it that distinguishes the government of England from the most despotic monarchies? What-but the security which the subject enjoys in a trial and judgment by his equals; rendered doubly secure as being part of a system of law which no expediency can warp, and which no power can abuse with impunity?

The Attorney General's second preliminary observation, I equally agree to. I anxiously wish with him that you shall bear in memory the anarchy which is desolating France.-Before I sit down, I may perhaps, in my turn, have occasion to reflect a little upon its probable causes; but waiting a season for such reflections, let us first consider what the evil is which has been so feelingly lamented, as having fallen on that unhappy country. It is, that under the dominion of a barbarous state necessity, every protection of law is abrogated and destroyed; -it is, that no man can say, under such a system of alarm and terror, that his life, his liberty, his reputation, or any one human blessing, is secure to him for a moment: it is, that, if accused of federalism, or moderatism, or incivism, or of whatever else the changing fashions and factions of the day shall have lifted up into high treason against the State, he must see his friends, his family, and the light of heaven, no more: - the accusation and the sentence being the same, following one another as the thunder pursues the flash. Such has been the state of England, -such is the state of France:---and how then, since they are introduced to you for application, ought they in reason and sobriety to be applied? If this prosecution has been commenced (as is asserted) to avert from Great Britain the calamities incident to civil confusion, leading in its issues to the deplorable condition of France; I call upon you, Gentlemen, to avert such calamity from falling upon my client, and through his side upon yourselves and upon our country. Let not him suffer under vague expositions of tyrannical laws, more tyrannically executed. - Let not him be hurried away to predoomed execution, from an honest enthusiasm for the public safety. I ask for him a trial by this applauded Constitution of our country -I call upon you to administer the law to him, according to our own wholesome institutions, by its strict and rigid letter :however you may eventually disapprove of any part of his conduct, or, viewing it through a false medium, may think it even wicked, I claim for him, as a subject of England, that the law shall decide upon its criminal denomination :-I protest, in his name, against all appeals to speculations concerning consequences, when the law commands us to look only to INTENTIONS. -If the state be threatened with evils, let Parliament adminis

ter a prospective remedy, but let the prisoner hold his life UNDER

THE LAW

Gentlemen, I ask this solemnly of the court, whose justice 1 am persuaded will afford it to me; I ask it more emphatically of you, the jury, who are called upon your oaths to make a true deliverance of your countryman, from this charge: but lastly, and chiefly, I implore it of Him in whose hands are all the issues of life, whose humane and merciful eye expands itself over all the transactions of mankind; at whose command nations rise, and fall, and are regenerated; without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground; - I implore it of God himself, that he will fill your minds with the spirit of justice and of truth; so that you may be able to find your way through the labyrinth of matter laid before you, a labyrinth in which no man's life was ever before involved, in the annals of British trial, nor indeed in the whole history of human justice or injustice.

Gentlemen, the first thing in order, is to look at the indictment itself; of the whole of which, or of some integral part, the prisoner must be found guilty, or be wholly discharged from guilt.

The indictment charges that the prisoners did maliciously and traitorously conspire, compass and imagine, to bring and put our Lord the King to death; and that to fulfil, perfect, and bring to effect their most evil and wicked purpose (that is to say, of bringing and putting the King to death,) " they met, conspired, consulted, and agreed amongst themselves, and other false traitors unknown, to cause and procure a convention to be assembled within the kingdom, WITH INTENT"-I am reading the very words of the Indictment, which I entreat you to follow in the notes you have been taking with such honest perseverance)-" WITH INTENT, AND IN ORDER that the persons so assembled at such convention, should and might traitorously, and in defiance of the authority, and against the will of parliament, subvert and alter, and cause to be subverted and altered, the legislature, rule, and government of the coun try; and to depose the King from the royal state, title, power, and government thereof." This is the first and great leading overt act in the indictment; and you observe that it is not charged as being treason SUBSTANTIVELY AND IN ITSELF, but only as it is committed in pursuance of the treason against the King's PERSON, antecedently imputed; -for the charge is NOT, that the prisoners conspired to assemble a convention to DEPOSE the King, but that they conspired and compassed his DEATH; and that, in order to accomplish that wicked and detestable purpose, i. e. in order to fulfil the traitorous intention of the mind against his LIFE, they conspired to assemble a convention, with a view to depose him. The same observation applies alike to all the other counts or overt acts upon the record, which manifestly indeed lean upon the establishment of the first for their support; because they charge the publication of different writings, and the provision of arms, not as distinct offences, but as acts done to excite to the assembling of the same convention, and to maintain it when assembled: but above all, and which must never be forgotten, because they also uniformly charge these different acts as committed in fulfilment of the same traitorous purpose, TO BRING THE KING TO DEATH. You will therefore have three distinct matters for consideration, upon this trial: First, What share (if any) the prisoner had, in concert with others, in assembling any convention or meeting of subjects within this kingdom :-Secondly, What were the acts to be done by this convention, when assembled:--and Thirdly, What was the view, purpose, and intention of those who projected its existence. This third consideration, indeed, comprehends, or rather precedes and swallows up the other two; because, before it can be material to decide upon the views of the convention, as pointed to the subversion of the rule and order of the King's political authority (even if such views could be ascribed to it, and brought home even personally to the prisoner,) we shall have to examine whether that criminal conspiraсу against the established order of the community, was hatched and engendered by a wicked contemplation to destroy the natural life and person of the King; and whether the acts charged and established by the evidence, were done in pursuance and in fulfilment of the same traitorous purpose.

