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the Tuesday, under pretence of the protestant cause, he offered his services, and read a resolution of the house to them, accompanied with every expostulation which a zeal for peace could possibly inspire; and because he was speaking to ruffians and papists, and not to the authors of the petition, and who therefore would not obey him, how is that to be imputed to him?

He afterwards, agreeably to the king's direction, attended the magistrates in their duty, honestly and honourably exerting all his power to quell the fury of the multitude; which circumstance, to the dishonour of the crown, has been scandalously turned against him. Even the protections which he granted publickly in the coach of the sheriff of London, whom he was assisting in his office of magistracy, are produced in evidence of his guilt, though protections of a similar nature were, to the knowledge of the whole privy council granted by Mr. Fisher himself, who now stands in my presence unreproved, and who would have explained their tendency, so as to remove every imputation of criminality, had he been examined.

What then has produced this trial for high treason, or given it when produced the seriousness and solem. nity it wears? What but the inversion of all justice by judging from consequences, instead of from causes and designs! What but the artful manner in which the crown has endeavoured to blend the petitioning in a body, and the zeal with which an animated disposition conducted it, with the melancholy crimes that followed! crimes, which the shameful indolence of our magistrates, which the total extinction of all. police and government suffered to be committed in broad day, in the delirium of drunkenness, by an unarmed banditti, without a head, without plan or object, and without a refuge from the instant gripe of justice: a horde of ruffians, with whom the Associated Protestants and their president had no manner of connexion, and whose cause they overturned, dishonoured, and ruined.

How iniquitous then is it to attempt, without evidence, to infect your imaginations, who are upon your oaths dispassionately and disinterestedly to try the offence of merely assembling a multitude with a petition to repeal a law (which has happened so often in all our memories before) by blending it with the subsequent catastrophe, on which every man's mind may be supposed to retain some degree of irritation? This is indeed wicked. It is taking the advantage of all the infirmities of our nature. Do the prosecu tors wish you, while you are listening to the evidence, to connect it with consequences in spite of reason and truth, in order to hang the millstone of prejudice round the prisoner's innocent neck. If there be such men, may Heaven forgive them for the attempt, and inspire you with fortitude and wisdom, to do your duty to your fellow citizen, with calm, steady, reflecting minds.

Gentlemen, I have no manner of doubt that you will. I am indeed, sure you cannot but see (notwithstanding my great inability, increased by a perturbation of mind arising, thank God, from no dishonest cause) that there has been no evidence on the part of the crown, to fix the guilt of the late commotions upon my noble client, but that on the contrary, we have been able to resist the probability; I might almost might almost say the possibility of the charge, not only by living witnesses, whom we ceased to call, because the trial would never have ended, but by the evidence of all the blood that has paid the forfeit of that guilt already; which, I will take upon me to say is the strongest and most unanswerable proof that the combination of natural events ever brought together for the shield of an innocent man. It is, that in the trial of all the black catalogue of culprits who expired on the gibbets, though conducted by the ablest servants of the crown, with an eye, and with a laudable eye, to the investigation of the matter which to day engages your attention, no one fact appeared which showed any plan, any object, any leader. That finally, out of forty-four thousand persons who signed the petition of the Protestants, or among

those who were convicted, tried, or even apprehended on suspicion; or of all the felons that were let loose from prisons, and who assisted in the destruction and plunder of our property, not a single wretch was to be found who could even attempt to save his own life by the plausible promise of giving evidence on the present occasion.

Gentlemen, what can overturn such proof as this? Surely a good man might, without superstition, believe that such an union of events was something more than the natural issues of life, and that the Providence of God was watchful for the protection of innocence and truth. I may now, therefore, relieve you from the pain of hearing me any longer, and be myself relived from the pain of speaking on a subject which agitates and distresses me. Since, gentlemen, lord George Gordon stands clear of every hostile act or purpose against the legislature of his country, or the properties of his fellow subjects-since the whole tenour of his conduct repels the belief of the traitorous purpose charged in the indictment-my task is finished. I shall make no address to your passions. I will not remind you of the long and rigorous imprisonment he has suffered. I will not speak to you of his great youth, of his illustrious birth, and of his uniformly animated and generous zeal in parliament for the constitution of his country. Such topicks might be useful in the balance of a doubtful case; yet even then, I should have trusted to the honest hearts of Englishmen to have felt them without excitation. At present, the plain and rigid rules of justice and truth are sufficient to entitle me to your verdict; and may God Almighty, who is the sacred author of both, fill your minds with the deepest impressions of them, and with virtue to follow those impressions! You will then restore my innocent client to liberty, and me to that peace of mind, which, since the protection of that innocence in any part depended upon me, I have never known.

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DUKE OF BEDFORD'S SPEECH,

ON A MOTION TO ADDRESS THE THRONE FOR THE DISMISSAL OF MINISTERS.

IN recording the subsequent sample of the eloquence of this distinguished nobleman, we eagerly seize on so appropriate an occasion to introduce to the more intimate acquaintance of our readers his character and pretensions, by prefixing to the speech a delineation of them, which, though executed by the hand of friendship, has been admitted, by those of less indulgence and partiality towards him than Mr. Fox, to be distorted by no great exaggeration of praise, or to be disguised by no sedulous exclusion of defects.

In March 1802, the Duke of Bedford, in the prime of life, and in the midst of usefulness, very suddenly died. Leaving no son, the peerage devolved on his brother, who was, at the time, a member of the house of commons. The borough of Tavis. stock which he represented became thus vacated. In moving for a writ for a new election for that place, Mr. Fox as prefatory to the motion, pronounced the eulogium on his deceased friend to which we have alluded. Whatever slight variation of opinion may be entertained respecting the exactness of the resemblance, it has been, and must be confessed, that the portrait he has drawn, is a masterly display of ability. We know indeed, of no example of more happy and complete success, than this eulogium, in a species

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