functionaries alluded to as having by their mismanagement paved the way for the march of discontent: in the second place, the trial was remarkable for its result; for the other trial to which it gave birth, and in which Cobbett was called as a witness; for the departure from his former system of caution which he displayed in touching upon the topic at all, whilst the embers of insurrection were yet smouldering, and for the ultimate fixing of the libel upon an Irish judge: but in nothing is it more deserving of notice than in the pleasing portrait which it draws of Cobbett in every relation of life political and social. Erskine opened the proceedings against him with forbearance, although the publication of the libels was at the least imprudent at such a time; and Adam (aftewards Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court of Scotland) replied in an eloquent speech, in the course of which he thus described his client's character:-" I stand here in behalf of a person, whom, though he is accused of a serious crime, I can describe to you as a good father, an excellent husband, a virtuous subject of the king, and one who has uniformly, in all his conduct public and private, in this country and abroad, endeavoured to uphold the true constitution of England, as by law established—a person who is ardently attached to the monarchial frame of this Government, and who has repeatedly stepped forward, to the certain loss of his fortune and the risk of his life, to support the true spirit of the British constitution and the honour and interests of Britain at home-a person who, for twelve long years of public life, has never, till the present moment, been once questioned for a libel on the Government of any country whatever; has never even, by the worst of his enemies, been accused of being an advocate for misrule." To bear out all the details of this flattering character, he called as witnesses Mr. Robert Liston, who had been British Minister in America during Cobbett's residence there; Lord Henry Stewart, the Right Honourable William

Wyndham, Lord Minto, and the Right Honourable Charles Yorke, all of whom bore warm testimony to the truth of the advocate's statement. It certainly must be considered remarkable that a man like Cobbett, endowed with strong sound common sense and warm passions, ballasted with so little education, should have commanded such an estimate from such men. That "ardent mind correctly represents him as possessing, seldom led him away which Adam so or betrayed him into extravagances; he was unlike Wilkes, with whom he has wrongly been compared, for he always strove to do good, whereas all the good that Wilkes did politically sprang from accidental circumstances. Lord Ellenborough, in directing the jury, of course dwelt upon the character of the offence, not of the man, with which the jury had nothing to do, and of this there could be no doubt it was a libel, and of a libel he was accordingly found guilty; but he was never called upon to receive sentence, as another trial sprang from this in which he was examined as a witness.*

*

But two days afterwards he had to sustain an action brought by Plunkett, Solicitor-General of Ireland, for a libel in the Register, in the shape of reflection upon the Solicitor-General's conduct of the trial of Emmett. Again Erskine was employed against him; and the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, with five hundred pounds damages.†

The matter of the previous libel on the Lord Lieutenant and officials of Ireland, was now re-opened in the trial of the Honourable Robert Johnson, judge of his Majesty's Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, as the author of the libel. The arrest appears to have been harsh, and offensive to an unnecessary degree; and the arguments as to its legality are to lawyers the most interesting part of the trial. The judge was arrested by warrant under a post

*

Howell's "State Trials," vol. xxix. pp. 1-54. + Ibid. vol. xxix. pp. 54-81.

facto Act, which his counsel argued could not operate retrospectively. The matter was discussed before the Court of King's Bench in Ireland, on January the 18th, 22d, 26th, 28th, 29th, and 31st, 1805, when the legality of the arrest was confirmed; but the judge procured a writ of habeas corpus from the Court of Exchequer, where the case was again argued on February the 4th and 7th, and subsequently in the Court of Common Pleas, by both which Courts the arrest was held good. On this warrant he was brought over to London for trial, and indicted at the Court of King's Bench; but here he again demurred to the jurisdiction of the Court, and denied its power to try him for an offence committed in Ireland. This question again was argued, June 29th and July 1st, and the jurisdiction of the Court affirmed; and it was not until November the 23d that the trial came on, before Lord Ellenborough. The defence was, that the libel was not written by the judge; and the weight of evidence as to the handwriting appears to have been freely balanced, although Lord Ellenborough most unjustly attempted to throw suspicion on the very respectable witnesses for the defence. We have already said that Cobbett was examined as a witness for the Crown, but his evidence only went to prove that the manuscript was left at his shop, and did not tend to criminate the judge; although it has been said that he owed his escape from judgment, after his conviction for publishing the libel, to the giving of information or the production of handwriting which led to a suspicion of the writer. The jury returned a verdict of Guilty; but the Attorney-General never applied for judgment-in fact, entered a nolle prosequi in the next year, and Mr. Johnson was allowed to retire from the bench on a pension for life.*

