sorrow on the occasion to the captain of the City of Edinburgh, who was at the island for timber, and prepared to accompany him with an armed force to release the women and the boy, in which they fully succeeded. The strong symptoms of dissatisfac tion which have been manifested throughout the papal states, and which the dignified clergy are suspected of promoting, has rendered it necessary for the governor to collect in the vicinity of Rome an armed force of 26,000 men. Many of the French troops were, until lately, quartered upon the inhabitants, but in consequence of the numerous assassinations which this dispersion occasioned, it was abandoned, and the cathedrals and other public buildings have been converted into barracks for their use. Colonel Bell, the first of the officers brought to trial by the Madras government, was acquitted of the principal charge, but found guilty on the others. His sentence was only to be suspended from rank and pay for one month. This slight pu nishment is considered a virtual abandonment of the pretensions of the government. Private letters from Madras state, that notwithstanding the restoration of tranquillity there, Sir G. Barlow continued to be very unpopular.A conspiracy against his life had been frustrated, but the conspirators escaped. The late accounts from Canada indicate a disposition to revolt in the British colonies, from which we have much to apprehend, if it be necessary to the supply of our navy and for the maintenance of our trade to continue these remote settlements under our authority. Whatever may be the fond expectations of certain confident politicians, nature never intended, and the happiness of society never required a dominion at the distance of 3000 miles. But there are no limits to the folly of man, when intoxicated with copious draughts of ambition. But these disorders are not con- fined to the West. surrendered either to the natives or to the refractory and disobedient agents employed to preserve them. These expanded limbs of the British constitution are in a state of tumour and disease; they are drawing from the heart the vital blood which should support it, and the malady we fear will not be discovered until all the noble parts of the system are so far debilitated as to be inaccessible of restoration. DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE. The Attorney-General on Friday, the 30th ult. applied in the court of King's Bench for a rule to shew cause why the actions brought by Sir F. Burdett, against the speaker of the house of commons, for issuing a warrant for his apprehension; against the serjeant at arms, for using unnecessary violence in executing it; and Lord Moira, for detaining him in custody should not be tried at the bar of the court. Lord Ellenborough granted the rule but recommended that Michaelmas term should be fixed on for the trials, as the present term was already so far advanced. To this the attorney-general agreed. The actions against the serjeant at arms and Lord Moira will therefore be trials at bar, (that is, a trial before all the four judges of the court, who will deliver their judgment seriatim), and the one against the speaker will be argued on a demurrer. On Wednesday the 4th instant, Mr. Serjeant Shepherd appeared as counsel on behalf of Sir F. Burdett, Bart. in the several actions which he has brought against the speaker of the house of commons, the serjeant at arms of the said house, and the Earl of Moira, constable of the Tower of London. After an argument of some length, Lord Ellenborough observed: "The court has already agreed that the trial shall be at bar, and the only thing to be settled is the day on which the trial shall fall. The court are not called upon to make any arrangements, whether the demurrer or the trial at bar shall have the precedency at present he would anticipate no such operations, but leave the matter to be decided on a future application, if any such shall be made. Let the trials at bar stand for the 20th of November, which will at least clear our way so far." COURT OF KING'S BENCH. The King v. Cobbett and others. On Thursday the 5th, the Attorney-General moved the judgment of the court against William Cobbett, Esq. the proprietor, and Messrs. Hansard, jun. Bagshaw, and Budd, the printer and publishers of the 'Political Register,' (the three latter had suffered judgment by default.)The defendants were all brought into court, when Lord Ellenborough asked Mr. Cobbett if he had any affidavits to produce? Mr, Cobbett replied in the negative; and stated that after what had passed on the trial, it was quite unnecessary for him to consume the time of the court. All he wished to say was, with reference to the other defendants that during the many years he had known them, he had never heard either of them utter a single word against government. The defendants Hansard, Bagshaw, and Budd, handed in affida vits, which disclaimed any other intention, in publishing the libel in question, than merely the ordinary exercise of their business, as printer, publisher, and newsman. Mr. Burroughs, Mr. Gurney, and Mr. Bowen, addressed the court in mitigation of the punishment of the three latter defendants. The Attorney-General then, in a speech of very considerable length, appealed to the court on the part of the crown. He contrasted the libel of which Mr. Cobbett had been con victed, with those upon the administration of justice, for which the court had some time ago inflicted a severe punishment, but not more severe than it was merited.