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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry
-Cooper, by William Cooper
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper
-       Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father
-
-
-Author: William Cooper
-
-
-
-Release Date: December 11, 2007  [eBook #23826]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE
-HENRY COOPER***
-
-
-Credit
-
-
-
-Transcribed from the [1856] W. & H. S. Warr edition by David Price,
-ccx074@pglaf.org
-
-{A slight sketch of my Father, when over 70, taken in Court by Mr. Joseph
-Geldart of Norwich: p0.jpg}
-
-W. & H. S. Warr 63, High Holborn
-
-
-
-
-
-A SKETCH OF THE LIFE
-OF THE LATE
-HENRY COOPER,
-BARRISTER-AT-LAW, OF THE NORFOLK CIRCUIT;
-AS ALSO,
-OF HIS FATHER,
-
-
-BY HIS SON,
-
-WILLIAM COOPER, ESQ., B.A., Oxon.,
-
-_Of Lincoln's Inn_, _Barrister at Law_;
-
-AUTHOR OF THE DRAMAS OF
-
-"THE STUDENT OF JENA," "MOKANNA,"
-"ZOPYRUS," &c.
-
-"MEMINISSE JUVAT."
-
-LONDON:
-PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY W. & H. S. WARR,
-63, HIGH HOLBORN.
-
-
-
-
-DEDICATION.
-
-
-To MR. SERGEANT STORKS.
-
-DEAR MR. SERGEANT,
-
-To you I dedicate this sketch of the Life of my late brother, Henry
-Cooper; and, for three good reasons--the first, because, you were
-associated with my brother on circuit, knew him well, and were one of
-those, who being often opposed to him in court, were best able to
-appreciate his talents, eloquence, and the general powers of his mind;--my
-second, because, when young, I have listened often to your eloquence, and
-been made merry by your wit and humour;--my third, because, you have
-known all my family, and by one and all are much respected;--and my dear
-Mr. Sergeant, with kind regards to yourself, and best wishes to you and
-yours,
-
-Believe me,
-Yours very truly,
-WILLIAM COOPER.
-
-3, HARE COURT, TEMPLE,
-_December_, 1856.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-KIND READER,
-
-In attempting the life of my late brother, who, after struggling for
-years at the bar in almost obscurity, had, on a sudden, his brilliancy
-noticed and his great talents acknowledged, and no sooner had he reached
-that eminence in his profession, when all was made easy before him, than
-unpitying Clolho stept up, and cut his thread of life; I must ask your
-indulgence, for the reasons you will see, as you proceed in this my life
-of him, as also, from the very scanty materials I have been able to
-collect for it.  How the first idea of this suggested itself to my mind,
-I will tell you; a few days ago, I was about to re-publish some Dramas,
-written by me in earlier years, and thinking one of them would scarcely
-make a volume by itself, the _thought struck me_, on looking over my
-treasures, and finding some verses of my brother Henry in his own hand
-writing, amidst many youthful rhymes of my own and of my family, _that_ I
-would string them together, and so swell the work alluded to.  To do this
-I thought it necessary to affix a short heading to each, to particularize
-the writer, and for this purpose wrote, to head my brother's, a short
-biographical sketch of him, consisting of about thirty lines, and
-quitting my house, left it on my way to chambers at my printers, returned
-home, the labours of the day over,--went to bed, but not to sleep,
-thought of my late brother, of that I had written of him, pondered over
-the past anecdotes of his life, that had been often told me, recalled his
-image to my memory, and amidst airy visions of the past, of my father,
-earlier days, and of youthful pleasures mixed with pain, fell
-asleep--BUT--with a determination.  To carry it out,--on the morrow I
-began this sketch.  You must judge how I have performed my self-imposed
-task, and wishing it may amuse you, and encourage young aspirants who
-shall chance to read it, not to give way under difficulties, but
-strenuously to persevere, seeing how much may be achieved by diligence
-and a determination not to yield, remembering ever the good advice and
-the useful maxim delivered of old:--
-
-   "Tu ne cede malis sed contra
-   Audacior ito--"
-   "Possunt quia posse videntur."
-
-I am, yours faithfully,
-W. COOPER.
-
-
-
-
-LIFE OF HENRY COOPER.
-
-
-The subject of the present memoir, Henry Cooper, was born at a house in
-Bethel Street, in the City of Norwich, now well-known as the late
-residence of Alderman Hawkes, and where resided for many years his
-father, Charles, now better known as Old Counsellor Cooper, a remarkable
-man, who, like the late William Cobbett, though of humble origin,
-possessed one of those minds that will and must, as they have ever done
-from the time of Deioces of Ecbatana (recorded by Herodotus) till now,
-elevate the possessor and compel the homage, whilst exciting the no small
-envy of inferior intellects.  What education he received was at a small
-school kept by the Rev. John Bruckner (a Lutheran Divine), who died in
-1804, and was buried at Guist, in Norfolk, where French, Latin, and the
-common rudiments of an English education were taught; and where, too, the
-late William Taylor,--perhaps one of the most extraordinary men Norwich
-ever produced, the early and intimate friend of Southey, and who was the
-first, according to Lockhart's Life of Scott, to give that great writer a
-taste for poetry by his (Taylor's) spirited and inimitable translation of
-Burger's well known ballad beginning,--
-
-   "At break of day from frightful dreams up started Eleanor,"
-
-was his fellow pupil, and who has told me what a gentle, industrious, and
-amiable boy he remembered my father (truly, in this instance, the child
-was father of the man); there he acquired, no doubt, some knowledge, but
-it was far more to his own self-instruction that he was indebted for the
-large and varied knowledge he possessed, for, as his brother Samuel (his
-only and younger brother,--he had a sister but she died young) informed
-my mother that such was his early thirst for knowledge, that he not only
-repudiated all play, and the sports of boyhood, taught himself Greek, and
-greedily devoured the contents of every book that came within his reach,
-but would, with the pocket-money given him, purchase candles, and when
-the family had retired to rest, light one, and sit and read till the dawn
-of day, when he would creep into bed, and sleep till the hour of call,
-when he would rise to resume anew his mental exercise.  So years past by,
-and the young and sickly looking boy grew into the youth, when his
-father, a man of strong intellect, with a great deal of sound common
-sense, perceiving the bent of his son's mind,--and being a man who had
-retired early in life from business with a small property, on which he
-lived in a house at Heigham (a hamlet within the city),--at once placed
-his son Charles with one of the most respectable attornies, in large
-business in Norwich, as an articled clerk to the law, where he very soon,
-by his persevering industry, his assiduity, and the great acuteness shown
-in every matter entrusted to his care and management, so conciliated the
-good opinion of his master, who discovered progressively, the evident
-marks of superior abilities [here, too, he indulged to an excess his
-insatiable thirst for reading, that he would sit up the greater part of
-the night for this purpose, to the neglect and injury of his health],
-that at the termination of his engagement, his conduct was so acceptable,
-and his services so manifest, and his influence, too, among the clients,
-was found to be so extensive, that on his obtaining his certificate to
-practise as an attorney, his principal was glad to offer him a share in
-the business, and receive him as a partner; the reputation he had already
-acquired became wide spread, and quickly raised the firm in the
-estimation of the public, and clients flocked to it, and all would see,
-if they could, and consult with Mr. Cooper on their affairs.
-
-Some years thus passed, when, from some cause or other, a dissolution
-took place in the partnership, and when, probably from the advice of
-friends stimulated by his wife's ambition (a Miss Yarrington, a woman as
-I have been given to understand, of masculine mind, vast energy, and
-indomitable spirit, whom her son Henry has been often said by those who
-knew her, to have resembled in more than features, for in face he
-resembled his mother), he was induced to enter himself at Lincoln's Inn,
-which he accordingly did in the year 1782, and is thus entered: "Charles
-Cooper, of the City of Norwich, eldest son of Charles Cooper of the same
-place, merchant, admitted 22nd of April, 1782."  Prior to this, a
-remarkable incident occurred in his life: he undertook the conduct of a
-cause of great intricacy and importance for a pauper, a labouring
-blacksmith.  An extensive and valuable landed property, well-known as Oby
-Hall, with its extensive demesnes, had been for a long time in abeyance;
-the property was estimated at that period, at not less than 30,000
-pounds; on failure of male issue, the descendants on the female side put
-in their claim, among whom the blacksmith stood foremost; he came,
-consulted with my father on his claim, who became after a time, convinced
-of the solidity of his title; and after examining it with indefatigable
-assiduity, he at length, after much entreaty, undertook to carry his
-cause through every court, were it necessary, upon certain conditions;
-the conditions were, that if my father succeeded in gaining the cause, in
-consideration of taking upon himself all the risk, expenses, and labour,
-he should enjoy the estate; whilst the claimant, having no relations but
-the most distant, if any, was to receive an annuity for life of 300
-pounds.  After almost insurmountable difficulties, great expense, and
-consumption of time and labour, the long anticipated time arrived when
-the trial was to decide the question of such grave moment to the parties
-concerned: Lord Erskine came down to Norwich specially retained for the
-claimant (the origin, I believe of his after intimacy with Henry), the
-case came on for trial,--was fought on both sides with all the ability
-and ingenuity such a cause demanded (I forget the name of the opposing
-counsel), the claimant's title was confirmed, and the estate gained.  The
-claimant lived but a little more than a year or two after to receive his
-annuity, to him absolute wealth; and he died, I have heard, expressing to
-the last, his gratitude to (as he styled my father) his protector.
-
-Unfortunately, coming into the possession of the estate, my father must
-turn farmer, and like him, I have before compared him to, and I have
-often thought since reading the works of Cobbett, that there was a
-similarity in their thoughts on many subjects; he soon began to farm at a
-fearful loss (for to be a gainful farmer, so farmers hold, or rather they
-did then, a man should properly be trained to it from his youth), he was
-forced to trust to others to do what he should himself have done, and
-being still occupied in his professional pursuits at Norwich, his visits
-to the hall and the estate were but occasional, and the eye of the master
-was but too often absent; his family, however, resided there, consisting
-of his wife and his four children, Charles, Henry, Harriet, and Alfred,
-and there his affections were centred, so that it cannot be wondered at,
-that with a divided duty, and the course pursued, ere many years, but I
-am forestalling, the estate soon became involved, and eventually he was
-compelled to part with it at a loss, or rather with no gain, for at the
-time of its sale, which happened at a period during the long war, land
-fell all of a sudden greatly in value, and the seller was glad to
-experience the truth of the old saying--
-
-   "When house and land and all are spent,
-   Then learning is most excellent."
-
-This sale, however, did not occur till some years after the death of his
-first wife, and when he had married his second, a Miss Rose White, my
-mother, and by whom he had several children, seven only living to
-maturity, all of whom, I being the eldest, having survived him.  His
-first family, with the exception of his daughter, who died a few years
-ago, having all died previous to the decease of their father.  After
-having pursued his studies with his accustomed assiduity, in chambers he
-had taken in Stone Buildings, and eaten his terms, he was called to the
-bar on the 9th of June, in the year 1788.  (For these several dates I am
-indebted to the kindness of Mr. Doyle, the greatly respected steward of
-Lincoln's Inn.)  When, having resided a few terms in London, he hastily
-left the metropolis--the true and only sphere for the full development of
-extensive legal knowledge and great abilities, such as his,--to reside
-and practise as a provincial barrister in his native city; where, from
-his previous reputation, not only as a lawyer well versed in common law,
-with great knowledge in the practical parts of it, but as a most skilful
-conveyancer, and great real property lawyer, with a deep knowledge of all
-its intricacies and moot points, he, at once, obtained considerable
-practice, and a fine income, which, I believe, by present provincial
-counsel would be regarded rather as a fiction than reality.  He was,
-moreover, a fluent speaker, with diction pure, and most grammatical.  I
-ought, here, perhaps, to mention what will seem strange to the present
-generation, that I have often heard my father say, that the first book he
-began to study law from was "Wood's Institutes," a book that "the
-Commentaries of Blackstone," rendering the study of the law far more
-intelligible and easy to the student, has long completely superseded.  In
-Norwich he continued to reside up to his death, where he was ever applied
-to by every attorney, without exception, far and near, if any very
-difficult point of law arose; and, till within some few years prior to
-his death, which happened on the 21st of July, 1836, when age as, is
-usual, though it kindly spared the vigour of his intellect, yet brought
-with it its physical weakness and ailments, he was employed as leading
-counsel in many important causes, where legal knowledge and acumen was
-required; and, in the courts, from the high reputation he had acquired,
-he ever commanded the ear of the judges, and the respect of his brethren
-at the bar.  He had the joy, too, to live to see his son Henry rising
-fast to eminence in the same profession, though the after pang and
-anguish to sorrow for his death; and he grieved for him in heart, though
-not his youngest, as did Jacob at the imagined loss of his favourite,
-and, in my opinion, never did he quite get over it; he not only loved,
-but was proud of him.
