that the King can not, consistently with his cor- | stand amazed at, and every one must confess onation oath, consent to any law that can be needs a remedy." stated or imagined, presented to him as the act “Salus populi suprema lex, is certainly so just of the two Houses of Parliament. He could not, and fundamental a rule, that he who sincerely indeed, consent to a bill sent up to him framed follows it can not dangerously err. If, thereby a convention of delegates assuming legislative fore, the executive, who has the power of confunctions. If my friend could have proved that voking the legislative, observing rather the true the societies, sitting as a Parliament, had sent up proportion, than fashion of representation, regusuch a bill to his Majesty, I should have thought lates, not by old custom, but by true reason, the the prisoner, as a member of such a Parliament, number of members in all places that have a was at least in a different situation from that in right to be distinctly represented, which no part which he stands at present. But as this is not of the people, however incorporated, can pretend one of the chimeras whose existence is contended to, but in proportion to the assistance which it for, I return back to ask upon what authority it affords to the public, it can not be judged to is maintained, that universal representation and have set up a new legislative, but to have reannual Parliaments could not be consented to by stored the old and true one, and to have rectified the King, in conformity to the wishes of the other the disorders which succession of time had insensbranches of the Legislature. On the contrary, ibly, as well as inevitably, introduced; for it beone of the greatest men that this country ever saw, ing the interest as well as intention of the people considered universal representation to be such an to have fair and equal representation, whoever inherent part of the Constitution, as that the King brings it nearest to that, is an undoubted friend himself might grant it by his prerogative, even to, and establisher of, the government, and can without the Lords and Commons—and I had not miss the consent and approbation of the comnever heard the position denied upon any other munity; prerogative being nothing but a power, footing than the Union with Scotland. But be in the hands of the Prince, to provide for the pubthat as it may, it is enough for my purpose that lic good, in such cases, which, depending upon the maxim, that the King might grant universal unforeseen and uncertain occurrences, certain representation, as a right before inherent in the and unalterable laws could not safely direct; whole people to be represented, stands upon the whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the good authority of Mr. Locke, the man, next to Sir of the people, and the establishing the governIsaac Newton, of the greatest strength of under- ment upon its true foundations, is, and always standing that England, perhaps, ever had; high, will be, just prerogative. Whatsoever can not too, in the favor of King William, and enjoying but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the one of the most exalted offices in the state. society, and people in general, upon just and Mr. Locke says, book ii., c. xiii., sect. 157 and lasting measures, will always, when done, justify 158: "Things of this world are in so constant itself; and whenever the people shall choose their Views of a flux, that nothing remains long in the representatives upon just and undeniably equal same state. Thus people, riches, trade, measures, suitable to the original frame of the power, change their stations, flourishing mighty government, it can not be doubted to be the will cities come to ruin, and prove, in time, neglected and act of the society, whoever permitted or desolate corners, while other unfrequented places caused them so to do." But as the very idea of grow into populous countries, filled with wealth universal suffrage seems now to be considered and inhabitants. But things not always chang- not only to be dangerous to, but absolutely deing equally, and private interest often keeping up structive of, monarchy, you certainly ought to be customs and privileges, when the reasons of them reminded that the book which I have been readare ceased, it often comes to pass, that in gov-ing, and which my friend kindly gives me a note ernments, where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, that, in tract of time, this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurd-ance, which, under the same establishments, have ities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied when we see the bare name of a town of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheep-cote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd, is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers, as a whole county, numerous in people and powerful in riches. This strangers

Mr. Locke.

to remind you of, was written by its immortal author in defense of King William's title to the Crown; and when Dr. Sacheverel ventured to broach those doctrines of power and non-resist

now become so unaccountably popular, he was impeached by the people's representatives for denying their rights, which had been asserted and established at the glorious era of the Revolution.

up to the passing of the Reform Bill, in 1832, when the borough was disfranchised, Old Sarum was represented in Parliament.

ited from preaching for three years, and his two ser 43 A. D. 1709. Being found guilty, he was prohib

41 He was one of the Commissioners of Trade and mons. which had given so much offense, were ordered Plantations.

42 Mr. Locke alluded to Old Sarum, in Wiltshire. in which a few fragments of foundation-walls are the only traces of a town ever having existed. It was totally deserted in the reign of Henry VIII.; but yet,

to be burned by the common hangman. The famous decree passed in the Convocation of the University of Oxford, asserting the absolute authority and indefeasible right of princes, was also ordered to be, in like manner, committed to the flames.

(1.) London

the society.

