who were attacked for their approbation of it, was to render it public, that the world might decide the controversy, sent it to be printed, prefixing to it the following advertisement :

"A short defence hath been thought necessary against a violent and groundless attack upon the Flintshire Committee, for having testified their approbation of the following dialogue, which hath been publicly branded with the most injurious epithets; and it is conceived that the sure way to vindicate this little tract from so unjust a character will be as publicly to produce it. The friends of the Revolution will instantly see that it contains no principle which has not the support of the highest authority, as well as the clearest reason.

"If the doctrines which it slightly touches in a manner suited to the nature of the dialogue be 'seditious, treasonable, and diabolical,' Lord Somers was an incendiary, Locke a traitor, and the Convention Parliament a pandæmonium; but if those names are the glory and boast of England, and if that Convention secured our liberty and happiness,