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CLXXVII.

CHAP. to do justice to such merit, I will not give up even my small share of the honour of repelling and of exposing so A. D. 1778. odious a prosecution.". -After some general observations on

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the common herd of libellers whom the Court had been ac-
customed to punish, he said, "I beseech your Lordships to
compare these men and their works with my client and
the publication before the Court. Who is he? What was
his duty? What has he written? To whom has he written?
and what motive induced him to write?" These few questions,
which he answered seriatim, the advocate made the heads of
his inimitable discourse - showing that his client had written
nothing but the truth, and had acted strictly within the line
of his duty. He was thus about to conclude: "Such, my
Lords, is the case. The defendant, not a disappointed
malicious informer, prying into official abuses, because with-
out office himself. - but himself a man in office;
troublesomely inquisitive into other men's departments, but
conscientiously correcting his own; - doing it pursuant to
the rules of law, and, what heightens the character, doing it
at the risk of his office, from which the effrontery of power
has already suspended him, without proof of his guilt — a
conduct not only unjust and illiberal, but highly disrespectful
to this Court, whose judges sit in the double capacity of mi-
nisters of the law, and governors of this sacred and abused
institution. Indeed, Lord Sandwich has in my mind acted
such a part-" [Here (in the words of the report) Lord
Mansfield, observing the counsel heated with his subject, and
growing personal on the First Lord of the Admiralty, told
him that Lord Sandwich was not before the Court.] Erskine.
"I know that he is not formally before the Court, but for that
very reason I will bring him before the Court. He has placed
these men in the front of the battle in hopes to escape under
their shelter, but I will not join in battle with them; their
vices, though screwed up to the highest pitch of human de-
pravity, are not of dignity enough to vindicate the combat
with me.
I will drag him to light, who is the dark mover
behind this scene of iniquity. I assert that the Earl of
Sandwich has but one road to escape out of this business

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A. D. 1778.

without pollution and disgrace, and that is, by publicly CHAP. disavowing the acts of the prosecutors, and restoring Captain CLXXVII. Baillie to his command! If he does this, then his offence will be no more than the too common one of having suffered his own personal interest to prevail over his public duty in placing his voters in the Hospital. But if, on the contrary, he continues to protect the prosecutors, in spite of the evidence of their guilt, which has excited the abhorrence of the numerous audience who crowd this Court, IF HE KEEPS THIS INJURED MAN SUSPENDED, OR DARES TO TURN THAT SUSPENSION INTO A REMOVAL, I SHALL THEN NOT SCRUPLE TO DECLARE HIM AN ACCOMPLICE IN THEIR GUILT, A SHAMELESS OPPRESSOR, A DISGRACE TO HIS RANK, AND A TRAITOR TO HIS TRUST. But as I should be very sorry that the fortune of my brave and honourable friend should depend either upon the exercise of Lord Sandwich's virtues or the influence of his fears, I do most earnestly entreat the Court to mark the malignant object of this prosecution, and to defeat it. beseech you, my Lords, to consider that even by discharging the rule, and with costs, the defendant is neither protected nor restored. I trust, therefore, your Lordships will not rest satisfied with fulfilling your JUDICIAL duty, but, as the strongest evidence of foul abuses has by accident come collaterally before you, that you will protect a brave and publicspirited officer from the persecution this writing has brought upon him, and not suffer so dreadful an example to go abroad into the world, as the ruin of an upright man for having faithfully discharged his duty. My Lords, this matter is of the last importance. I speak not as an ADVOCATE alone I speak to you AS A MAN as a member of a state whose very existence depends upon her naval strength. If our fleets are to be crippled by the baneful influence of elections, WE ARE LOST INDEED. If the seaman, while he exposes his body to fatigues and dangers, looking forward to Greenwich as an asylum for infirmity and old age, sees the gates of it blocked up by corruption, and hears the riot and mirth of luxurious landsmen drowning the groans and complaints of the wounded, helpless companions of his glory, he will

CHAP. CLXXVII.

tempt the seas no more. The Admiralty may press HIS BODY, indeed, at the expense of humanity and the ConstituA. D. 1778. tion, but they cannot press his mind, they cannot press the heroic ardour of a British sailor; and instead of a fleet to carry terror all round the globe, the Admiralty may not be able much longer to amuse us with even the peaceable unsubstantial pageant of a review.* FINE AND IMPRISONMENT! The man deserves a PALACE instead of a PRISON Who prevents the palace built by the public bounty of his country from being converted into a dungeon, and who sacrifices his own security to the interests of humanity and virtue.— And now, my Lords, I have done; but not without thanking your Lordships for the very indulgent attention I have received, though in so late a stage of this proceeding, and notwithstanding my great incapacity and inexperience. I resign my client into your hands, and I resign him with a well-founded confidence and hope; because that torrent of corruption which has unhappily overwhelmed every other part of the Constitution is, by the blessing of Providence, stopped HERE by the sacred independence of the Judges. I KNOW that your Lordships will determine ACCORDING TO LAW; and therefore, if an information should be suffered to be filed, I shall bow to the sentence, and shall consider this meritorious publication to be, indeed, an offence against the laws of this country; but then I shall not scruple to say, that it is high time for every honest man to remove himself from a country in which he can no longer do his duty to the public with safety; where cruelty and inhumanity are suffered to impeach virtue, — and where vice passes through a court of justice unpunished and unreproved."