Gentlemen, there was a sort of silence in the court-I do not say an affected one, for Motto of I mean no possible offense to any one— but there seemed to be an effect expected from beginning, not with the address itself, but with the very bold motto to it, though in verse : "Unbless'd by virtue, government a league Becomes, a circling junto of the great To rob by law; Religion mild, a yoke To tame the stooping soul, a trick of state To mask their rapine, and to share the prey. Without it, what are Senates, but a face Of consultation deep and reason free, While the determined voice and heart are sold? What, boasted freedom, but a sounding name! And what election, but a market vile, Of slaves self-barter'd?"

for the Crown. upon my mind, from common read-of the society, we must look to the institution ing in a thousand directions, my strength would itself, which you are, indeed, desired to look at fail long before my duty was fulfilled. I had by the Crown; for their intentions are not convery little when I came into court, and I have sidered as deceptions in this instance, but as abundantly less already; I must, therefore, man- plainly revealed by the very writing itself. age what remains to the best advantage. I proceed, therefore, to take a view of such parts of the evidence as appear to me to be the most material for the proper understanding of the case. I have had no opportunity of considering it, but in the interval which the indulgence of the court and your own has afforded me, and that has been for a very few hours this morning. But it occurred to me, that the best use I could make of the time given to me was, if possible, to disembroil this chaos; to throw out of view every thing irrelevant, which only tended to bring chaos back again; to take what remained in order of time; to select certain stages and resting-places; to review the effect of the transactions, as brought before us, and then to see how the written evidence is explained by the testimony of the witnesses who have been examined. The origin of the Constitutional Society not having been laid in evidence before Correspond you, the first thing, both in point of ng Society. date, and as applying to show the objects of the different bodies, is the original address and resolution of the London Corresponding Society on its first institution, and when it first began to correspond with the other, which had formerly ranked among its members so many illustrious persons. Before we look to the matter of this [latter] institution, let us recollect that the objects of it were given without reserve to the public, as containing the principles of the [former] association. And I may begin with demanding, whether the annals of this country, or, indeed, the universal history of mankind, afford an assistance of a plot and conspiracy voluntarily given up in its very infancy to government, and the whole public; and of which-to avoid the very thing that has happened, the arraignment of conduct at a future period, and the imputation of secrecy where no secret was intended-a regular notice by letter was left with the Secretary of State, and a receipt taken at the 44 Previous to the formation of the London Corresponding Society, there existed another called the Society for Constitutional Information. This was founded by some of the most distinguished Whigs of the kingdom. Soon after the commencement of the French Revolution, it was joined by Horne Tooke and others of more radical views, and many of its original members left it. This society took the lead in sending a deputation to the National

Convention of France, an act which was highly censured as derogatory to the English government. They also passed a vote of thanks to Thomas Paine for his work entitled the Rights of Man. Much of the evidence in the present case was intended to identify the Corresponding Society with the Constitutional Society, and thus to load Hardy with the odium of their proceedings.

I almost fancy I heard them say to me, “What think you of that to set out with? Show me the parallel of that." Gentlemen, I am sorry, for the credit of the age we live in, to answer, that it is difficult to find the parallel, because the age affords no such poet as he who wrote it. These are the words of THOMSON; and it is under the banners of his proverbial benevolence that these men are supposed to be engaging in plans of anarchy and murder-under the banners of that great and good man, whose figure you may still see in the venerable shades of Hagley, placed there by the virtuous, accomplished, and publicspirited Lyttelton: the very poem, too, written under the auspices of his Majesty's royal father, when heir-apparent to the Crown of Great Britain, nay, within the very walls of Carlton House, which afforded an asylum to matchless worth and genius in the person of this great poet. It was under the roof of A PRINCE OF WALES that the poem of LIBERTY was written; and what better return could be given to a Prince for his protection, than to blazon, in immortal numbers, the only sure title to the Crown he was to wear -THE FREEDOM OF THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN? And it is to be assumed, forsooth, in the year 1794, that the unfortunate prisoner before you was plotting treason and rebellion, because, with a taste and feeling beyond his humble station, his first proceeding was ushered into view under the hallowed sanction of this admirable person, the friend and the defender of the British Constitution; whose countrymen are preparing at this moment (may my name descend among them to the latest posterity!) to do honor to his immortal memory. Pardon me, gentlemen, for this desultory digression-I must express myself as the current of my mind will carry me."