-
-The latter years of him, whose life I have thus briefly sketched, were
-past at his small country residence, situated at Lakenham, where his
-second wife, who survived him, my mother, now seventy-four, still
-resides, a hamlet of and situate two miles from Norwich, where he spent
-the chief of his time, of that he could spare from the city where he
-practised, till up to the last twelve months of his life, when in his
-eighty-fourth year he expired, worn out with past exertion and years, and
-was, as chief Coroner and Magistrate of the Close and its precincts,
-under the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter, buried within the
-cloisters of the cathedral.
-
-By his family, from his sweetness of disposition, kindness of heart, and
-amiability of temper, he was tenderly beloved and regretted, and still
-whenever recalled to memory in the quietude of the chamber the eye will
-ever be moistened by a tear, and the heart kindle at the recollection;
-and by many others he was and will be yet greatly missed; the poor and
-struggling literary man he would encourage not only with praise, but with
-his purse, and, THAT, the poor and needy had ever open to them, and his
-advice besides gratuitously, whenever required (and this might be
-confirmed by hundreds still living "in the ONCE ancient city," as a
-certain wise Alderman of yore styled it), and to their affairs he would
-give as much attention as to the richest client; his private memoranda
-alone, after death, told his good deeds, for he strictly adhered to the
-beautiful doctrine laid down by the great Teacher, "But when thou doest
-alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth,"--"_Quando
-ullum invenies parem_?"
-
-Of his first family, Charles, the eldest son, was intended for the bar,
-and was entered at Lincoln's Inn, but from the natural sensitiveness of
-his disposition he never kept his terms, and soon gave up all thoughts of
-the profession; he lingered at home, a Westminster scholar, a man of
-extensive reading, and of great intelligence [as I have been informed,
-for I was much too young fully to appreciate him], till after many years,
-on Henry's quitting Bermudas, he became the secretary to Sir James
-Cockburn, in which employment he continued some years, and only returned
-when Sir James ceased to be the governor.  He then became a kind of
-superior clerk in the Marine office then held in Spring Gardens, and
-subsequently died at the age of about forty-five or forty-eight of
-consumption, a complaint of the mother's family.  Alfred went into the
-army as an ensign, was at the battle of Waterloo, was wounded there, was
-ordered and went subsequently to India with his regiment, the 14th Foot,
-where, years after, just as he had obtained a sick leave to return home,
-he was shot at Dinapoor, whilst reposing on his sofa, thinking probably,
-or dreaming of home and its affections, by a drunken Sepoy, mistaking him
-(in his mad excitement) for his servant, who had just previously refused
-him drink; the occurrence caused, necessarily, great excitement and much
-conversation at the time, the man was caught and hanged--a satisfaction
-to justice, but a wretched consolation to his family, by whom, as the
-youngest, and amiable as he was gentle, he was most fondly loved.  His
-father and sister, I believe, were never made acquainted with the true
-cause of his death.  A letter of Henry's relating, though indistinctly,
-for evident reasons, to the sad occurrence, will be placed before the
-reader.  Harriet, as I have said, the only sister (who married a Dr.
-Leath, a physician in the army, who resides still at Bayswater) died not
-very long ago, leaving no issue.
-
-Having given a sketch, which I think and hope will have interested the
-reader of him, from whom He sprung, whose life I am about to delineate.  I
-will now proceed to depict the life of the Son, with the simple remark
-that I have undertaken a task of no slight difficulty (and much such an
-one as that of the poor Jews, who, under their hard taskmasters in Egypt,
-were set to make bricks without straw), with very slight materials to
-describe the life of one who died when I was sixteen, and whom I loved
-from his unvaried kindness to me, of the life of one who, had he lived,
-would have had a far abler biographer.  Henry, in early life, took a
-propensity to and entered the navy, and was a midshipman in the battle of
-the Nile, but soon after, disliking the service, quitted the profession.
-
-His education, when he returned from sea, was, through indulgence,
-neglected: and he passed most of his time at Oby Hall, in Norfolk, the
-then residence of his father, and distant about eight miles from
-Yarmouth, in shooting, fishing, and driving a tandem-cart about the
-country, built of unusual height; and an anecdote is related of him,
-that, after driving it awhile, he went to Mr. Clements, the builder at
-Norwich, and said, "Well, Clements, you have built a machine to surprise
-all the world, and I am come to surprise you by paying you for it."  And
-to show his early quick perception, ready reply, wilfulness, and
-precocity, I must here relate two well-attested anecdotes: the first,
-when quite a child, and at his lessons in the nursery, on his mother's
-running up to dispel the noise and disturbance he was making, she
-exclaimed in anger, after in some measure correcting him, "Why, sir, if
-you go on in this manner you'll turn the house out of the windows," the
-young gentleman, looking roguishly at his mother, responded, "How can I
-do that, Ma, for the house is bigger than the windows?" this of course
-dissipated all anger, and brought a smile to the mother's face; silence,
-however, was restored and study resumed.  The other, when he was about
-eleven or twelve years of age, a poor soldier, who had been kind to him,
-assisting him in his fishing, boating, &c., and who was at that time
-cleaning harness for my brother in the stable, was arrested by an escort
-of soldiers, who suddenly came to apprehend and convey him, for some
-alleged offence, to the head quarters at Yarmouth; without saying a word
-or leaving a message behind him, young Henry started off with his friend
-and the soldiers, telling the captive, "Never to care, for he would be
-his advocate."  He was, after some time had elapsed, missed; search was
-made for him in every direction till night came on, but no traces of his
-whereabouts could be discovered, and, with fearful anxiety, as I have
-heard my father often say, all, at last, worn out and weary with the
-fruitless search, retired to bed, but not to rest; care brooded over
-their pillows and dispelled sleep.  Morning, at last, came, but with it
-no tidings of Henry; and, when alarm had reached its height, in ran the
-servant lad, in breathless haste, exclaiming, "Master Henry is found,"
-and soon after he was seen, being borne in triumph on a soldier's back,
-with others following, coming up the lawn.  All were delighted to see the
-lost one safe, and, to delight was added astonishment, on a soldier
-putting into his father's hand a letter, which was quickly opened and
-read, and which came from the commanding officer.  I regret that letter
-is lost; it spoke, I have often heard my father and mother relate, in the
-highest terms of the youngster, and warmly congratulating the former on
-the possession of such a son, so noble in bearing, so bold, and so
-talented; adding, that he had pleaded the soldier's case so well, that he
-had, so young an advocate as he was, obtained the acquittal of his
-client.  As he grew up in years he was the pride and terror of the little
-farmers of the neighbourhood,--the first from his ready wit, playful, and
-genial disposition, which he ever retained; the latter from the practical
-jokes he was constantly in the habit of playing on them, many of which
-are remembered and spoken of at, and around Oby, up to the present day:
-and he had the love of all, for, if they wanted game, or any kindness
-done them, they had only to ask and have.  But midst this he read, and he
-lacked not mental food to feed on, as his father possessed a large and
-well-stocked library.  Henry's reading, however, was necessarily
-desultory and discursive, but such the retention of his memory, that he
-forgot nothing he had once conned; as an instance of this I must relate
-an anecdote, often told of him by Mr. Jay, an attorney at Norwich, still
-living, and who was an excellent client, and a great admirer of my
-brother, that soon after large business flowed in upon him, and he went
-into court with a bag full of briefs; to his Mr. Jay's utter
-astonishment, after a case had been called on, in which he was the
-attorney, and the several witnesses had been called, examined, and the
-cause gained, my brother, who had led it, turned round, and said, "There
-Jay, I have won your cause, but I will be hanged if I know where your
-brief is; I read it, but somehow lost it."  He, of course, used blank
-paper for his notes.  His perception, too, was so acute, his imagination
-so vivid, and his memory so retentive, that he could at once, and readily
-apply the knowledge so widely gleaned to the subject under discussion,
-that they who were ignorant of his previous mental instruction, would
-have imagined that he had, in earlier years, been the lean and diligent
-student, who had wasted the midnight oil in meditation and deep research.
-
-After an interval of years, he became a member of Lincoln's Inn, when in
-due course of time he was proposed by the late Mr. Justice, then James
-Allan Parke, Esquire, and called to the bar, May 25th, 1811.  Soon after
-his call, he accompanied Sir James Cockburn, who had been just appointed
-governor of the Bermudas, as his secretary, and after a short period, on
-his arrival there, was made Attorney General, the duties of which office
-he for some years performed to the entire satisfaction of the governor.
-His letters thence, I have understood, contained beautiful and vivid
-descriptions of
-
-   "That happy island where huge lemons grow"
-
-[he was an admirer of scenery and nature], and that the wit, graphic
-portraitures of the men in office on the island, the general chit chat,
-scandle and fun, intermixed with politics, occasional rhymes, &c., put
-the reader [since dead] of a few of them, in mind of the letters of Lord
-Byron.  After his return home, he took chambers in Fig Tree or Elm Court,
-in the Temple, read and awaited clients, and went the Norfolk circuit;
-but, alas! few profitable knocks came to his door, and the circuit
-yielded rather expense than profit; but on he went struggling and
-struggling, till at last his talents were acknowledged; and the four
-years preceding his death, he was an eminent leader, and engaged in
-almost every cause throughout his circuit, and rapidly gaining a
-reputation in London from "the very eloquent, bold, and honest style of
-his defence," for Mary Ann Carlile, who was prosecuted, by what was then
-styled the Constitutional Association, for publishing a libel upon the
-government, and the constitution of this country.  The trial ended after
-a brilliant speech of the defendant's counsel, full of argument,
-eloquence, and ability, in the dismissal of the jury, after being locked
-up all night; the counsel for the prosecution, the late Mr. Baron Gurney,
-consenting to their discharge.  The report of the trial, and Henry
-Cooper's speech in full, was printed and published by the notorious
-Richard Carlile, who then kept a shop in Fleet Street.  At the early age
-of forty my brother died, and he was then looked on by the profession, as
-a man, who, had he lived, must have achieved the highest honours in it.
-He was an ardent admirer of, and some of his friends were pleased to say,
-a close imitator of the oratory of Lord Erskine, with whom, till he died,
-he was on terms of the greatest intimacy.  In fact he was writing his
-life for publication, by the express desire of Erskine himself, when
-death staid the pen.  Alas! but a few pages of it were written, and those
-in the rough, I will, however, lay them, ere I have done, before the
-reader.
-
-Henry, the last four years of his going circuit, and when his abilities
-were acknowledged, was sometimes opposed to his father, to the no small
-pleasure and amusement of the Norwich people, who as greatly respected
-the legal ability of the one, as they admired the eloquence of the other;
-and it was often a source of half suppressed laughter in that portion of
-the court set aside for the public to hear "my learned friend" banded
-from one to the other by the two Athlete--Father and Son--the one as
-powerful from his tact, energy, and fervid eloquence, as the other from
-his legal knowledge and great acumen, and who was often the victor, for
-that knowledge, deep and extensive gave the father a superiority on those
-points of a case, in which law and fact were intermingled, and which were
-apt from Henry's comparative previous little business and short practice
-as a leader to escape his attention, or when patent rendered him less
-capable effectually to grapple with the legal and knotty difficulty, for
-he had never had the advantage of a pleader's chambers; nor let it be
-thought in those days that there were no giants to contend with--Sergeants
-Blosset, Frere, and Storks, Messrs. Plumptre, Eagle, Robinson, Prime, and
-others of note, with Biggs Andrews, now Q.C., and George Raymond, author
-of the "Elliston Papers," as juniors were on the circuit, all of whom
-have long since been dead, with the exception of Mr. Sergeant Storks and
-the four last named.