-Comparing that libel with the present one, it sunk into insignificance. That publication, dangerous as it was, merely went to degrade the administration of justice; but this had for its object the destruction of the country altogether, by exciting a spirit of mutiny in the army, and producing nothing short of actual rebellion. It was a libel which was an insult upon the army, and the army looked up to their lordships to vindicate its character by a severe sentence. The country, conscious that it was the object of the libel to devote it to the miseries of insurrection, also expected that the court would avenge it upon the author of so dangerous a publication. Upou the whole he trusted that the pu nishment to be inflicted upon the de fendant would be as exemplary as the offence was atrocious, tempering it with mercy, but at the same time recollecting that mercy to the public was the first duty of the court. Lord Ellenborough ordered the four defendants to be committed to the Marshalsea prison, and to be brought up on Monday for judg ment. On Monday the 9th. the court was unusually crowded at an early hour, and before the business commenced, Mr. Justice Grose, in the first instance, and afterwards Lord Ellenborough, were under the necessity of ordering the passages in the court, and the avenues leading to it, to be cleared. Mr. Cobbett, Messrs. Hansard, Bagshaw, and Budd, being called to the bar, Mr. Justice Grose, addressing himself to Mr. Cobbett, informed him that he stood there to receive judgment, for having written and given to the world a very seditious and mischievous libel, tending to produce mutiny among our soldiers, by instilling into their minds that they were treated with unnecessary and unbecoming severity. It was not necessary for his lordship to detail to him all the evils which the publication was calculated to produce, those having, within these few days been so ably and fully discussed, and the nature and effect of the publication having been so clearly pointed out from the bench by the noble lord who tried the cause. The libel had been submitted to the consideration of a jury of his fellow subjects, who had expressed their opinion of its tendency, by pronouncing a verdict of guilty. The arguments that had been used, both on the one side, and on the other, had only tended to make the blackness and deformity of the publication appear the more manifest. It was impossible, indeed, for any rational mind to doubt the tendency and meaning of the publication. No man could look at the libel, and not shudder at reflecting on the consequences it was calculated to produce. One obvious tendency which it must be seen to have was that of rendering our military dissatisfied. It compared the modes of treatment resorted to in the armies of France and of England, and plainly pointed out the latter as being the more odious of the two. We were now at war with a country, which, having thrown aside all the usual avocations of industry, trade, and commerce, had converted itself into a military state, whose sole aim, and indeed whose sole means of existence, was, to live on the spoils of surrounding nations. Against this country were the exertions of the overgrowing power to whom he had alluded, now in a great measure directed. We were therefore driven, as a necessary consequence, to provide the best internal defence we could against the efforts of our ambitious enemy. The local militia, and the encrease of the foreign troops in our employment, were two of the measures resorted to for this purpose. A detachment of our local militia having risen upon their officers, the mutiny, as the newspapers properly stated it, was fortunately suppressed, by calling in the assistance of the German Legion; and the ring-leaders being tried by a court martial, were sentenced to receive a certain number of lashes, part of which punishment was afterwards remitted. Taking advantage of these circumstances, he, (Mr. Cobbett) had chosen to represent this as a mere squabble, for which the persons who had risen upon their officers were not deserving of punishment, and ridiculed them for submitting to endure the punishment like trunks of trees. He also, in the same moment, held up to odium the German Legion, who had been called in to restore tranquillity, as if they alone would have performed such a task. A more seditious and calumnious libel, he ventured to assert, had never been ́ published. It was obviously calculated to produce two objects-To provoke the foreign troops, who thus saw themselyes held up to public odium: and to create dissatisfaction in the minds of our own soldiers, by instructing them, that they were treated with unbecoming severity, such even as those who laboured under the iron-hand of the ruler of France were not subjected to. A publication more nearly allied to High Treason he had never witnessed, and the consequences which might have been produced by so inflammatory and dangerous a production, could not be contemplated without horror. That it was the intention of the person at the bar, to whom he now addressed himself, that it should produce such consequences, he should not say, but such must strike every one as their obvious tendency. There might have been a sense of lucre by which the writer was actuated. Mr. Cobbett was a man conversant in public affairs, and ought to have been, if he was not, aware of the danger of such a paper as that which he had written and caused to be circulated. In mitigation he had offered nothing. The obvious inference from which was, that he had nothing in mitigation which he could offer.-Consisidering the mischievous nature of the publication, the consequences which were likely to have resulted from it, and the peculiar period of time at which the publication had been brought forward, the sentence of the court upon him, William Cobbet, was, "That he do pay to the King a fine of 1000l.