45 This was done by the Corresponding Society, partly, no doubt, in the spirit of bravado.

46 Thnson was born at Ednam in Scotland, and

the society was to carry out the plan of the Duke of Richmond.

convention, they had high

If we look at the whole of the institution itself, I been considered as an infamous libeler and traThe object of it exactly corresponds with the plan ducer, and deservedly hooted out of civilized life. of the Duke of Richmond, as express- Why, then, are different constructions to be put ed in the letters to Colonel Sharman, upon similar transactions? Why is every thing and to the High Sheriff of Sussex. to be held up as bonâ fide when the example is This plan they propose to follow, in a public ad- set, and malà fide when it is followed? Why dress to the nation, and all their resolutions are have I not as good a claim to take credit for framed for its accomplishment; and I desire to honest purpose in the poor man I am defending, know in what they have departed from either, against whom not a contumelious expression has and what they have done which has not been been proved, as when we find the same expresdone before, without blame or censure, in the sions in the mouths of the Duke of Richmond or pursuance of the same object. I am not speak- Mr. Burke? I ask nothing more from this obing of the libels they may have written, which servation, than that a sober judgment may be the law is open to punish, but what part of their pronounced from the quality of the acts which conduct has, as applicable to the subject in ques- can be fairly established; each individual standtion, been unprecedented? I have at this mo- ing responsible only for his own conduct, instead In proposing a ment in my eye an honorable friend of having our imaginations tainted with cant of mine, and a distinguished member phrases, and a farrago of writings and speeches, authorities, of the House of Commons [Mr. Fox], for which the prisoner is not responsible, and for who, within my own remembrance, I believe in which the authors, if they be criminal, are liable 1780, sat publicly at Guildhall, with many others, to be brought to justice. some of them magistrates of the city, as a convention of delegates for the same objects. And what is still more in point, just before the convention began to meet at Edinburgh, whose proceedings have been so much relied on, there was a convention regularly assembled, attended by delegates from all the counties of Scotland, for the express and avowed purpose of altering the constitution of Parliament-not by rebellion, but by the same means employed by the prisoner. The Lord Chief Baron of Scotland sat in the chair, and was assisted by some of the first men in that country, and, among others, by an honorable person to whom I am nearly allied, who is at the very head of the bar in Scotland, and most avowedly attached to the law and the Constitution.47

Prejudice against these latter conthey speak of the

ventions because

rights of man.

But it will be said, gentlemen, that all the constitutional privileges of the people are conceded-that their existence was never denied or invaded-and that their right to petition and to meet for the expression of their complaints, founded or unfounded, was never called in question. These, it will be said, are the rights of subjects-but that "the rights of man" are what alarms them. Every man is considered as a traitor who talks about the rights of man; but this bugbear stands upon the same perversion with its fellows.

The rights of man are the foundation of all government, and to secure them is the Defense of only reason of men's submitting to be the phrase. These gentlemen, whose good intentions nev- governed. It shall not be fastened upon the unFirst Scottish er fell into suspicion, had presented a fortunate prisoner at the bar, nor upon any other convention. petition for the alteration of election man, that because these natural rights were aslaws, which the House of Commons had rejected, serted in France, by the destruction of a governand on the spur of that very rejection they met in ment which oppressed and subverted them-a a convention at Edinburgh, in 1793. The style process happily effected here by slow and imperof their first meeting was "A Convention of Del- ceptible improvements-that, therefore, they can egates, chosen from the counties of Scotland, for only be so asserted in England, where the govaltering and amending the laws concerning Elec-ernment, through a gradation of improvement, is tions"-not for considering how they might be well calculated to protect them. We are, fortubest amended-not for petitioning Parliament to nately, not driven in this country to the terrible alamend them, but for altering and amending the ternatives which were the unhappy lot of France, election laws. The proceedings of these meet- because we have had a happier destiny in the ings were regularly published, and I will prove forms of a free Constitution. This, indeed, is the that their first resolution, as I have read it to you, express language of many of the papers before was brought up to London, and delivered to the you that have been complained of—especially of editor of the Morning Chronicle, by Sir Thomas one alluded to by the Attorney General, as havDundas, lately created a peer of Great Britain, ing been written by a gentleman with whom I and paid for by him as a public advertisement. am particularly acquainted. And though in that Now, suppose any man had imputed treason or spirited composition there are, perhaps, some exsedition to these honorable persons, what would pressions proceeding from warmth which he may have been the consequence? He would have not desire me critically to justify, yet I will venture to affirm, from my own personal knowledge, an association was formed at this time, of which Er- that there is not a man in court more honestly skine was a member, to erect a monument to his public-spirited and zealously devoted to the Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons, than the honorable gentleman I allude to [Felix Vaughan, Esq., barrister-at-law]: it is the phrase, therefore, and not the sentiment expressed by it, that can

memory in his native village. This was finally ac complished at an expense of £300.