-
-And here I cannot do better than insert a paragraph signed J. S., which
-appeared in the _Times_, I think in or about the years 1831 or 1832; I
-copy from the paragraph cut out from the paper, and at the time pasted in
-an album, to which the date was omitted to be attached.  The paragraph
-was headed, "The late Henry Cooper:"--
-
-   "To most of our legal readers, we feel convinced, that this week's
-   sketch of the late Henry Cooper, the friend companion and intended
-   biographer of the late Lord Erskine, will prove highly acceptable.  The
-   unexpected and melancholy event which deprived the bar of one of its
-   most promising ornaments, and cast a shade over the gay and talented
-   circle in which he moved, must be fresh within the memory of our
-   readers.  As yet no memoir, no frail tribute to stamp even a fleeting
-   remembrance of his learning, professional fame, or liberal principles
-   has appeared, and while worthless rank and heartlessness have been
-   perpetuated by marble and the prostituted energies of literature,
-   genius, talent, and honor, have been left to the obscurity of the
-   grave; not one of those who shared his gay and mirthful hours, who
-   listened enraptured to his eloquence and flashes of wit, which as
-   Hamlet says 'were won't to set the table in a roar,' have endeavoured
-   by giving to the world his literary labours, or even a sketch of his
-   life, to preserve his memory from oblivion.  Henry Cooper was the son
-   of an eminent counsellor of Norwich, a gentleman of powerful mind,
-   whose legal knowledge has rendered him one of the first consulting men
-   of the day.  Even at his present advanced age of near eighty, he may
-   be seen early of a morning taking his accustomed walk, or if the
-   weather be too severe for exercise, found in his library surrounded by
-   his books and papers.
-
-   Raised by his own perseverance, and in a great measure self-educated,
-   it is not to be wondered at if from such a father, the subject of our
-   sketch, acquired those habits of perseverance and industry which
-   enabled him by system to attain knowledge and fame in his profession.
-
-   Upon being called to the bar his convivial powers and talent for
-   conversation introduced him to Erskine, who found so much pleasure in
-   his society, that they became not mere friends, but inseparable
-   companions, and plunged together in the gay round of pleasure, which
-   the world too temptingly presents to men whose minds enable them to
-   watch its interests and guide the machine by which society is
-   regulated.  To all who knew him, and the thoughtless life he led, it
-   was a matter of surprise how and when he found time to attend to the
-   numerous cases of his clients, for his field of action soon became
-   extended; yet we will venture to pronounce and feel confident of being
-   borne out by those who knew him, that in no one instance did the cause
-   of the party he advocated suffer.
-
-   In the Court he appeared as well acquainted with the words of his
-   brief, as if it had been for months the object of his most serious
-   attention; not a thread or a link of evidence escaped him, and so
-   persuasive was his manner, so argumentive his style of language, that
-   the jury frequently received the impressions he wished to convey, and
-   their feelings generally, if not their judgment, went in favour of his
-   client.  He used, on some occasions, to plead in the Norfolk Courts,
-   and we have frequently seen him opposed to his father as a special
-   pleader.  The old gentlemen, strong in the possession of his youthful
-   intellect, which time even to the present hour has failed to rob him
-   of, was perhaps less assailable by his pleasing manner and florid
-   speech than any of his brothers of the bar, and his ejaculations not
-   always of the most complimentary nature, were sometimes loud and
-   frequent.  We have seen the son on such occasions always the first to
-   smile at his father's petulance, and the last to express any sense of
-   the impropriety of the interruption.  We have seen the old gentleman,
-   in the midst of his son's argument, write to the opposing counsel
-   suggesting authorities and giving references and precedents against
-   him, all with the most perfect good humour on both sides; and the
-   greatest triumph he could boast was to defeat his son upon a point of
-   law: on such occasions he would put his hands behind his back, and
-   moving round with a chuckle, exclaim, "Something to learn yet, Harry!"
-   The father's delight and pride in his superior legal knowledge over
-   his son, became at last a standing joke with the barristers of the
-   Court.  The death of Lord Erskine blighted Henry Cooper's hopes to a
-   seat in Parliament, where his eloquence and sarcasm would have made
-   him powerful as an ally, and feared as an antagonist; liberal in his
-   opinions to the present exclusive system of the church, he was a
-   decided enemy, and a thorough reformer in the state.  His services at
-   a crisis like the present, would have been of incalculable benefit to
-   his country.
-
-   From the period of the loss of his friend, till his own untimely end,
-   he devoted himself more than he had ever before, to literary pursuits
-   and the labours of his profession.  A life of Lord Erskine was nearly
-   arranged for the press at the time of his decease, and it is to be
-   regretted that as yet his labours have not been given, imperfect as
-   they are, to the world; no one could have had better opportunities or
-   have been better calculated for the task; alike the counsellor in his
-   difficulties, the companion of his mirthful hours, the springs of
-   action, the feelings of his breast, must have appeared unveiled before
-   him; Death, however, prevented the completion of his task and removed
-   him too early from the world his talents ornamented."
-
-I had forgotten to say, that on his return from Bermudas he became and
-continued very intimate with the Cockburn family, and often prophesied
-the future success of the late Attorney General, now Chief Justice of the
-Court of Common Pleas, then young Alexander Cockburn; and often has my
-brother said to me, then about sixteen, when speaking of the above
-family, "rely upon it, Billy, young Alexander, if he enter the
-profession, will do great things in it; he is a remarkably clever,
-energetic, and talented young man."  Henry had much of the restlessness
-and irritability, the usual accompaniments of a high order of talent,
-with great earnestness in diction and action.
-
-Ere I proceed further; the reader will, perhaps, be pleased with a
-likeness of the man.  I should say, in height, he was about five-feet
-eleven-inches; of spare and sinewy frame, with an elastic tread, that
-those who knew him, and seeing him in the distance, might truly say, as
-Ulysses of Diomede in Shakspeare's play of "Troilus and Cressida,"
-
-   "'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;
-   That spirit of his in aspiration lifts him from the earth."
-
-And often have I heard the late Mr. Alderson (the father of the present
-judge), who travelled with my father, circuit and sessions as a
-provincial barrister, more than thirty years, and who was resident at
-Norwich, say,--"that Henry always put him more in mind of a Spirit, that
-a man of flesh and blood;" his eye dark, like that of Edmund Kean's, the
-great actor, showed every emotion of the soul, now fiery with anger, now
-glazed with thought, and anon, melting into softness; his head small, and
-finely rounded, and covered with thick clustering curls of black crispy
-hair, was such as sculptors have ever loved to give the youthful
-Antinous; his forehead retreating was characteristic, as Lavater says,
-"of genius;" his nose was slightly arched in the centre and slightly
-fleshy near the nostrils; his face oval, with a well defined chin and a
-mouth plain, but full of energy and expression, and similar to Sterne's,
-the contour, of whose face I always thought my brother's much resembled.
-I have thus given, to please the lover of physiognomy, "a shadow
-portrait," not "a Myall's photograph," which I hope will not only satisfy
-the physiognomist, but which I think they, who but even slightly remember
-Henry Cooper, have but to place before the tablet of their memory and
-view the shade cast from it with their "mind's eye" to at once recall and
-recognize the original.  I have thus sketched his likeness, as I regret
-to say, thus only can he be now known, or viewed by those who were
-unacquainted with him living, as no portrait of him is extant, he dying
-young, and for years previous struggling to succeed in a profession where
-the "battle is not always to the strong," though in the long run the best
-man often succeeds, as with few exceptions, perhaps, the long race,
-barring accidents, is usually won by the best horse.  He left no writings
-behind him save a few letters, beautifully expressed, but mostly relating
-to family matters, and, therefore, uninteresting to the general reader,
-with the exception of five or six preserved by my mother, which I will
-give the reader ere I have ended this biographical sketch; and the few
-friends with whom he corresponded, and to whom, occasionally, he showed,
-and gave the productions of his pen, though they considered him a man of
-considerable talent, set such small value on his effusions, that,
-however, pleased at the time they might have been with them they were put
-aside forgotten and most probably destroyed, and what he himself chanced
-to write and was pleased with for the instant, was, from the natural
-carelessness of his disposition, hastily cast aside, and, no doubt, often
-burnt with the waste paper of his chambers; so that every endeavour I
-have made to possess even a shred of these scraps, has been futile.  All
-I have been able to gather are the few letters alluded to, with a few
-poetical lines which will be given to the reader; and, as we often judge
-of character from trifles, he must, from the slight sketch I have given,
-and the small crumbs I have been able to collect, form a judgment of HIM
-I have endeavoured to describe.  He had all but reached the height of his
-profession, when he was taken away, no doubt for a wise purpose, to the
-deep and lasting regret of those who not only fondly loved him, but who
-had begun to take, and no wonder, a warm pride in the object of their
-affections.
-
-He died on September 19th, 1824, having been attacked some days previous
-by a severe attack of diarrhoea, which, by some fatal mischance, was
-mistaken by the surgeons who attended him, for brain fever; he was,
-consequently, bled, and drastic medicines were administered, which must
-have hastened if they did not cause his death, which happened at the
-house of a friend of his, by the name of Hill, at Chelsea, where he was
-buried, but his body was afterwards removed by his sister and deposited
-where it now lies, near his father's in the cloisters of Norwich
-Cathedral.
-
-I will now lay before the reader the few letters I possess.  By the
-letters of an ingenuous writer, it is said, you can gain a clearer
-insight into his character, disposition, and mental powers, than by long
-association or familiar discourse; these letters have been kindly given
-me by my mother, with whom Henry constantly corresponded, and whom he
-always treated with marked respect and affection, which was fully
-reciprocated.  They were addressed to her at Norwich, where she with my
-father resided, and the first bears date,
-
-   _London_, 3_rd_ _Nov._ 1815.
-
-   "My Dear Madam,
-
-   "And it came to pass that when they emptied their sacks, lo! ev'ry
-   man's money was in the mouth of his sack."  I have had the same
-   measure from you which Joseph's liberality heaped on his brethren; and
-   if you will but believe that my proposal to you, to be allowed to be a
-   purchaser of half the preserved raspberry, was not a covert mode of
-   begging it as a gift; I thank you without any regret, and am very much
-   obliged to you.  I thank you, too, very much for the pheasant which
-   flew into the window of the mail coach, and startled me in St.
-   Stephen's Street.  George, who is a good lad, had put on his best
-   legs, and soon overtaking the mail, threw it in '_sans ceremonie_.'  It
-   was a pleasant disturbance from no very pleasant reverie, which my
-   mind set out on the moment the coach set out from the inn; and which
-   would, but for this agreeable interruption, have lasted me at least as
-   long as the first stage.  For the rest of the good things which you
-   gave me while I was in Norwich, and sent me laden away with, I must
-   thank you _en masse_; for to thank you one by one for them, would
-   force me to write a long letter, which I have not the least intention
-   in the world of doing.  I was outside the mail, and for a long way the
-   only passenger.  We learned at Newmarket, that the coachman, who drove
-   the coach, which was overturned the preceding night, lay very much
-   hurt.  His viscera are bruised, and his only chance of life is in cool
-   veins well emptied by the lancet.  'Tis right that he on whose care
-   the safety of others depends should be most prominently exposed to the
-   danger of ill conduct or neglect; I wish heartily that this liability
-   could be transferred from those who sit on the coach box, to those who
-   sit in the cabinet and hold the reins of the hard driven state! we
-   should then have had more peace and less taxes.  Ask Mr. Samuel Cooper
-   [a great liberal and brother of my father] if we should not?
