He then thank

ɔn lame suspicions and doubtful inferences.”
ed the jury with much emotion for the life they had spared to
him. The entire panel shed tears-the very men who had
been so obviously packed to convict him, that at the opening
of the trial Erskine said, "Mr. Tooke, they are murdering
you!" The populace bore the old patriot through the pas-
sages to the street, where they sent up shout upon shout. It
was a great day for Reformers, and its anniversary is still cele-
brated by the Radicals of England.

Erskine's speech for Hardy (whose case was very critical,
and the first one tried,) is one of the most splendid specimens
of popular juridical eloquence on record. Owing to the run-
ning contests on points of law and evidence, constantly kept
up while the trial went on, he
he was to address the jury.
ning, and he was able to crowd
as is rarely heard in our day.
or conviction not only as the turning point in the fate of his
eleven associates, but as settling the question whether construc-
tive treason should for long years track blood through the
land, or its murderous steps be now brought to a final stand.
He made a superhuman effort for victory, and achieved it.
Profound as was his legal learning, eminent as were his reason-
ing faculties, classical as was his taste, transcendent as were
his oratorical powers, all conspiring to place him not only at
the head of the English bar, but to rank him as the first advo-
cate of modern times; yet all were overshadowed by the in-
flexible courage and hearty zeal with which he met this crisis
of British freedom. With the combined power of the King,
his ministers, and his judges, arrayed against his clients and
against him as their representative, seeking their blood and his
degradation, he cowered not, but maintained the home-born
rights of his proscribed fellow-subjects with arguments so
matchless, with eloquence so glowing, with courage so heroic,
with constancy so generous, that his name will ever find a

lost his voice the night before.
It returned to him in the mor-
seven hours full of such oratory
He regarded Hardy's acquittal

But more than all

place in the hearts of all who prefer the rights of man to the prerogatives of power. But more than all; he exploded the doctrines of constructive treason, and established the law on the true foundation, that there must be some overt act to constitute guilt; and he reïnscribed upon the Constitution of England the obliterated principle, that Englishmen may freely speak and publish their opinions concerning the Government of their country without being guilty of treason-a principle, under whose protecting shield they now utter their complaints, their denunciations even, in the very ear of Majesty itself.*

* The text states only a legal truth. Practically there yet remain great obstacles in the way of the free utterance of opinions hostile to the Government-as witness the recent prosecutions of O'Connell, Jones, &c.

CHAPTER IV.

Constructive Treason-The Law of Libel and Sedition-The Dean of
St. Asaph-The Rights of Juries-Erskine-Fox-Pitt.

I TOOK Occasion in the last chapter to speak at some length
of the trials of Tooke, Hardy, and others, for high treason, in
1794, and of the successful attack then made by Mr. ERSKINE
on the doctrine of constructive treason. Down to the period
of these trials, the English law of treason was infamous. Among
other things, treason was defined to be waging war against the
King, or compassing and imagining his death, or the overthrow
of his Government. The law evidently contemplated the doing
of some act, designed and adapted to accomplish these ends.
But the construction of the courts had subverted this principle,
and declared the mere utterance of words high treason. In the
reign of Edward IV, a citizen was executed for saying "he
would make his son heir of the crown;" meaning, as was sup-
posed, that he would make him the heir of his inn, called "the
Crown."
Another, whose favorite buck the King had wan-
tonly killed, was executed for saying, "he wished the buck,
horns and all, in the bowels of the man who counseled the
King to kill it." The court gravely held, that as the King
had killed it of his own accord, and so was his own counselor,
this declaration was imagining the King's death, and therefore
treason! So it had been held, that using words tending to
overawe Parliament, and procure the repeal of a law, was levy-
ing war on the King, and therefore treasonable. At length the
courts yielded to the doctrine that there must be some overt act

to constitute the crime. But they also held that, reducing words to writing was an overt act, even though they were never read or printed! Peachum, a clergyman, was convicted of high treason for passages found in a sermon which had never been preached. The immortal Algernon Sidney was executed, and his blood attainted, for some unpublished papers found in his closet, containing merely speculative opinions in favor of a republican form of government. It was in allusion to this judicial murder by the infamous Jeffries, and to the fact that the record of the conviction had been destroyed, that Erskine, on the trial of Hardy, uttered the splendid anathema against "those who took from the files the sentence against Sidney, which should have been left on record to all ages, that it might arise and blacken in the sight, like the handwriting on the wall before the Eastern tyrant, to deter from outrages upon justice.” It has already been said that this peerless lawyer exploded these dangerous doctrines, and made it safe for Englishmen to speak and write freely against the King and Government, without exposure to a conviction for treason.

But this is not the only salutary legal reform for which England is indebted to his exertions. Pernicious as is the existing law of CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS AND SEDITIOUS WRITINGS in that country, it was vastly worse till his strong arguments and scathing appeals had shaken it to its foundations. A glance at the law. Any publication imputing bad motives. to King or Minister; or charging any branch of Government with corruption, or a wish to infringe the liberties of the People; or which cast ridicule upon the Established Church; and any writing, printing, or speaking, which tended to excite the People to hatred or contempt of the Government, or to change the laws in an improper manner, &c., were seditious libels, for which fine, imprisonment, the pillory, &c., might be imposed. Nor was the truth of the libel any defense. Admirable snares, these, to entangle unwary reformers, and catch game for the royal household! And these bad laws were worse administered.

The juries had no power in their administration—the only check in the hands of the People. The court withheld from the jury the question whether a writing was libelous or seditious, and permitted them only to decide whether the prisoner had published it. In a word, if the jury found that he published, they must convict; and then the judge growled out the sentence. These trials were ready weapons for State prosecution in the hands of a tyrannical King and Ministry, with pliant judges at their beck; and in the latter half of the last century they were used without stint or mercy. They struck down Wilkes, Tooke, Woodfall, Muir, Palmer, Holt, Cartwright, and other liberals, for publications and speeches in vindication of the People, which, at this day, would be held harmless even in England. Some were heavily fined, others imprisoned or transported, others set on the pillory, or cropped and branded, their houses broken open and searched, their wives and daughters insulted, their private papers rifled, their printing presses seized, their goods confiscated, their names cast out as evil, and they might regard their lot as fortunate if their prospects for life were not utterly ruined. The treatment of Muir and Palmer, in 1793, was barbarous. Muir was a respectable barrister, and Palmer a clergyman of eminent literary attainments. They had merely addressed meetings and associations for Parliamentary reform in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and reports of one or two of their speeches had been printed. Muir was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years, and Palmer for seven. They were shipped off to Botany Bay with a cargo of common felons! Several other persons, for attending a Reform Convention in Edinburgh the same year, shared a like fate. These are trials which sunshine politicians of the liberal school never contemplate, except to draw from them materials for rounding off fine periods about freedom and the rights of But they endear the sufferers to the struggling masses of their own time; and, in after years, when the sons of the

man.