47 The Honorable Henry Erskine, Mr. Erskine's brother, then Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, at Edinburgh.

was charged by the Bill of Rights to consist in cruel and infamous trials, in the packing of juries, and in disarming the people, whose arms are their unalienable refuge against oppression. But did the people of England assemble to make this declaration? No! because it was unnecessary. The sense of the people, against a corrupt and scandalous government, dissolved it, by almost the ordinary forms by which the old government itself was administered. King William sent his writs to those who had sat in the former Parliament; but will any man, therefore, tell me that that Parliament re-organized the government without the will of the people? and that it was not their consent which entailed on King William a particular inheritance, to be enjoyed under the dominion of the law?

alone give justifiable offense. It is, it seems, a new phrase commencing in revolutions, and never used before in discussing the rights of British subjects, and, therefore, can only be applied in the sense of those who framed it. But this is so far from being the truth, that the very phrase sticks in my memory, from the memorable application of it to the rights of subjects, under this and every other establishment, by a gentleman whom you will not suspect of using it in any other sense. The rights of man were considered by Mr. Burke, at the time that the great uproar was made upon a supposed invasion of the East India Company's charter, to be the foundation of, and paramount to, all the laws and ordinances of a state. The ministry, you may remember, were turned out for Mr. Fox's India Bill, which their opponents termed an attack upon the chartered Gentlemen, it was the denial of these princirights of man, or, in other words, upon the abuses ples, asserted at the Revolution in Ensupported by a monopoly in trade. Hear the gland, that brought forward the author called forth by sentiments of Mr. Burke, when the natural and of the "Rights of Man," and stirred constitutional chartered rights of men are brought into contest. up this controversy which has given Mr. Burke, in his speech in the House of Com- such alarm to government. But for this, the litmons, expressed himself thus: "The first objec-erary labors of Mr. Paine had closed. tion is, that the bill is an attack on the chartered rights of men. As to this objection, I must observe that the phrase, "the chartered rights of men," is full of affectation, and very unusual in the discussion of privileges conferred by charters of the present description. But it is not difficult to discover what end that ambiguous mode of expression, so often reiterated, is meant to an

swer.

"The rights of men, that is to say, the natural Mr. Burke on rights of mankind, are, indeed, sacred this subject things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. And if these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, clearly defined and secured against chicane, power, and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in a still better condition: they then partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself, which secures an object of such importance. Indeed, this formal recognition, by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted but by rooting up the holding radical principles of government, and even of society itself."

Duke of Richmond on the

The Duke of Richmond, also, in his public letter to the High Sheriff of Sussex, rests the rights of the people of England same subject. upon the same horrible and damnable principle of the rights of man. Let gentlemen, therefore, take care they do not pull down the very authority which they come here to support. Let them remember that his Majesty's family was called to the throne upon the very principle that the ancient kings of this country had violated these sacred trusts. Let them recollect, too, in what the violation was charged to consist: it

48 See antè, page 313.

Paine's book

the dental of

principles.

He as

serts it himself in his book, and every body knows it. It was not the French Revolution, but Mr. Burke's Reflections upon it, followed up by another work on the same subject, as it regarded things in England, which brought forward Mr. Paine, and which rendered his works so much the object of attention in this country. Mr. Burke denied positively the very foundation upon which the Revolution of 1688 must stand for its support, namely, the right of the people to change their government; and he asserted, in the teeth of his Majesty's title to the Crown, that no such right in the people existed. This is the true history of the Second Part of the "Rights of Man." The First Part had little more aspect to this country than to Japan; it asserted the right of the people of France to act as they had acted, but there was little which pointed to it as an example for England. There had been a despotic authority in France, which the people had thrown down, and Mr. Burke seemed to question their right to do so. Mr. Paine maintained the contrary in his answer; and, having imbibed the principles of republican government during the American Revolution, he mixed with the controversy many coarse and harsh remarks upon monarchy, as established even in England, or in any possible form. But this was collateral to the great object of his work, which was to maintain the right of the people to choose their government. This was the right which was questioned, and the assertion of it was most interesting to many who were most strenuously attached to the English government. For men may assert the right of every people to choose their government, without seeking to destroy their own. This accounts for many expressions imputed to the unfortunate prisoners, which I have often uttered myself, and shall continue to utter every day of my life, and call upon the spies of government to record them. I will say any where, without fear -nay, I will say here, where I stand, that an at