-
-   At Chesterford your friend, Mr. Smith, the representative for Norwich,
-   took the mail; and after a nap, talked very unrestrainedly with me on
-   the present state of France, on Buonaparte, the criminal law, and the
-   wisdom of the Justices at sessions.  I was determined--like Horace's
-   whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put
-   an edge on him--to say something deep and decisive on some of the
-   subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk.  Perhaps
-   (like the character with the Greek name in the _Rambler_, who tells
-   his guest, showing him his fine things, that they were only brought
-   into service when persons of consequence visited him) he disdained to
-   pull out his best to me, yet I rather judge that he is only clever to
-   the party at Norwich; and as Oberon, though but six inches high, is
-   yet tall for a fairy, he is a great Apollo to the blue and whites [the
-   colours of the liberal party at Norwich].  For corroboration of any
-   opinion of theirs, I should always, like the Recorder of London, think
-   it right to ask the cook.
-
-   There's my letter, a type of the miracle of the creation and the lie
-   to the great Epicurean maxim, that 'Nothing can be made out of
-   nothing;' for as one of those, that, as the song runs, 'None can love
-   like,' would exclaim, 'by Jasus, I had not a word to say, and yet I
-   have spoke three whole pages!'
-
-   My duty to my father, and if you please, my best regards to Mrs.
-   Watson [my mother's sister], on condition she has no more hysterics;
-   and that is, as she pleases, more than perhaps she is aware of.  She
-   is not naturally melancholy, and may soon accustom her mind to like
-   hope better than remembrance.  My best love to Harriet [his sister], I
-   should, as I promised her, have written to her if I had not written to
-   you, but one letter will serve both; pray assure her how grateful I am
-   to her for all her anxious care and attention to me; I will not even
-   allow that Charles [his eldest brother, who was then the secretary to
-   Sir James Cockburn at Bermudas] loves her more than I, or esteems her
-   more, or will be more glad (as I told him in my letter) than I was to
-   see that she was better in health than she had been for years; 'twill
-   make him happy indeed, for the possibility of losing her is alarming
-   to him, and if she were to die, he would be most inconsolable; yet his
-   grief would not be more than mine, nor would he be more ready to
-   exclaim,--
-
-   'I, nunc; et, numina non posse nega'
-
-   which, as you are a lady, I translate for you, 'go now and say, that
-   angels cannot die.'  But you must not read this to her, for she will
-   absurdly say 'tis flattery, as if I could have any motive to flatter
-   her.
-
-   My love to Will [meaning myself].  He is so much improved as to be an
-   engaging boy, and I begin to like him very much.
-
-   I am, dear Madam,
-   Yours very faithfully,
-   HENRY COOPER.
-
-   P.S.--If Mr. Boardman [an old friend of his] should call, pray
-   remember me most particularly to him.  He has long behaved to me with
-   the affection of a brother.  He has even, in no few instances,
-   preferred my interests to his own.  I am most deeply obliged to him,
-   and I like to tell people of it."
-
-The next letter bears date,--
-
-   _London_, 31_st_ _Dec._ 1815.
-
-To the same,--
-
-   "I send you the only coin I have, my very warm thanks for one of the
-   finest and best turkeys that entered the metropolis to be devoured in
-   celebration and honour of Christmas.  A Christian of the utmost degree
-   of faith, that is as great as you ladies place in physicians, who
-   devoured with a devout and religious pique, could not have eaten more
-   or with more pleasure than I, though I sat down with no other zeal
-   than an hungry appetite, and little better than a mere heathen
-   stomach.  When I reflected that you good people at Norwich were
-   rioting on just such a dinner (upon my honour), I could not help
-   blushing for your preposterous consciences, that, could expect to
-   enjoy so much pleasure in this world, and be saved in the next too.
-   'Tis well for me that no one offered to bet with me, that the
-   pheasants did not come from you; but, I pray, do not think of
-   returning me the thanks, which I paid for them.  They are all due, and
-   a vast sum more on the old account, though you, like a liberal
-   creditor, may have no idea of urging the payment of the balance
-   against me, and I beg they may be carried to it.  I had almost
-   forgotten to add Alfred's thanks to mine for the turkey [he was the
-   youngest brother, who was an ensign in the 14th Foot, and had been
-   wounded in the recent battle].  He was here in time, and made a dinner
-   that contrasts rather vividly with his first meal after the battle of
-   Waterloo, on a slice of old cow that they shot with their muskets, and
-   tore to pieces, without giving themselves a moment's pause to reflect
-   whether the Bramin's might not be the true religion.  But I must not
-   anticipate any part of his narrative to you, and Harriet, as to
-   another Dido and Anna, of all he has seen, done, and suffered,
-   throughout which he has been, like the French poets (Grissets) famous
-   parrot, _quite as unfortunate_ as AEneas, and a great deal more pious.
-   In other respects, indeed, you'll not find him like that bird; he'll
-   not give you his adventures with the gratuitous loquacity of poor
-   Poll.  In this he'd rather resemble the bullfinch; you must give out
-   the tune to him, and chirrup with questions to him before he will pipe
-   his strain to you; and when I consider the vast difficulty which the
-   natural taciturnity of you ladies places you under of asking
-   questions, I feel for your curiosity in its tight stays excessively.
-   On this occasion, perhaps, where the motive is so strong, you will
-   break through your native restraint; and, therefore, I advise you to
-   have your interrogatories ready by the 8th of January, 1816, when
-   Alfred, who means to accompany me, will be in Norwich.  I am very
-   grateful to you for your benevolent wishes of prosperity and happiness
-   to me, but they fall on a heart dead to expectation.  I have been so
-   long in obscurity, that hope has quite left off visiting me; the best
-   years of my life are gone; and what is my condition?  Depressed
-   spirits, and ill health; and the way as far as I can see before me, no
-   better, nay worse than the lengths behind.  What right have I to hope?
-   The ring and the lamp of the Arabian tales must cease to be fiction,
-   before I can have any chance of good fortune.  But I do not call for
-   pity.  If I have not learned to be skilful in parrying and eluding the
-   blows of Adversity, from experience, I am at heart somewhat hardened
-   by long subjection, and habituation to them; and, if I have not the
-   soothing of Hope, I am not altogether without the consolation of
-   Philosophy.  The happy must substract from his happiness the frequent
-   reflection, which comes like a cloud over him, that death will snatch
-   him from all his blessings.  The wretched finds relief in the
-   certainty that death will end his misery; therefore, that state is not
-   very enviable, nor this intolerable.  Both will soon, very soon be
-   past, and small, indeed, is the difference between past pleasure and
-   past pain.  Be assured, madam, that I, in return, as warmly wish you
-   prosperity and happiness; I wish not only that the approaching, but
-   many succeeding years, may have both hands full of plenty and delight
-   for you; and I trust that it is not so unreasonable in you to believe,
-   that future events may give a character of prophecy to my present
-   wishes, as it would be in me to expect the fulfilment of yours.
-
-   Pray, have the goodness to tell my father, that the vol. of Pickering,
-   from Priestleys, is procured, and that the copy of the Manuel
-   Libraire, at Longman's is still to be sold at four guineas.  Pray,
-   make my thanks to him for letting me know the day of the sessions at
-   Norwich; I shall be present to help to do the nothing there.  I
-   suppose he knows that the Corporation of Yarmouth have elected Mr. W---
-   , to the stewardship.  I hear him say 'How stupid of them to elect
-   that fellow.'  I beg his pardon; it shewed exquisite judgment; and
-   yet, after all, there was somewhat of a felicity in it.  They thought
-   it would be deserting propriety to have a man in the lower office of
-   steward of higher understanding than their Recorder.  Now, under all
-   the fleecy cloud of wigs that lowers in the court of King's Bench,
-   they could not have found a second rate head to A---s, but that of W---
-   d, and nothing but 'a lucky hit of nature' that mended her design when
-   she was determined to make as thick a skull as she had ever yet turned
-   out of her hands, could have given existence even to this instance of
-   inferiority.  He says he was quite ignorant of their intention of the
-   honour that has been done him.  If this be not affectation, I can
-   imagine nothing with which to compare or illustrate his surprise,
-   except that which must have come over the onion, when it discovered
-   that the Egyptians had made a God of it.  I am wrong: surprise is the
-   effect of perception and he has none; his is like the genuine night,
-   that admits no ray, and in his very stupidity he is involved from the
-   least glimmering of consciousness of it.  Pray, lessen the anxiety of
-   Harriet, which an unmerited affection for me betrays her into, by
-   telling her that I am getting better, and excuse the want of turn to
-   the conclusion of my letter in the want of paper; and allow me
-   abruptly to assure you that, I am, dear Madam,
-
-   Yours most faithfully,
-   HENRY COOPER."
-
-The following letter, the reader must think very piquant and graphic, and
-it will, probably, tend to throw a new light upon his preconceived
-opinions and estimation of a certain great man.  He must remember, too,
-whilst reading it, that Admiral Sir George Cockburn had the command of
-the ship which conveyed Napoleon and his suite to St. Helena.
-
-This letter is dated,
-
-   _London_, 14 _Oct._ 1816.
-
-To the same,--
-
-   "I am very much obliged to you for your excellent and most welcome
-   present [it is below the dignity of the Epopee to say goose and
-   sausages] which reached me on Sunday, and the note which you were so
-   kind as to send with it, I can only repay you in this the old paper of
-   unproductive thanks, but the sincerity of them will be held in some
-   estimation by the mind actuated by the kindness that has excited them,
-   and, therefore, flimsy as they are, I venture to beg your acceptance
-   of them.  I have nothing new, Madam, to send you for your
-   entertainment from this great city.  That the Regent is going to
-   divorce the Princess of Wales, and excite the hope of the husbands and
-   the fear of the wives--that under such an example, all the legal
-   restraints to repudiation will be removed, and the practice become
-   wide, and quite fashionable; you have, of course, heard long ago from
-   the newspapers, they are eternally depriving us by anticipation of the
-   power of writing agreeable and interesting letters to the Ladies in
-   the country.
-
-   Sir James Cockburn arrived in town last Saturday from Bermudas.  He is
-   quite well, and neither seems nor believes himself an hour older for
-   having been three years at Bermudas, since he was last in England.  I
-   have been much with him and his brother, the Admiral, lately.  I have
-   not (for your sex has not ALL the curiosity, though all of a peculiar
-   kind) omitted to ply him with questions about Buonaparte.  He is now
-   admirably qualified to be Emperor in that country of which I have
-   read, where they elect the fattest man in the state to the Empire.  His
-   legs are as bulky as my body, the ribs in proportion; and since this
-   girth is all attained in little more than five-feet five-inches of
-   length, he is not what Miss Cruso or Miss Godfrey [the head milliners
-   of Norwich at the time] would call a very genteel figure.  He eats
-   with voraciousness of the most luxurious dishes; he has, in Cockburn's
-   opinion, a very mean assemblage of features with something fearfully
-   black and vicious about the brows and eyes.  His manners are coarse
-   and repulsive.  Did you ever in a litter yard come suddenly on a lady
-   in the straw that starts up on her fore legs and, dropping fourteen
-   infant pigs from her teats, salutes you with a fierce jumble of
-   barking, grunting, and hissing?  In exactly such a sound is this
-   amiable man represented to me to have always replied to every address
-   of Bertrand, Mouthoulon, and the others, who are his fools and
-   followers to St. Helena.  Sometimes he neglected all restraint on his
-   nature, and gave the same ferocious and inarticulate answers to the
-   English officers.  He played chess so badly, that Bertrand and
-   Mouthoulon, who had too much discretion to excel their patron, had, at
-   times, great difficulty to lose the game to him; after trying for many
-   nights he could not attain the rudiments of whist, and went back to
-   vingt-un; but this is the man who has been described to us all as ALL-
-   INTELLECT.  The newspapers, too, said I remember, that at whist he
-   left all instruction behind him, and soon played so well, that he had
-   won very large sums of the Admiral by his superior play, even while he
-   was only a Tyro.  I can tell you no more now; but the Admiral has had
-   the goodness to lend me a journal of his conversation with Buonaparte
-   on the passage out, and when I have the pleasure of seeing you in the
-   sessions week, I will give you some extracts from my memory.  I am, I
-   believe, a little better, but the disorder in the upper part of my
-   stomach still continues and oppresses me.  It is now inveterate, the
-   complaint commenced last March, a twelvemonth past.  If I cannot rid
-   myself of it, it will kill me in time.  My best duty to my father,
-   love to William and 'aliis,'
-
-   I am, dear Madam,
-   Yours very faithfully,
-   HENRY COOPER.
