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July, 1803. Under the provisions of that act, and the different circumstances, which attended the execution of it in the county of Donegal, it became the duty of Lord Abercorn to hold the first meeting within ten days (viz. on the 21st of July), whereas he delayed it to the 28th; thus almost doubling the utmost period of time allowed by the act, when the delays, even of hours might be pregnant with disaster. It became moreover incumbent upon his Lordship, as a governor of the County, having elected to raise the men by 10cruiting, and not by ballot, to proceed to raise the men, which was the immediate and pressing pur

This resolution thus signed was transmitted to the Lord Lieu tenant, who approved thereof; and ordered and directed, pursuant to the act, the governors to proceed without delay to raise the said number of volunteers, by this mode, which was so signfied, by the governors, as the most expeditious mode of levy, by the said resolutions signed by them. At the next general meeting, held on the 4th day of August, 1803, at Lifford, Lord Abercorn alone presided as governor, Sir Samuel Hayes having, through ill health, been under the necessity of absenting himself. The Lord Lieutenant's approbation to the mode of raising the men by recruiting by bounty, was received'; and that mode was adopted formally, and entered amongst their proceedings by the proper officer, and then the meeting adjourned. Thenceforth it became incumbent on the governors and their deputies to proceed without delay to raise the men; which was the object of all this preparation, agreeable to the letter, as well as to the spirit, of the act. By section 39. of the act, the levy by ballot was to be suspended by the Lord Lieutenant in the counties, where the governors should have signified under their hands, that they could raise the men more expeditiously by recruiting. This suspension was procured.

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view of the act: whereas, from the time the Lord Lieutenant had, according to the act, signed his consent to suspend the ballot, in order to facilitate the recruiting, which was the mode adopted for raising the quota of 350 men by the County of Donegal, up to the 29th of August 1803, not a single man had been raised; and yet (incredible) a presentment was tendered on that day by the grand jury to the judge, for his fiat, for levying near £2000 upon the occupiers of lands in the county of Donegal, under the pretence of paying the government the money, not one shilling of which had been advanced for the purposes of the act. Not a single man had then been recruited. The law required, that the men should be first raised, and that the grand jury should be furnished with lists duly authenticated by government, of the men so raised, and the bounties paid by them. out of the public money for that purpose. Had Mr. J. Fox, on that occasion, betrayed his trust, violated his oath, and injured his sovereign and his country, by putting his fiat to such a fraudulent presentment, he would have become, (for the first time in his life) a scandal and a reproach to a court of justice. The pitiful malignity of charg ing the judge with boasting of the personal motive of annoying the state delinquent, is too contemptible to animadvert upòn.

Such was the mass of false, rancorous and malignant accusation, for which Lord Abercorn and the charges. his creatures were for two years furnished with the countenance and purse of government, in order

to support the Orange ascendancy in Ireland over the rights, welfare, and justice of that country.

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to Ireland:

With all Mr. Pitt's partiality for that nobleman, Further he never durst make it a government question: for. even Lord Auckland opposed this latter mode of ceedings as proceeding. It ought, said his Lordship, to have originated in the House of Commons or in an inferior court. If they did any thing in the present mode of carrying on the business, they would probably be reduced to the embarrassing circumstance of pronouncing a verdict on a man, whom they might afterwards have to try, in case of his impeachment by the Commons, or appealing from the judgment of an inferior court. No rational hope could be entertained, that the charges would be fairly gone through during the short remainder of that session. The Chancellor supported the proceedings, and recommended to Lord Abercorn to omit all the charges, which could not be brought home to the learned judge in his judicial capacity; which being done, they were referred to the committee. In the Commons, Sir John Newport loudly complained of ministers holding back the papers he had long called for relative to the expences of criminal prosecutions in Ireland, which he observed by a gross charge to have exceeded 110,0001. for the last four years: and finding, that by the Pension Act, the secret service money was restricted to 5000l. per annum, he moved for an account of that money. There was a general and too well grounded belief, that for some years back

enormous sums had been expended under that

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liament touching Judge Fox

Johnson.

head. The motion was opposed by Mr. Vansittart, and consequently negatived.

Of all the parliamentary manoeuvres of that session touching Ireland, the two acts, which were and Judge passed to affect the legal proceedings against the two judges Fox and Johnson, demand the most serious observation. Lord Abercorn had proceeded to examine several of his most material witnesses before the committee, when finding it im

Some acts, which did not affect Ireland passed this session, which gave great dissatisfaction to the public. The act, which granted an annuity equal to one-fourth of the duties of the Isle `of Man to the Duke of Athol and his heirs general of the 7th Earl of Derby, after the rights of that family had been deliberately purchased and finally settled by government in the 5th of the King, was considered to be a rank ministerial job: and some very strong protests were entered against it by the Duke of Norfolk, Marquis of Buckingham, Lords Radnor, and Carysfort. Lord Ellenborough called it importunate mendicancy. General disgust and indignation followed the decision of the House of Commons on the 25th of June 1805, which was the last parlia mentary discussion, in which Mr. Pitt took a part. Chagrined and humbled as he was at the vote of the Commons affecting his friend Lord Melville, he artfully proposed to substitute the mode of proceeding against him by impeachment, for that which had before been determined upon, of criminal information by the Attorney General. Mr. Fox, Mr. Whitbread, and others of that side of the House were for the latter mode: confiding more in the verdict even of a packed jury, than in the honor of the House of Peers, one-half of whom had either been created or promoted by Mr. Pitt, in the decision of such a question. The minister prevailed in the Commons on this question by a majority of 23: the division being 166 for impeachment, and 143 for criminal information. When the Speaker gave the casting vote against Lord Melville in the Commons, there were 432 members in the House, on this occasion only 309.

practicable to get through the whole of the evidence before the end of the session, he procured the act to pass, which enacted, that the proceedings should not be discontinued by any prorogation or dissolution of Parliament. The other act

passed to meet the case of Judge Johnson, though he be not mentioned in it, is still more extraordinary. That learned judge, after having been foiled in all his proceedings in the law courts, presented a petition to the House of Lords (on which he was heard by counsel at their bar) against certain clauses of the bill then pending (namely, the 44th of Geo. III.) which went to affect his case in the nature of an ex post facto law; praying, that he might not be prejudiced by a law, which was not in existence at the time of the alleged offence. The legislature however on the 10th of July (about 10 months before the alleged commission of the offence and four months before he was tried for it at Westminster) passed an act for amending the two before mentioned acts of the 13th and 44th of Geo. III. by which they admitted persons apprehended out of the jurisdiction, in which they were charged with having offended, to bail in all bailable cases; compelled witnesses to answer subpoenas to appear, and give evidence as well. from without as within the jurisdiction of the writ; and lastly required, that no such warrant should be acted upon, until the seal signet or signature of the court, judge, or justice issuing the original warrant, should have been sworn to. These were three of the main objections to the act of the

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