Some old newspaper celebrities of the last century were now silently disappearing from the scene in which they had so long been actors; and death was busy in the Woodfall

* State Trials, vol. xxix. pp. 82-502.

family. William, or "Memory" Woodfall, the editor and reporter of the Morning Chronicle in its earlier years, editor of the London Packet in 1772, and founder and proprietor of the unsuccessful Diary in 1789, and the younger brother of Henry Sampson Woodfall, who first published "Junius's Letters" in the Public Advertiser, died on the 1st of August, 1803, in Queen-street, Westminster, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. His death appears to have been accelerated by disappointment at the want of success of his newspaper. And on the 12th of December, 1805, his brother, Henry Sampson-Junius's Woodfall-joined him in the grave. They were sons of Henry Woodfall, and both of them enjoyed in life the intimate friendship of the wits of their age, especially of Garrick, Goldsmith, Savage, Colman, Smollett, Hawksworth, Bonnel Thornton, &c. Henry Sampson was the eldest son, and was born on the 21st of January, 1739. It is said of him, that before he had attained his fifth year he read a page of Homer in the Greek in the presence of Pope, with so much fluency that the classical poet was delighted into presenting him with half a crown. At the age of eleven he was sent to St. Paul's School, on leaving which he was apprenticed to his father, and at the early age of nineteen commenced editing and printing the Public Advertiser. At this work he continued for thirty-three years, during which period he used to say, "he had been fined by the House of Lords, confined by the House of Commons, fined and confined by the Court of King's Bench, and indicted at the Old Bailey." In 1792 he sold the paper, and he was fortunate in getting rid of it then; for the Morning Advertiser, which started directly afterwards, with all the influence of the London publicans, damaged it so much that it fell to the ground in 1794; and, moreover, the year after he had sold it, in

* Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chief Justices," vol. ii. p. 478, makes the mistake of calling Woodfall the printer of the "Morning" Advertiser.

December, 1793, his printing office was burned to the ground. Henry Sampson Woodfall, and the mystery of Junius's identity, lie buried in Chelsea Churchyard.

John Almon, the friend of Wilkes, the contemporary of the Woodfalls, and the reporter of parliamentary debates for the London Evening Post of 1772, drew his last breath on the same day as Henry Sampson Woodfall, the 12th of December, 1805, being by one year Woodfall's senior. He was born at Liverpool, on December the 17th, 1737, and brought up as a printer. But he had an errant taste, and made a desultory, rambling tour upon the Continent, picking up information and experience, and, on his return to London, began working in earnest at his trade. He also found time to write some political pamphlets, &c., one of which attracted the attention of Say, the proprietor of the Gazetteer, who at once engaged him to assist in the management of the paper; and he was afterwards, as we have seen, engaged as reporter of the proceedings in Parliament for the London Evening Post. His connexion with Wilkes made him known to Lord Temple, who induced him to set up as a bookseller in Piccadilly, where his lordship's patronage brought him much custom, and his own publications much trouble-for he was frequently prosecuted for not only publishing, but for selling publications, which juries then called seditious. Anxiety and imprisonment impaired his health, and in 1781 he was forced, on that account, to retire from business, and he had not long been in seclusion in the country, when he lost his wife. In 1784, he married the widow of William Parker, the printer of the General Advertiser, and this brought him again in connexion with the newspaper press, which was only destined to bring to him trouble and misfortune; for, carrying on Parker's paper, he soon got involved in litigation, found his way again into the King's Bench for a libel, and subsequently was, for some time, an outlaw. He died in Hertfordshire, leaving his widow in a state of indigence after all,