-
-   P.S.--I write in a great hurry for I am making up my parcel for
-   Bermudas.  I should not write to you at all, but I do not like so long
-   to delay my due thanks to your kindness."
-
-This letter is dated,
-
-   2, _Lamb's Buildings_,
-   27_th_ _January_, 1817.
-
-To the same,--
-
-   I am scarcely warm in my place in London before I have to thank you
-   for your present to me; you hardly give me time, in the short
-   intervals of these marks of your kindness to me, to frame my thanks to
-   you for each.  I have exhausted all my common-place forms and am
-   forced to rack my invention (so very often have you come forward with
-   these welcome claims on me) to give anything like a turn to the
-   expression in which to convey my thanks.  Mr. Pope (in those rhymes
-   for the nursery which he has entitled the Universal Prayer) calls
-   enjoyment obedience: now if enjoyment be thankfulness, too, then never
-   was a being more completely thanked than yourself; for the ducks were
-   devoured with the most devout gust and appetite; they were the most
-   superb fowls that ever suffered martyrdom of their lives to delight
-   the palate and appease the hunger of the Lords of the creation.  You
-   should have sent them to some imitator of the Dutch school, who could
-   have painted them before he ate them; the hare, too, is as good as it
-   can be, and you are agreeably thanked for it by an equal portion of
-   enjoyment.
-
-   I must beg you to excuse a very short, dull, and hasty letter, from
-   me.  If I were not impatient at the thought of letting any longer time
-   elapse without expressing my lively sense of your frequent mark of
-   kind consideration of me, I should not write at all to day.  I have
-   something to do at my chambers, and in ten minutes I must run down to
-   Westminster Hall; and whilst I am thus engaged, I am as much
-   disqualified for writing, by a dark fit of low spirits, as prevented
-   by want of leisure.  I resist as much as I can these attacks of the
-   night-mare by day, but I cannot wholly succeed against them; my
-   circumstances may possibly change, and, if not, such gloominess is
-   unreasonable; if Fortune is never weary of persecuting me, I shall at
-   last be past the sense of her persecutions.  In the meantime, whatever
-   is the colour of my life, I shall, if I can, continue to hope the
-   future cannot be the worse, and the present will be the more tolerable
-   for it.  I shall, therefore, cling to her while I live, and to apply a
-   beautiful thought of Tibullus--
-
-   'Dying, clasp her with my failing hand.'
-
-   In endeavouring to recollect me of the many fine things that have been
-   said of hope to crown my declaration of attachment to that first place
-   of our lives, I remember Cowley has observed 'that it is as much
-   destroyed by the possession of its object as by exclusion from it.'
-   This is very ingenious and very true, and though not to the purpose
-   for which I was seeking it yet will very well serve another.  I wish
-   my dear Madam, very sincerely, that the former mode of destruction may
-   speedily befall all your present hopes, and that in future you will be
-   surrounded by so many blessings as will leave you no room for the
-   exercise of any hope but their continuance, My duty to my father, and
-   my love to William, I trust that he improves in Latin; pray tell him
-   that I was vexed not to find him so good a scholar in that language as
-   I expected; when I next see him I hope my expectations will be
-   exceeded.
-
-   I am, my dear Madam,
-   Yours very truly,
-   HENRY COOPER."
-
-The following letter I have previously made reference to.  It is written,
-evidently, in despondency, and heartfelt sorrow, under the shock of the
-frightful calamity.  It relates to the disastrous death of poor Alfred,
-his youngest brother.  It is dated from, and bears date
-
-   2, _Elm Court_, _Temple_,
-   25_th_ _June_, 1822.
-
-To the same,--
-
-   I received your letter yesterday, but I was so ill (that important as
-   the occasion is) I could not answer it.  To-day, nothing less than the
-   urgency of the subject could prevail upon me to make the smallest
-   exertion, for I am scarcely able to drag one limb up to the other.  I
-   have a violent catarrh, the glands of my throat are further inflamed
-   and ulcerated, and I am burning with fever.
-
-   With regard to divulging to Harriet the disastrous event, for which,
-   when once known to her, she can never be consoled; I am in a very
-   unfit state to give advice.  I am as I have always been of opinion,
-   that it should be concealed from her as long as it can.  It is a more
-   generous cause of grief than the loss of a lover; and as Harriet's
-   mind is built, I think more likely to shock and destroy her.  You
-   state only one reason for breaking the secrecy which has hitherto been
-   observed--that it appears strange, the event public, that you are not
-   in mourning for it.  I cannot but think that if any good can
-   reasonably be expected from withholding the knowledge of this dreadful
-   incident, it would be wrong and trifling to forego it, for the
-   senseless custom of putting yourself in black for a few months.  I
-   have no crape about me.  If any one were to ask the cause of my
-   disregard of a paltry decorum, I should either turn on my heel from
-   him, or explain to him that I did not put on the mockery of sorrow,
-   lest it should get to my sister's ear; that I was in outward mourning,
-   and she had to be discovering for whom.
-
-   It is, surely, easy for you to say that you do not put on black for
-   the same reason, to all who may enquire, or to all those to whom you
-   wish to appear decorous.  [He then writes on family matters, but,
-   after a few lines, again recurs to the painful subject of his letter.]
-   It is known to several with whom I am acquainted in London; but, it is
-   easy, as Harriet restricts herself to a very narrow intercourse, to
-   keep it still from her knowledge, till she has recovered strength of
-   body to contend anew with severe and heavy affliction.  How much I
-   have suffered from the intelligence I shall not attempt to describe to
-   you.  I had but little interest in life before; it is now heavy and
-   sickening to me.  I feel as if I never should smile again; every
-   circumstance of aggravation attends it.  To perish on the verge of the
-   shore, when he was just about to embark, after six years in the
-   climate, when we thought the danger past.  With letters from him full
-   of felicitation of himself, and rapture at the hope of soon meeting us
-   again, and when we were expecting him every moment in our embrace, to
-   be struck cold to the heart with the news that we should never see him
-   again.  I owe little to man--I shall soon owe nothing to any other
-   being.  I hate the cant of the doctrine of Providence 'your brother
-   may be snatched by a merciful power from impending evil.'  Bah! why
-   not the merciful being continue life to my brother, and destroy the
-   impending evil?  Well, I shall soon be as he is, and though there is
-   no consolation in that feeling, it is some assuagement of grief,
-   because sorrow will then be at an end.  My duty to my father.  I write
-   in great pain.
-
-   I am, dear Madam,
-   Yours very truly,
-   HENRY COOPER."
-
-The following makes the last of the letters I possess, and is written six
-months previous to his death; and in answer to a letter, of my mother to
-him, respecting the appointment of a paid chairman, and he, a barrister
-of some standing, to preside at Quarter Sessions, and to have besides (if
-my recollection be correct) some civil power.  This was then in the
-contemplation of the Ministry; and as the poet says "coming events cast
-their shadows before" evidently the shadow of the present county courts.
-The letter is dated from and bears date,
-
-   5, Hare Court, Temple.
-   6th March, 1824.
-
-To the same,--
-
-   "I did not return to Town till Sunday morning, when I found your
-   letter at my chambers.  I hope you will accept, as a sufficient
-   excuse, the extreme fatigue and languor which I felt all yesterday for
-   not answering it immediately.
-
-   I lament exceedingly, that my father should not have been early enough
-   in his application to the Lieutenant of the County, in whose gift, by
-   the frame of the bill, the appointment is placed, and in whose hand, I
-   fear, by the act itself it will remain.
-
-   I cannot conjecture to whom it has been promised by Col. Wodehouse.  To
-   Alderson is not at all probable, from the part he has taken against
-   the Wodehouse's, who are the most bigoted and relentless Tories in
-   existence.  To Preston [another provincial barrister in Norwich, and
-   the late Jermy, who was shot by Rush], ought not to be probable,
-   because he is not competent either in law or common sense to fill the
-   office; and the favour to him would be an injury to the public.  My
-   father has every claim to it, and I think that it would have been no
-   more than what was due from Col. Wodehouse, both to the county and my
-   father, to offer it to him before he promised it to another.
-
-   I wish you might be right in your surmise, that the patronage will be
-   placed in another quarter; but, of that there is the faintest chance,
-   I should advise you to press my father to exert himself to procure the
-   appointment, as it will be an office of the most agreeable kind,
-   affording considerable profit at very little trouble.  I, myself, know
-   not a soul in the world who could influence any one of the present
-   government: and any enquiries or attempt by me would have, in all
-   probability, an adverse operation.  I am of no importance whatever to
-   any party, but my opinions, humble and insignificant as they are, have
-   been noticed and recorded; and I am down in the black book for
-   persecution, rather than in the red for favour.  Of little note and
-   importance as I am, such is the consciousness, in their own infirmity,
-   in those who rule us, that the very lowest who have denounced their
-   system, are objects of their hatred, for they are the objects of their
-   fear; and those who have put them to the pain of apprehension, are
-   marks for their revenge.  I should think that the best course that my
-   father could take would be to apply to Mr. John Harvey, to induce his
-   brother, Onley Harvey, Esq. (a brother barrister of my father too), to
-   ask it of the Home Department; if he asked it (supposing the gift to
-   be there), I think, without doubt it would be given.  [The rest of the
-   letter relates to family matters, and concludes my love to William.  He
-   attributes too much honour to me by looking to me with any
-   admiration.]  My duty to my father.
-
-   I am, dear Madam,
-   Yours very truly,
-   HENRY COOPER."
-
-My task is all but accomplished.  I have but now to lay before the reader
-the promised verses; those on Buonaparte are characteristic of the
-writer, who, with his high intellectual powers, possessed to the last, a
-noble and independent spirit, which despised even the appearance of
-servility.  I shall then add the notices that appeared in the _Morning
-Chronicle_, and _Gentleman's Magazine_, soon after his decease, which
-clearly show that He, whose death they record, was no common person; as,
-also, the high estimation he was held in by the profession, to which he
-was an honour; and by the public who admired him for his eloquence, and
-prized him for his independence of character.  In the sketches I have
-given of the two lives, which were, of necessity intermingled,--it is
-true, I have given but a rough outline of each, and my hope is they will
-portray the lineaments and character as effectually as a more lengthened
-biography; as I have seen, and often the character of a friend's face
-better given in a few mere outlines, than in the finished likeness.  In
-looking at a small duodecimo edition I possess of Plutarch's lives, I
-perceive that the lives of his greatest heroes and statesmen, are
-comprised within a hundred pages, and yet how clearly does he portray
-their lives to the reader.  He gives a few anecdotes of their youth, a
-few salient points of their character in manhood, and then concludes with
-their actions and their deaths; and leaves the rest to the imagination
-and "the mind's eye;" and who, after, reading them, does not see clearly
-before him the man whose life has been so ably delineated?  I mean not,
-by this, to compare myself for an instant, with that great writer; but,
-having, as I said before, such slender materials to deal with, I have, as
-far as I was able, and after re-perusing the writer referred to, done my
-best, with my small abilities to follow his example, and pursue his
-arrangement; I can only hope I may have in part succeeded.
-
-After the notices referred to, I shall end by laying before the reader
-the verses written on my brother, after his death, by my mother and Mr.
-Wing; and in the appendix I shall refer the reader to the life of Erskine
-before alluded to; as, also, to the trial of Mary Ann Carlile, which will
-show, and clearly, the style of the eloquence of her advocate on the
-occasion, combined as it is with powerful argument, and that clearness
-and lucid order which were his forte.  And now, reader, to use the words
-of Cicero, in concluding one of his epistles to a friend, "vale et
-valeas."