Effect pro

duced.

The impression made upon the audience by this address is said to have been unprecedented; and I must own that, all the circumstances considered, it is the most wonderful forensic effort of which we have any account in our annals. It was the début of a barrister just called and wholly unpractised in public speaking - before a Court crowded with the men of

*There had just before been a naval review at Portsmouth.

the greatest distinction, belonging to all parties in the state. He came after four eminent counsel, who might be supposed to have exhausted the subject. He was called to order by a venerable Judge, whose word had been law in that Hall above a quarter of a century. His exclamation, "I will bring him before the Court," and the crushing denunciation of Lord Sandwich, in which he was enabled to persevere, from the sympathy of the by-standers, and even of the Judges, who in strictness ought again to have checked his irregularity

are

as soul-stirring as anything in this species of eloquence presented to us by ancient or modern times. I hardly less admire his quiet peroration, which, with an appearance of modesty and submission, breathes confidence and defiance. A commonplace declaimer would have thought it necessary to conclude with some noisy mouthing sentences. How much more effective must have been the lowered tone of the man who knew instinctively to touch the feelings-speaking in an assembly where every look was fixed upon him—where every syllable he uttered was eagerly caught up where breathing was almost suspended, — and as often as he paused a flake of snow would have been heard to fall.

Need I mention, that the rule was discharged with costs? It would be easy to narrate the congratulations which the young counsel received in Court, and his ovation when on retiring he walked through the Hall. But who could adequately describe his own feelings, when all his anxieties were over, and he knew that he had conquered fame for himself, and secured all worldly comforts to those who were dear to him? This last consideration I believe was nearest his heart. Being asked, how he had the courage to stand up so boldly against Lord Mansfield, he answered, that he thought his little children were plucking his robe, and that he heard them saying, "Now, father, is the time to get us bread."

CHAP.

CLXXVII.

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own ac

count of

He himself is said, many years after at the "King of Clubs," Erskine's to have given the following gay account of his start in the profession. "I had scarcely a shilling in my pocket when I his début. got my first retainer. It was sent to me by a Captain Baillie, of the navy, who held an office at the board of Greenwich Hospital, and I was to show cause, in the Michaelmas

CLXXVII.

A. D. 1778.

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CHAP. Term, against a rule that had been obtained in the preceding term, calling upon him to show cause why a criminal information for a libel reflecting on Lord Sandwich's conduct as governor of that charity should not be filed against him. I had met, during the long vacation, this Captain Baillie at a friend's table, and after dinner I expressed myself with some warmth, probably with some eloquence, on the corruption of Lord Sandwich as First Lord of the Admiralty, and then adverted to the scandalous practices imputed to him with regard to Greenwich Hospital. Baillie nudged the person who sat next to him, and asked who I was? Being told that I had just been called to the Bar, and had been formerly in the navy, Baillie exclaimed with an oath, Then I'll have him for my counsel!' I trudged down to Westminster Hall, when I got the brief, and being the junior of five, who would be heard before me, never dreamed that the Court would hear me at all. Dunning, Bearcroft, Wallace, Bower*, Hargrave, were all heard at considerable length, and I was to follow. Hargrave was long-winded, and tired the Court. It was a bad omen: but, as my good fortune would have it, he was afflicted with the strangury, and was obliged to retire once or twice in the course of his argument. This protracted the cause so long that, when he had finished, Lord Mansfield said that the remaining counsel should be heard the next morning. This was exactly what I wished. I had the whole night to arrange, in my chambers, what I had to say the next morning, and I took the Court with their faculties awake and freshened, succeeded quite to my own satisfaction, (sometimes the surest proof that you have satisfied others,) and as I marched along the Hall, after the rising of the Judges, the attorneys flocked around me with their retainers. I have since flourished, but I have always blessed God for the providential strangury of poor Hargrave.” †

* Erskine, or more likely his reporter, had forgot the names of the counsel. Dunning was on the other side; and Wallace and Bower were not engaged in

the cause.

† Adair's Clubs of London.

On other occasions he varied the circumstances

a good deal, and he carried the number of retainers which he received before he left the Hall to the number of SIXTY-FIVE, inducing a suspicion that they had multiplied from narration.

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