-be imprisoned in the Jail of Newgate for the space of two years; that he do then enter into recognizances to keep the peace for seven years, himself in 3000l. and two sureties 1000l. each, and that he be further imprisoned till such fine be paid and sureties found." Addressing himself to the other three defendants, the learned judge observed, that their guilt was greatly less than that of the author, and principal in the offence. They had also evinced their sorrow for the crime they had committed, by allowing judgment to go against them by default. Of these three the offence of Hansard was the greatest, and though the guilt of them all was infinitely less than that of Mr. Cobbett, their guilt was not done away by the aggravated nature of his offence. It was no answer for them to say, that they did not know the contents of the publication. It is the bounden duty of persons concerned in publications, to know that they were responsible for the contents of these publications! As to Hansard, he, as the printer, had seen and read the article, and ought to have been aware that it was of a libellous tendency.Though the guilt of all the three was less than that of the principal, still they were all partakers of the criminality. All of them had pleaded the state of their health, and that they had families. Men, like them, however, should reflect on these circumstances before they lent themselves to such purposes as that for which they were now called on to answer. It was impossible that the court could allow offences of this kind to go entirely, without punishment, In the cir cumstances of each particular case, the sentence of the court was, "That the defendant, T. P. Hansard, be committed to the custody of the Marshal of the Marshalsea of that Court for the space of three calendar months, and at the expiration of that time, do enter into recognizances to keep the peace for three years, himself in 400l. and two sureties in 2001." And that the other two defendants, Richard Bagshaw and John Budd, "Be committed to the custody of the Marshal of the Marshalsea of that Court for the space of two calendar months, and be then discharged." Court of King's Bench, July 20. THE KING v. FINNERTY The defendant having withdrawn his plea of " Not Guilty," and thereby allowing judgment to go by default, the cause did not proceed. THE KING . JOHN GALE JONES. Mr. Abbott having opened the proceedings in this case, The Attorney-General stated the prosecution to have been instituted for several scandalous and malicious libels, published by the defendant against Lord Castlereagh. It would be the duty of the jury to say if the defendant had not published the papers in question, and then, it would be for them them to say, if these were not libels. The defendant, it would appear, was the conductor of a certain society-a debating society-of which he should say nothing derogatory to its character, except in so far as the present libels were in question. The first libel was contained in the following placard: Mr. Finnerty and Lord Castlereagh!British Forum, No. 33. Bedford-Street, Covent-Garden, Jan. 29, 1810. QUESTION" Ought my Lord Castle reagh's conduct towards Mr. Finnerty, during the late expedition to Walcheren, to be approved as a salutary measure of precaution to preserve order and discipline among his Majesty's forces, or reprobated as a flagrant infringement upon the liberty of a British subject, and a "cowardly act of oppression against an innocent individual?" The statement of Mr. Finnerty's treatment by Lord Castlereagh, as it appeared in The Morning Chronicle of Tuesday, the 23d. instant, has been read with the most lively emotions, and has excited universal astonishment and alarm. Mr. Finnerty has appealed to "the good sense and liberality, and justice" of the British nation, to give their decided opinion on the subject. So far as the British Forum can lend its aid towards collecting and proclaiming that opinion, neither his appeal, nor that of "any other persecuted and defenceless individual, shall ever be made in vain!" If the" gentle" Lord Castlereagh can muster sufficient confidence "to VENTURE into a public assembly of free and independent Englishmen," he may rest assured that he shall have "fair play." There is nothing that the managers of this institution more ardently long for, than an opportunity of "meeting his lordship and his adherents face to face, and hearing them vindicate their character and conduct before an outraged and insulted country !" In the second publication, by the present defendant, on this subject, the libel was of a still more inflammatory nature. The following was the placard : Adjourned Debate-Trial of Lord Castlereagh British Forum, No. 35, Bedford-Street, Covent-Garden, Monday, Feb. 5. 1810. QUESTION" Ought my Lord Castlereagh's conduct towards Mr. Finnerty, during the late expedition to Walcheren, precaution to preserve order and discito be approved as a salutary measure of pline among his Majesty's forces, or reprobated as a flagrant infringement upon the liberty of a British subject, and a cowardly act of oppression against an innocent individual?" Last Monday, notwithstanding "the mean and malignant attempts" to stifle the discussion of the present important question by "tearing down and defacing" the bills, a crowded assembly (among whom were several noblemen and members of the house of commons) attended, and after a very interesting debate, the opener was about to reply, when a gentleman" intimately and personally concerned" entered the room, and having pledged himself to attend on the next evening, and either open the debate or take a part in the discussion; the quesmajority, adjourned. tion was, with the consent of a large tant and extraordinary disclosures will Several imporbe made in the course of the evening, and Lord Castlereagh "or his adherents" and "prevent, if possible, his character are peremptorily summoned to attend, from being consigned to everlasting infamy and disgrace. The statement rerespecting the execution of Wm. Orr, in OF THE NOBLE LORD, although incontesIreland, UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION tible evidence was laid before him proving his innocence was read from Mr. Finnerty's letter, and excited in the audience visible emotions of horror and, disgust." Then followed a third publication. Last Monday, after two evenings' discussion, a crowded assembly unanimously decided, that "Lord Castlereagh's conduct towards Mr. Finnerty ought to be reprobated, as a flagrant infringement upon the liberty of a British subject, and a cowardly act of oppression against aa innocent individual." |