-
-
-
-"IN BONAMPARTEM."
-
-
-He ne'er shall be extoll'd by me,
-Whom wealth and fortune raise to power;
-But he, alone who will be free
-From sordid shame, or live no more.
-Let him with wreaths of song be crown'd,
-Who life, deflower'd of glory, spurn'd,
-And breaking from his kindred round,
-To Carthage and to death return'd.
-
-With him, who when his righteous hand,
-In vain the splendid blow had given,
-The tyrant, only chang'd, disdain'd
-The light of unregarded Heaven.
-And Cato--thou, who tyranny
-All earth besides enslaved, withstood;
-And failing to high liberty,
-Pour'd fierce libation of thy blood.
-
-Oh, Godlike men! you leave no praise
-For him who to the king could bend,
-To add a few unhonor'd days
-To life, at latest--soon to end.
-Nor him self-raised to Gallia's throne,
-Who, rushing with his martial hordes,
-Cast Europe's ancient sceptres down,
-And made his slaves her sov'reign lords.
-
-For his was not the heart that dar'd
-When with the battle all was lost,
-Plunge in the whirlpool of the war,
-And share the slaughter of his host;
-Nor his, the indignant soul with brave
-And Roman arm, his life to shed;
-But still he sought by flight to save
-His outlaw'd and unlaurell'd head.
-
-With face to earth his vet'rans' lay
-In ruins all who bore his name;
-His mighty Empire past away,
-And blasted, as a Chief, his fame.
-Yet--yet--(so let him live) content
-The sentence of his foes he bore,
-Like a vile felon to be sent
-An exile to a wretched shore.
-
-
-
-FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
-
-
-Where silver hairs no reverence meet,
-Where to the weary stranger's feet
-   To cross the threshold 'tis denied.
-And at the genial board, her place
-No kerchief'd matron takes to grace
-   Her savage husband's haughty side;
-Where Niger hides, or on the shore
-Of dark and stormy Labrador.
-   O Castres,--I with thee would rove,
-And, blest, thus wand'ring, if my mind
-Could leave her galling bonds behind;
-   The bonds of an unworthy love.
-Not like a Gambian slave that fled
-(Of the pale Creole's lash in dread)
-   From Rio, strives in fearful haste
-The mountain's woody side to gain;
-But with him drags the clinking chain,
-   Lock'd at his waist or ancle fast.
-
-
-
-THE WOES OF THE RIVERS.
-
-
-"To each his suff'rings."
-Heaps of dead Trojans were Scamander's bane,
-Dead dogs, dead cats, and dung-boats shame the Seine,
-Ten thousand shores and jakes the Thames defile,
-And gradual mud is working woe to Nile;
-Yet harder Duddon's fate, her hapless stream
-Of fifty strains by Wordsworth is the theme.
-
-* * * * *
-
-The following _jeu d'esprit_ was written on a certain nobleman, who,
-leaving the Whig party, of which up to that time he had been a strong
-adherent, and for the sake, it was supposed, of gaining the Regent's
-favour, not only voted, but took a strong part against the Queen.
-
-
-
-TO LORD L---.
-
-
-What caused you L---, to rush in,
-Through thick and thin, to give your Queen a splashing
-For this your party, to the devil gave you,
-And yet the rav'nous Tories will not have you.
-So in that country (where with hopes you fool
-Your second infancy, you yet shall rule)
-A sect of devotees there is who tell ye
-The way to heaven is through a fish's belly;
-And in the surges, on a certain day,
-They give themselves to rav'nous sharks a prey.
-Among the rest, an ancient beldame went,--
-Weak, wither'd, wrinkled, tawny, tough, and bent
-(Your very self in breeches she would be,
-Put on her petticoats, and you were she);
-She waded in the water to her haunches,
-Hoping the sharks would pass her through their paunches;
-But out of fifty, not a shark would have her,
-Tho' she implored them, as a special favour;
-They came and smelt, and did not like her savour,
-She threw their stomachs into such commotion,
-They would not even bear her in the ocean.
-But down they pushed her--roll'd her o'er and o'er,
-And shovel'd with their snouts again to shore;
-Alike your fate: to be by sharks abhorr'd
-Was her's, and your's by Minister's old _Lord_.
-
-* * * * *
-
-In the _Chronicle_ of September 27th, 1824, appeared the following notice
-of my brother's death, headed:--"Death of Henry Cooper.--We regret to
-have to announce the death of a gentleman warmly beloved by all who knew
-him, Mr. Henry Cooper the barrister.  He died on Sunday the 19th, at the
-cottage of his friend, Mr. Hill, of Chelsea, after a short illness which
-brought on an inflammation in his bowels that proved fatal; he was
-interred on Friday last.
-
-"Mr. Cooper had overcome the difficulties of his profession, and was
-rising fast into eminence.  He was already leader on the Norfolk circuit,
-and with his readiness, his powerful memory, and his forcible and fluent
-delivery, the most distinguished success was universally anticipated for
-him: his vein of pleasantry was particularly rich, as an instance we may
-refer to a case on the very last circuit in which a hairdresser of
-Newmarket was one of the parties, and which he made irresistibly amusing.
-We appeal confidently to those of our readers who have attentively
-considered the signs of the times, if there was not much distrust of the
-bar about the period when Mr. Henry Cooper came into notice, and if he
-did not by his exertions contribute greatly to remove it.
-
-"He had been sometime employed procuring materials for a life of Lord
-Erskine, with whom he was particularly intimate, which he had undertaken
-to write; we suspect he had not made much progress in the work when death
-erminated all his labour."
-
-The next notice of his death is taken from the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
-from July to December, 1824; vol. 94, part 2.--"On the 19th of September,
-1824, at Chelsea, Henry Cooper, barrister-at-law, in the vigour of life
-and with every prospect of reaching the highest honors in his profession.
-The death of this rising barrister has been recorded in page 381 [as
-above].  He died of inflammation of the bowels, at the house of his
-friend, Mr. Hill, at Chelsea.  His age was about thirty-eight or thirty-
-nine, and he had been about twelve years at the bar.  He was the son of a
-counsel of eminence residing at Norwich.  He went to sea with Lord
-Nelson, and was present at the battle of the Nile, but he early quitted
-the naval profession for that of the law, though he retained much of the
-frankness and gaiety of manner which distinguish seamen, and the activity
-and strength of frame which a seaman's habits create.  He was afterwards
-Attorney General of the Bermudas, at the time when one of the Cockburn's
-was governor.  On the appointment of the late Mr. Serjeant Blossett to
-the Chief Justiceship of Bengal, Mr. Cooper, who was then rapidly rising
-on his circuit (the Norfolk) became one of the leaders; and at the two
-last assizes, was in every cause.
-
-"He possessed great activity and versatility of mind; no one, according
-to the testimony of those who saw most of him, combined with a fluent and
-powerful eloquence, a better judgment and nicer skill in conducting a
-cause.  But his best and highest forensic quality, and that which,
-combined with his talents, make the loss a national one, was his great
-moral and professional courage, his unshaken attachment to what he
-considered a good cause.  No consideration ever warped him from his duty.
-He was proof not merely against those speculations on the best probable
-means of personal advancement which many men reject as well as he did,
-but against that desire of standing well with the judges, of getting the
-ear of the judge, of obtaining the sympathy of men of professional
-standing, which it requires much more firmness to resist; there was no
-one on whom a defendant exposed to the enmity of government, or to the
-judges, or to any prejudices, could rely with greater certainty; that he
-would not be compromised or betrayed by his advocate.  In a word, there
-was no man less of a sycophant.  He had a confidence that he could make
-himself a name by his own merits, and he would have it.
-
-   "But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
-   Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears
-   And slits the thin spun life."
-
-The following verses, soon after my brother's death, headed, "On the
-death of Henry Cooper, Esq.," appeared in the provincial papers; they
-were composed by my mother, and had not only the tacit consent of all,
-but the universal praise, and that openly expressed, for their spirit and
-truthfulness which all felt, for all then knew and admired him they
-mourned.
-
-   The pride of the Circuit is gone,
-      The eloquent tongue is at rest;
-   The spirit so active is flown,
-      And still lies the quick heaving breast.
-
-   The mind so gigantic and strong,
-      Is vanish'd like vapour or breath;
-   And the fire that shone in his eye,
-      Is quenched by the cold hand of death.
-
-   Yet a balm to his friends shall arise,
-      That so soon he acquired a name;
-   For he dropp'd like a star from the skies,
-      Untarnished in lustre or fame.
-
-The following verses also, on the death of my brother, appeared in the
-provincial papers, and were written by Frederic Wing, Esq., attorney-at-
-law, residing at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and headed, "On the death of
-the late Henry Cooper."
-
-   "Ye friends of talent, genius, hither come,
-   And bend with fond regret o'er Cooper's tomb;
-   Closed are those lips, and pow'rless that tongue,
-   On whose swift accents you've delighted hung.
-   Cold is that heart,--unthinking now, the brain,
-   But late the seat of thought's mysterious train,
-   For by the stern, relentless hand of death,
-   Is stopt the inspiring, animating breath:
-   And he whose powers of rhetoric all could charm,
-   Fail'd to arrest the Tyrant's conquering arm.
-      Cooper,--Farewell!--
-   Transient, yet splendid, was thy short career,
-   Unfading laurels twine thy early bier.
-   To mourn thy exit, how can we refrain,
-   For seldom shall we see thy like again!
-   Who, to deep learning, and the soundest sense,
-   Join'd the rare gift of matchless eloquence.
-   Thy wit most keen, thy penetration clear,
-   Thy satire poignant, made corruption fear.
-   And such thy knowledge of the human heart,
-   So prompt to see, and to unmask each art.
-   Oppression shrunk abash'd, while innocence
-   Call'd thee her champion--her sure defence.
-   Once more, farewell, long shall thy name be dear,
-   And oft shall Independence drop a tear
-   Of grateful memory o'er departed worth,
-   And selfish, wish thee back again to earth.
-   To abide the important issue of that cause,
-   Fix'd not by mortal, but celestial laws,
-   Thou'rt summon'd hence, may'st thou not plead in vain,
-   But from our Heavenly Judge acceptance gain,
-   And sure admittance to those courts on high,
-   Where term and time are lost in blest eternity.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX.
-THE LIFE OF LORD ERSKINE.
-AS COMMENCED BY MY BROTHER
-
-
-Thomas Erskine, the only advocate, and, almost, the only orator, whose
-speeches are likely to survive the interest of the occasion that gave
-them birth in a country, where forensic litigation abounds, and political
-institutions render the study and exercise of eloquence important and
-necessary, was born on the in --- the year 175, at ---, in Scotland; he
-was the third son of the Earl of Buchan, by ---.  This family is ancient,
-and connects, with its pedigree, the sovereigns, both of Scotland and
-England, related to the former.  The marriage of the daughter of James
-the First with the Palatine, mixed his line with the descendants, and,
-consequently, united him with the family that now reigns in England.  He
-thus brought with him to the profession of the bar, the advantage of all
-the prejudice in favour of illustrious descents, and found easier way
-yielded to his powerful talents by the diminution of envy which attended
-it.