Gentlemen, this view of the subject is not only correct, but self-evident; the subversion of the King's political government, and all conspiracies to subvert it, are crimes of great magnitude and enormity, which the law is open to punish; but neither of them are the crimes before you. The prisoner is NOT charged with a conspiracy against the King's POLITICAL GOV ERNMENT, but against his NATURAL LIFE. He is not accused of having merely taken steps to depose him from his authority, but with having done so with the intention to bring him to death. It is the act with the specific intention, and not the act alone, which constitutes the charge. The act of conspiring to depose the King, may indeed be evidence, according to circumstances, of an intention to destroy his natural existence; but never, as a proposition of law, can constitute the intention itself. Where an act is done in pursuance of an intention, surely the intention must first exist; a man cannot do a thing in fulfilment of an intention, unless his mind first conceives that intention. The

doing an act, or the pursuit of a system of conduct which leads in probable consequences to the death of the King, may legally (if any such be before you) affect the consideration of the traitorous purpose charged by the record, and I am not afraid of trusting you with the evidence.-How far any given act, or course of acting, independently of intention, may lead probably or inevitably to any natural or political consequence, is what we have no concern with; these may be curious questions of casuistry or politics; but it is wickedness and folly to declare that consequences unconnected even with intention or consciousness, shall be synonymous in law with the traitorous mind; although the traitorous mind alone is arraigned, as constituting the crime.

Gentlemen, the first question consequently for consideration, and to which I must therefore earnestly implore the attention of the court, is this:--WHAT IS THE LAW UPON THIS MOMENTOUS SUBJECT?-And recollecting that I am invested with no authority, I shall not presume to offer you anything of my own;nothing shall proceed from myself upon this part of the inquiry, but that which is merely introductory, and necessary to the understanding of the authorities on which I mean to rely for the establishment of doctrines, not less essential to the general liberties of England, than to the particular consideration which constitutes our present duty.

First then, I maintain that that branch of the statute 25th of Edward the Third, which declares it to be high treason "when a man doth compass or imagine the death of the King, of his lady the Queen, or of his eldest son and heir," was intended to guard by a higher sanction than felony, the NATURAL LIVES of the King, Queen, and Prince; and that no act, therefore (either inchoate or consummate,) of resistance to, or rebellion against, the King's regal capacity, amounts to high treason of compassing his death, unless where they can be charged upon on the indictment, and proved to the satisfaction of the jury at the trial, as overt acts, committed by the prisoner, in fulfilment of a traitorous intention to destroy the King's NATURAL LIFE.

Secondly, that the compassing the King's death, or, in other words, the traitorous intention to destroy his natural existence, is the treason, and not the overt acts, which are only laid as manifestations of the traitorous intention, or, in other words, as EVIDENCE competent to be left to a jury to prove it: and that no conspiracy to levy war against the King, nor any conspiracy against his regal character or capacity, is a good overt act of compassing his death, unless some force be exerted, or in contemplation, against THE KING'S PERSON: and that such force so exerted or in contemplation, is not substantively the treason of compassing, but only competent in point of law to establish it if the jury by the verdict of Guilty draw that conclusion of fact from the evidence of the overt act.

Thirdly, that the charge in the indictment, of compassing the king's death, is not laid as legal inducement or introduction, to follow as a legal inference from the establishment of the overt act, but is laid as an averment of a FACT; and, as such, the very gist of the indictment, to be affirmed or negatived by the verdict of guilty or not guilty. It will not (I am persuaded) be suspected by the Attorney General, or by the Court, that I am about to support these doctrines by opposing my own judgment to the authoritative writings of the venerable and excellent lord Hale, whose memory will live in this country, and throughout the enlightened world, as long as the administration of pure justice shall exist; neither do I wish to oppose anything which is to be found in the other learned authorities principally relied upon by the Crown, because all my positions are perfectly consistent with a right interpretation of them: and because, even were it otherwise, I could not expect successfully to oppose them by any reasonings of my own, which can have no weight, but as they shall be found at once consistent with acknowledged authorities, and with the established principles of the English law. I can do this with the greater security, because my respectable and learned friend, the Attorney General, has not cited cases which have been the disgrace of this country in former times, nor asked you to sanction by your judgment those bloody murders, which are recorded by them as acts of English justice; but, as might be expected of an honorable man, his expositions of the law (though I think them frequently erroneous) are drawn from the same sources, which I look up to for doctrines so very different. I find, indeed, throughout the whole range of authorities (I mean those which the attorney general has properly considered as deserving that name and character) very little contradiction: for, as far as I can discover, much more entanglement has arisen from now and then a tripping in the expression, than from any difference of sentiment amongst eminent and virtuous judges, who have either examined, or sat in judgment upon this momentous subject.

Gentlemen, before I pursue the course I have prescribed to myself, I desire most distinctly to be understood, that in my own judgment the most successful argument, that a conspiracy to depose the king does not necessarily establish the treason charged upon this record, is totally beside any possible judgment that you can have to form upon the evidence before you; since throughout the whole volumes that have been read, I can trace nothing that even points to the imagination of such a conspiracy;