country, must ever be regulated by that discretion, which I am equally determined in every situation, to reserve un, fettered by previous engagements, and the faithful exercise of which my public duty imperatively forbids me to relin, quish.

I have the honor to be, &c. &c. &c.

(Signed)

GRENVILLE,

Earl of Fingal.

LETTER

ON THE

TONE AND MATTER

OF

JUDGE FLETCHER'S

PRINTED CHARGE.

Ita irritatis animis subdere ignem, non esse ætatis, non prudentiæ ejus.

LIV. LIB. VIII. C. 32.

A LETTER, &c.

You inquire my opinion of Judge Fletcher's Charge. I cannot give it, without entangling you in that labyrinth of topics, which this miscellaneous composition has embraced. Part of my task will be to examine the Peace Preservation Bill; and contemporary Act, for the better execution of the Laws. Can the expediency of these statutes be accurately or duly weighed, without noticing what led to, and perhaps warranted their introduction? Thus observe what you will have rashly brought upon yourself. The conciseness which could compress discussions such as these, within the just or ordinary dimensions of a letter, being unattainable by any powers to which I can make pretension, the fate of Tarpeia must accordingly be yours: the boon which you have craved, in too loose terms, will overwhelm you. Nevertheless, I anı most inhumanly about to grant it.

A preliminary inquiry, which solicits our attention, is whether all the topics, which Judge Fletcher has introduced, suit the character and legitimate objects of a Charge. It appears to me that the counsels, fit to proceed officially from the Bench, are those only, which concern the administration of law and justice; and that from so grave a quarter no topics should be heard, to which non erat his locus will apply. Whatever we may assume to be the merit of an opinion, the propriety of declaring it from the Judgment Seat must be determined, by the duties which are there to be performed. If to, these it be quite foreign, the Horatian censure should preclude it. The Judge may happen to be eloquent; et fortasse cupressum scit simulare: but however eminent his talent for roughly sketching a mournful wreath, to grace the obsequies of a Con

I

stitution, which it implies to be defunct, such funereal decorations will, on the Bench, be quite misplaced. From a high priest of Opposition, in St. Stephen's Chapel, it may be questioned whether sepulchral rites of this kind would be endured. But, at least, the temple of justice is no fit theatre for their celebration; the ermined magistrate no proper functionary to preside at their performance.

How shall we best determine the topics proper for a Charge? By defining the legitimate functions of those to whom it is addressed. In the one in question, for example, whatever tended to assist those to whom it was delivered, collectively as grand jurors, or individually as magistrates, to discharge the important duties which either character imposed, was regularly and correctly introduced into that discourse;-provided always (in legal phrase) that nothing therein contained was deficient in respect towards those high authorities in the State, to whom as much deference is due from the judges of the land, as these may, in turn, claim from the forensic auditories to which they dictate.

2

3

It is nearly superfluous for me here, in a sort of parenthesis, to observe-that the text to which my present commentaries all apply, is a short publication, entitled Judge Fletcher's Charge. Where the contents of this impute any thing reprehensible to the Judge, I am most willing to suppose that the publisher has misreported; and should it unexpectedly turn out that passages, of which I presume to question the propriety, involve no misrepresentation of what his Lordship said, I shall in such cases be disposed to doubt the justice of my censure; or admit, at the very least, that whatever fell from that learned Judge, was by him pronounced with the most laudable intentions.

But to return to the test which I have ventured to establish.Which of his duties is a grand juror assisted to discharge, by being informed that rents are grown exorbitantly high? Is he therefore to throw out bills of indictment against those, who with a strong and lawless hand, would preclude all competition,—and terrifying every rival bidder into silence, establish a comfortably cheap maximum for farms? The assertion of Judge Fletcher, that lands bear too high a price, may be, and I fear is, in some degree well found

1 "Gentlemen, two Bills have recently passed both Houses of Parliament -one of these Acts consists of a complete suspension of the Constitution."-Judge Fletcher's Charge.

2 That passage is not too respectful, in which it is suggested that two important Bills, one suspending the Constitution, passed both Houses of Parliament, without inquiry into the state of the country, and almost without observation.

3 It may be inadvertently.

2

ed; and though my information on the subject does not qualify me to be decisive, I will never stigmatise as falsehood, what I conjectare to be truth. But will the opinion of a judge operate to lower the rates of land? Is it not more likely to raise our peasantsthan to reduce our rents? I doubt the wisdom of proclaiming a grievance, which we cannot cure: of proclaiming it to an irritated and deluded population--too long and successfully tampered with by the agents of sedition; and who now assured upon authority, that they are right in thinking themselves aggrieved, may conclude that they are proceeding under the same high sanction, when aiming through violence and outrage at redress, they but fly from griev ance, to take refuge in destruction.-The Judge's charge yet tingling in their ears, shall a grand jury, full of the extravagant and grinding price of land, send to trial a starving tenant, who would have "reformed" the crying evil,-and this not "indifferently," but "altogether?" Shall a petty jury convict the patriot of a capital offence--the judge sentence him to undergo the heaviest penalties of the law-and, with the passage on which I am commenting, of his prelection before his eyes, decline even to recommend to a portion of the royal mercy, this redresser of what himself had called intolerable grievance?-Might not our injured and neglected convict undertake to recommend himself-and copy into his memorial the very words of our learned judge?3 Might he not dwell upon 66 the extravagant rents which are bid for lands," for which the uttermost penny is exacted by absentees, who strip their Irish tenants of even the comforts of an English sow ?—who letting their lands when out of lease, by public auction to the highest bidder, have no gratitude for past services, no preference of the fair offer, no predilection for the ancient tenantry, be these never so deserving," in short, who feel no attachment to any thing but "the highest price," and visit "with depopulation the tract of country which withholds it?" Proceeding in his complaint, to that "harassing payment of tithe," which is so unmercifully "superadded to these exactions," might he not close the climax, with those enor mous "county charges," which gleaning the scanty profits, that rack-rents had left behind, cruelly waste the poor man's pittance on the rich man's job? Might he not then terminate his expostulation by inquiring, chased from the spot where his earliest breath was drawn, incapable of devising other means than tillage, of existence, what the oppressed and wretched peasant was to do? Was it "sur

1 If this exist.

2 As Hamlet advised the Players to do.

3 Those, I mean, which are ascribed to him by the printed Charge.