-
-Of his very early years, I am unable to supply the public with any
-information, and I regret it,--not that any very important lesson of
-utility can be derived from the anecdotes of childhood, but they are
-amusing, and amusing without harm; and I agree with Dr. West that he has
-a very imperfect knowledge of human nature who is not convinced, that in
-a state of refined society, it is impossible to amuse innocently.  All
-that I have been able to learn distinctly, is, that the most playful
-vivacity, and the same good humour, which ever after accompanied him even
-in the keenest rivalry of the bar, displayed itself in his words and
-actions, and made him the delight of all, but those who morose and
-splenetic, from their own disgust of existence, conceive offence at
-others for that enjoyment of the present, which can only subsist upon
-ignorance, and the hope of the future that MUST BE disappointed.  To this
-vivacity, he, perhaps, owed as much as to those endowments, which are
-deemed more solid qualifications for the bar.  It imparted itself to his
-eye, his mouth, his tone, and his action, and held his hearers engaged,
-when his periods were such as pronounced by an ordinary speaker, would
-not have preserved the audience from that listnessness, which is
-instantly seen and felt by the speaker, and soon adds embarrassment and
-confusion to feebleness.  In private society, to the last months of his
-existence, it gave him rather the air of a youth inexperienced in the
-realities of life, and entering it under the ardour of hope, than of a
-man who had almost reached the limits of human existence, in the exercise
-of a profession, which lays the human breast naked to inspection.  It was
-said of Pope, from his primitive habits of reflection and gravity, that
-he was never young; and, on the contrary, it may be said with equal
-justice, from the playfulness and vivacity of Erskine, that he was never
-old.  At the age of he entered the navy as a midshipman, and served in
-the ---, commanded by Captain ---, in America.  While in this station he
-was employed in making a survey under one of the lieutenants of the ship,
-off the coast of Florida.  He had some acquaintance with geometry; and,
-as he tells us himself in his "Armata," always retained a fondness for
-that science.  Whether this fondness grew in acquiring the knowledge of
-navigation, indispensable to his profession, or subsequently at the
-university in which it forms so much the greater part of education, I am
-ignorant; but that he was versed to a degree both in geometry and
-astronomy, is evident, from the work I have named, and some pieces of his
-poetry, which I have had access to.  The cause that led him to leave the
-navy and enter the army is unknown; it is most likely to have been
-disgust and impatience of the subordination, which in our fleets is rigid
-in the extreme, and never softened by that alternation of social
-intercourse, at a common table at which in the army, all the officers of
-the regiment meet daily, and from which they rise with a feeling, not
-only that insulting and overbearing command upon duty would be a
-violation of an implied pledge of kindness, but injury to themselves, as
-diminishing in the gloom that would spread over their next meeting, the
-common stock of enjoyment.  The condition of our naval service is, in
-some respects, improved since Erskine was a member of it; but then all
-knowledge beyond that of the conduct of a ship, was deemed unnecessary,
-impertinent, and even adverse to the attainment of nautical skill.  The
-intercourse of the officers even on the shore, was confined almost
-entirely to one another, for not to speak of the uncouthness of their
-habits, which made them as incapable of mingling in society on land, as
-the beings of their element on which their avocation lay, are of living
-in the air, their language was technical to a degree that rendered it to
-all, except themselves, almost unintelligible.  With such persons for
-companions, and to use Terence's expression, quotidian and tedious
-sameness of a life at sea, we need look no further for Erskine's desire
-to change his profession.  When we consider the great capacity which he
-possessed for observation, and his extraordinary power of combining the
-knowledge that he so acquired, the period which he gave to the naval
-service must have been, to a spirit so active, a period of painful
-constraints.  I remember that in a conversation upon Lord Erskine, with
-Mr. Capel Loft, after enumerating the many great causes in which the
-great advocate had been engaged, he exclaimed, "what an infinite
-multitude of ideas must have passed through that man's mind."  The remark
-is not an empty one; I doubt whether there ever was a man who exercised
-the faculty of reasoning more, who drew a greater number of distinct
-conclusions, or whose materials of thought were more the collection and
-property of his own observation.  Cicero, in his speech for Archias,
-appeals to the judges whether he could possibly supply the demands upon
-him for daily exertions of eloquence, unless he assidiously refreshed his
-mind with studies, in which he was assisted by Archias and other
-rhetoricians, and that he read copiously is manifested in all his works.
-The accomplished academician, the able balancer of the different schools
-of philosophy and morals, and the studied Rhetor is obtruded upon us.  He
-was, in every sense of the term, learned; Erskine, on the contrary,
-cannot be discovered by any of his speeches, or writings, to have read
-much, and most probably had read very little.  He was in no sense of the
-word learned.  He has, indeed by acuteness of observation, vigour of
-combination, and the ready power of deduction that he possessed, been
-able to produce and leave behind him what will become the learning of
-others, but he was not learned himself.  His qualities, from his earliest
-years were quickness and acuteness, unchecked and insatiable curiosity,
-retentive memory, and busy reflection; his mind was never still.  In the
-coffee-room he conversed and indulged in humour with all round him.
-However important or heavy the causes which were to occupy him in court,
-they never oppressed his mind with a load of anxiety; his was not like
-ordinary minds under great affairs, so absorbed that he could perceive
-nothing round him; his, till the hour of solemn exertion arrived, was
-disengaged and indulged in pleasantry; after the toil of the day, the
-passion of eloquence and the intensity of technical argument, he was full
-of spirits and waggery at dinner and in the evening.  And light as his
-topics sometimes were, his thoughts were always distinct, and his
-expressions full; you never from him heard any imperfect thoughts
-expressed, that (like tadpoles, before they are complete, must go through
-other processes of animation) required the exertion of your own
-conceptions to attain their sense and spirit.  The activity of his mind
-was like that of the swallow, which either in sport or pursuit is upon
-the wing for ever.  With this character it may readily be believed that
-young Erskine received his discharge with feelings like those that attend
-the cessation of a long and painful disease from a state which called for
-no exercise of his great talents, and, neither yielded scope for the
-communication of his own attainments nor opportunity to increase them
-from the communications of others.
-
-He became an ensign of the Royals and married not long after.  He was
-sent with his corps to the Mediterranean, and stationed either with his
-regiment or a detachment of his regiment, at Minorca; there, under the
-influence of an ardent feeling of religion, which he owed to the anxious
-inculcations of his mother, from whom he received the rudiments of
-education, he is said in the absence of the chaplain, to have composed
-more than one sermon, and to have delivered them to the assembled
-officers and privates of his regiment.  It never occurred to me to ask
-him whether there was truth in this report; but he has frequently talked
-to me of anecdotes which were circulated of him, some of which he
-confirmed while he contradicted others, and never spoke of this as
-unfounded; from my knowledge of his character it is highly probable, and
-I believe it is true.  About three years ago he was at Tunbridge Wells
-with Mr. Coutts, and while there, pointed out to a friend of mine a
-building, and said, "There, when it was a public room, I preached a
-sermon of my own composition to the company;" this was for a wager.  He
-returned to England in 17-- with his regiment, the father of three
-children.  The anxiety of his mother, whose affections and care for her
-family rendered her most estimable, and have endeared her memory to her
-descendants, was excited by Thomas, who had nothing but his pay for the
-support of his wife and his children, likely soon to become more
-numerous.  Her prudence suggested to her another profession for him by
-the gains of which he might avoid the destitution which she saw hanging
-over his head.  With this design, she sent for Mr. Adam, the barrister
-(now the Commissioner of the Scotch jury courts), that she might receive
-the assistance of his experience and advice.  On his arrival she said,
-"My son Tom has been thoughtless enough to marry a woman without fortune,
-and she has brought him a family which he cannot support himself, nor I
-for him,--what is to be done?  And I have been thinking that he must sell
-his commission, go to the bar, and be Lord Chancellor."  It is
-interesting to reflect, that while this excellent woman was endeavouring
-to conceal the bitterness of an affectionate mother's anguish for her
-son's imprudence, she was unconsciously pronouncing a prophecy.  Nor will
-it be less to see how trifling an event would have prevented its
-accomplishment; Mr. Adam told her that there were a great many steps from
-the entrance of the profession and the very high rank which she purposed,
-many of which he should be happy to congratulate her son on attaining.
-The conference proceeded, the obstacles to success at the bar were
-weighed against the certainty of domestic calamities if he remained in
-his present profession, and they parted, both of opinion, that in the
-direction of the bar, Thomas Erskine was most likely to leave behind his
-present embarrassment and reach prosperity.  It remained, however, to
-procure the consent of her son; that was not easy: he had no predilection
-for the bar, and was attached to the army, and his regiment, to the
-officers of which his sprightly and amiable manners had endeared him, and
-in which he was soliciting promotion and expecting it.  At last, however,
-his conditional consent was drawn from him.  He agreed to let his mother
-dispose of him as she wished, if he should be unsuccessful in his
-application for the vacant captaincy in the Royals.  This was far from
-satisfying his mother, but he was peremptory, and she could not induce
-him to more positive terms; thus, if Erskine could have gained the rank
-of captain in the Royals, the destination of which was, then, an American
-colony, by which he might have gained the privilege of being scalped by
-the savages, or perishing in the swamps or forests of North America, the
-country would never have known that splendid eloquence, which is its
-boast and its pride; Tooke, Thelwall, Hardy, and the rest of those
-unfortunate men who were held so long under the terror of death, would
-probably have been hanged, and the country oppressed by a gloomy
-precedent of constructive treason, under which no man who has raised
-himself in opposition to a corrupt and sinister government could have
-been safe; one is inclined to shudder, like a man whom a shot has missed
-only by the breadth of a hair, in contemplating how near so much danger
-was incurred, and so much benefit lost.  But it is not on the magnitude,
-but continuity of the chain, that great results depend; on examining the
-past, we shall find that as small a link struck out at one point or other
-of succession, would have disappointed the most important events of
-history.  Happily for Erskine and his country, his claims from the merit
-of his services were eluded, and though he was more urgent in his
-applications, since the alternative was to be the bar, he was refused
-promotion.  There was a singular coincidence in the fortune of the late
-Lord Chatham and Erskine: the former was sent into parliament and driven
-into violent opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, because that minister had
-deprived him of a company of horse, and dismissed him the service, an act
-of which the minister had reason to repent.  He was like the emblem of
-envy with the recoiled dart in his own bosom; except Charles I., who
-stopped Hampden and Cromwell from embarking upon the Thames to follow
-liberty into the wilderness of America, no man had ever so much reason to
-curse himself for his own acts.  In the same manner a slight of Erskine's
-claims to promotion sent him to display an eloquence that had never yet
-been heard at the English bar.  His fame as an advocate, drew the notice
-of the Whig party on him; he was enlisted in their ranks and added an
-importance to the opposition, which not unfrequently increased the
-embarrassment of the minister.  While he was held in suspense by those
-who had the disposal of commissions, he was quartered at Maidstone, and
-entering the court during the assizes there, was placed in his military
-uniform upon the bench, beside the great Lord Mansfield, to whom he was
-distantly related, and who at intervals of business, conversed with him
-on the proposed change of arms for the gown.  This was another of the
-accidents which, by minds of a certain frame would be regarded as an
-omen.  After relating this anecdote, he added, "Only four years from that
-time, I was at the place in the lead of that very circuit."  All his
-hopes of promotion at an end, the commission so unequal to the demands
-for subsistance upon it, was disposed of, and he was at once entered a
-student of the Law Society of Lincoln's Inn, and a Commoner at ---
-College, Cambridge
-
-* * * * *
-
-A few days before he was called to the bar, a friend came and invited him
-to accompany him to dine at the villa of a wine merchant, a few miles
-from London.  The allurements were a good dinner, and wine not to be
-procured but by a dealer, who could cull his own stock from thousands of
-pipes, and they were not to be resisted by a young man fond of pleasure,
-to whom such luxuries must come gratuitously, if they come at all.
-Economy, which was important to Erskine, was not quite beneath the regard
-of his friend, and after many proposals of several modes of conveyance,
-which were all rejected, either for their expense, or their humbleness,
-they agreed to walk; I have heard playful exertions of the mind or body
-attributed to what was denominated an excessive flow of animal spirits, a
-phrase that sounds significantly in the ear, but gives no information to
-the understanding.  Those who use it, mean, I suppose, to express that
-when the body has received more nutriment than is necessary to promote
-its growth, or maintain it the redundancy is thrown off in almost
-involuntary exertions of the limbs or of mind.  If this physiology be
-just, Erskine had an extraordinary surplus of supply,--that regular
-discharge like the back water of a mill, and it found vent in various
-gambols and effusions of humour on the way to the wine merchant's.  While
-Erskine, buoyed by high health and ardent hope, scarcely felt the ground
-that he trod, the sight of a ditch by the side of the road, tempted him
-to exercise his agility.  The impulse, and obedience to the impulse, were
-the same.  He made the attempt, but the ditch was too wide for his
-spring, and he leaped a little short of the opposite bank.  His dress
-above was splashed with foul water, and his legs booted in mud.  Nothing
-was to be done on his part but to return, and his companion with a
-kindness that does him honour, would have returned with him, but this,
-Erskine was too generous to allow; and while his friend continued his
-journey to the wine merchant's house and sumptuous dinner, Erskine
-solitary and in pain (for he had severely sprained his leg) returned to
-town; on reaching his lodgings Mrs. Erskine proposed a change of dress,
-and urged him yet to go to dinner at the wine merchant's.  He objected
-his lameness from the sprain, which she answered by proposing a coach and
-the expense, which he hinted, was not to be weighed against the benefit
-he might derive from the friends which his manners and spirits were
-likely to make him in the mixed and numerous company he would meet there.
-This was a consideration so important to a young man on the verge of the
-bar, that Erskine's disinclination was overcome by these reasonings of
-his wife.  A coach was procured, and he again set out, but he did not
-arrive till dinner was half over, and found himself placed by this
-accident by the side of Captain Bailey, of Greenwich Hospital.  With the
-modesty which is always united with true genius, Lord Erskine always
-spoke of this event as the greatest instance of good fortune which ever
-befel him.  But for this, he said to me, "I might have waited years for
-an opportunity to show that I had any talent for the bar; and when it
-occurred I should not have pleaded with such effect, depressed and
-mortified as I might have been by long expectation, and its attendant
-evils, instead of seizing it with all the energy and confidence of youth
-elated with hope."  I record this to show how little he was actuated by
-arrogance or presumption; I by no means assent to his opinion, on the
-contrary, I think he would have waited a very short time for occasion to
-exert his prominent talents.  He slipt from high ground into the
-profession.  His rank would have drawn notice upon him, and he had
-friends full of eagerness, and not altogether without power.  No more is
-the partiality which, it is said, was manifestly shown him by Lord
-Mansfield, to be deemed a main cause of his success.  On the contrary I
-am so little inclined to attribute such an effect to it, that I believe
-even the hostility of the bench could not have kept Erskine from rising.
-His mind was not of the ordinary mould,--he was excited by obstacles.
-Such was his temperament, that the damp slight of discouragement which
-would have quenched common spirits, by the ardour of his mind would have
-been converted into fuel, and have increased the splendour with which he
-burst forth at once at the English bar.  How was the delay of
-opportunity, or the frown of the judge to suppress the eloquence whose
-first essay excelled, both in matter and delivery, the latest efforts of
-the most experienced speakers in our courts? when he rose Dunning,
-Bearcroft, Wallace and others, were in the height of their reputation as
-speakers in Westminster Hall.  They were even eloquent, according to the
-judgment of the day gazed at as the luminaries of the profession; but,
-brilliant as they were, they were combust in the splendour of Erskine, on
-his first appearance as an orator.  This considered, it is in vain to
-pretend, that, but for favourable conjunctions which have happened to him
-and not to others, the prosperous and devious career on which he
-immediately entered, could have been prevented or even long
-delayed.--[Alas, no more!]
-
-BRIDGE STREET BANDITTI, _v._ THE PRESS.
-
-REPORT OF THE TRIAL
-OF
-MARY-ANNE CARLILE,
-FOR PUBLISHING A NEW YEAR'S ADDRESS
-TO THE
-REFORMERS OF GREAT BRITAIN;
-WRITTEN BY
-RICHARD CARLILE;
-AT THE INSTANCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSOCIATION:
-BEFORE
-MR. JUSTICE BEST, AND A SPECIAL JURY,
-AT THE
-_Court of King's Bench_, _Guildhall_, _London_, _July_ 24, 1821.
-
-WITH THE NOBLE AND EFFECTUAL SPEECH OF
-MR.  COOPER,
-IN DEFENCE, AT LARGE.
-
-LONDON:
-PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET.
-1821.
-
-
-
-DEDICATION.
-
-
-TO
-HENRY COOPER, ESQ.,
-BARRISTER AT LAW;
-
-For the noble stand and more noble attitude which he took on this
-trial--for the very eloquent, very bold, and very honest style of his
-defence--and, above all, for the manly resistance which he made to, and
-the contempt which he showed for, the menacing frowns of those persons
-who conducted, advocated, and supported this prosecution: and to those
-HONEST JURYMEN who resisted their fellows in the attempt to throw the
-defendant into the hands of her enemies, and the enemies of their
-country; and who, by their honesty and independence, have given a death
-blow to those corrupt, wicked, and malignant _would-be_-censors of the
-Press, calling themselves a Constitutional Association; this report of
-the proceedings is gratefully dedicated by, and the sincere and heartfelt
-thanks is hereby offered to them, of
-
-MARY-ANNE and RICHARD CARLILE.
-
-
-
-REPORT,
-&c., &c.
-
-
-This was an indictment at the prosecution of "The Constitutional
-Association," and their first attempt to obtain a verdict.  The defendant
-pleaded Not Guilty.
-
-The following are the names of the Jurors:--
-
-
-SPECIAL.
-
-
-John Stracey, of Smithfield Bars, Merchant,
-Philip Jacob, of the Crescent, Cripplegate, ditto,
-James Byrne, of Dyer's Court, ditto,
-Charles Wright, of the Old Jury, ditto, (foreman)
-Henry Houghton, of King's Arms Yard, ditto,
-John Webb, of Coleman-street, ditto.
-
-
-TALESMEN.
-
-
-Joseph Blackburn, Russia Mat Dealer,
-John Davis, Painter,
-John Williams, Cheesemonger,
-Bryan Mills, Packer,
-Michael Williams, Agent,
-Frederick Bennet, Smith.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST, at the request of the defendant, enquired if either of
-the Jurors was a member of the Constitutional Association.  The answer
-was in the negative.
-
-Mr. TINDALL opened the pleadings.
-
-Mr. GURNEY appeared to conduct the prosecution, and Mr. COOPER was for
-the defendant.
-
-Mr. GURNEY.--May it please your lordship; gentlemen of the Jury; my
-friend, Mr. Tindall, has told you the nature of this action, and it is
-now my duty to lay this case before you.  The indictment has been found
-by a grand jury, upon the prosecution of the Constitutional Association;
-and it charges the defendant, Mary Ann Carlile, with publishing a libel
-upon the government and the constitution of this country; and, gentlemen,
-after a not very limited experience in these cases, I will say, that a
-more criminal and atrocious libel never met my observation.  It purports
-to be written by Richard Carlile; it is dated from Dorchester Gaol, and
-it has been published by the defendant, the sister of that man who is now
-suffering imprisonment for his own criminal conduct.  It is entitled, "A
-New Year's Address to the Reformers of Great Britain;" and, among other
-objectionable passages not charged as libelous, it contains the
-following; "As far as the barrack system will admit"--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I do not think that you are entitled to read that
-passage, Mr. Gurney.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I think not, my lord; I was just rising to interrupt Mr.
-Gurney.
-
-Mr. GURNEY.--I have no objection, my lord, to abstain from reading the
-passage to which I was about to call your attention.  I shall read the
-passage which is charged as libelous, and if the learned counsel for the
-defendant can find throughout a single passage to qualify its malignity,
-do you, gentleman, give the defendant the benefit of it.  The passage is
-this:--"To talk about the British Constitution, is, in my opinion, a sure
-proof of dishonesty; Britain has no constitution.  If we speak of the
-Spanish constitution, we have something tangible; there is a substance
-and meaning as well as sound.  In Britain there is nothing constituted
-but corruption in the system of government; our very laws are corrupt and
-partial, both in themselves and in their administration; in fact,
-corruption as notorious as the sun at noon-day, is an avowed part of our
-system, and is denominated the necessary oil for the wheels of the
-government; it is a most pernicious oil to the interests of the people."
-And in another passage the following words were contained:--"Reform will
-be obtained when the existing authorities have no longer the power to
-withhold it, and not before.  We shall gain it as early without
-petitioning as with it, and I would again put forward my opinion, that
-something more than a petitioning attitude is necessary.  At this moment
-I would not say a word about insurrection, but I would strongly recommend
-union, activity, and co-operation.  Be ready and steady to meet any
-concurrent circumstances."  Now, gentleman, these are the passages
-charged as libelous, and I defy even the ingenuity of my learned friend
-to show that they are not most odious libels.  What! are the people of
-this free and independent country to be told that they have no
-constitution?  It is an assertion, the malignity of which is only
-equalled by its falsehood.  We have a free and glorious constitution.  It
-has descended to us from our brave and free ancestors, and I trust that
-we, too, shall have virtue and magnanimity enough to transmit it
-unimpaired to our posterity.  We have laws, too, equal in their
-administration.  We have a constitution where no lowness of birth--no
-meanness of origin--operate as an obstacle to preferment; in which the
-chief situations are open to competition, and for which the only
-qualifications are integrity and information.  Our laws are here
-stigmatized as partial and corrupt.  If they were not impartial, this man
-would never have dared to vilify them.  The very accusation proves that
-the charge is false; for if it were true, this libeler must have suddenly
-suffered for this assertion.  It is because that they are administered in
-a spirit of mercy unknown to the laws of any other country--it is because
-they are administered in tenderness, that this man has had the power to
-promulgate his vile and odious falsehood.  He thought it meet and right,
-and most becoming too, to tell the world that this was not the precise
-time for insurrection.  He plainly indicates, that he has no objection to
-it; but he would not say a word about it at present, the time was not
-come; but he tells his fellow reformers to be "ready and steady to meet
-any concurrent circumstances."  Gentlemen, it would be an idle and
-impertinent waste of time to make any further observations upon the
-pernicious tendency of this libel.  But what is the defence which is to
-be set up by my learned friend?  Are we to be told that the prosecution
-of this libel is an invasion of the liberty of the press?  I will not
-yield to my learned friend, nor to any man in existence, in a just regard
-for the freedom of the press.  But who, I would ask, is invading its
-liberty?  He who brings to justice the offenders, or he who under the
-sacred form of liberty promulgates such language as I have just read to
-you?  I do not think that on this subject you can entertain a doubt.  I
-feel the most perfect confidence in committing this case to your good
-sense.  If you believe that the defendant is guilty of publishing this
-libel with the intention charged, you will pronounce your verdict of
-guilty.  If, on the other hand, you think that the passages which I have
-read to you contain nothing libelous, or that the defendant is not the
-publisher, I shall sincerely rejoice in your conscientious acquittal.
-
-_James Rignall_ deposed, that he had purchased the pamphlet in question
-of the defendant, at her shop in Fleet Street, on Friday evening, the 9th
-of March.  There were several other copies lying about on the counter.
-
-Cross-examined by Mr. COOPER.--Who are you?--I am an agent to the Society
-for the Suppression of Vice.
-
-But you are also employed by these constitutional people, as they call
-themselves?--Only in this one instance.
-
-Were you employed to purchase the pamphlet in question?--I purchased that
-and others.
-
-You were employed by the Constitutional Society to purchase them?--Yes, I
-was.
-
-Who sent you?--Mr. Murray.
-
-The Attorney?--Yes.
-
-And he directed you to purchase this pamphlet, eh?--He did not
-particularize any.
-
-Did he state his object in the purchase?--No.
-
-What wages are you to have?--I have no wages.
-
-Then you perform this agreeable duty gratuitously?--No, I do not say
-that.
-
-Then how are you paid?--I made a charge for my time.
-
-Perhaps you belong to the society?--No, indeed I do not (with vehemence).
-
-Well, I do not wonder that you should be anxious to separate yourself
-from the society (a laugh amongst the auditory).
-
-Mr. GURNEY.--I desire that no such remarks may be made.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--What have you had for this particular job?--I have made a
-charge for several other little things I did (a laugh).
-
-Mr. GURNEY (to the spectators),--I shall certainly move his Lordship to
-take notice of some particular persons that I see misconducting
-themselves.
-
-Cross-examination resumed.--What other jobs did you for the
-association?--I did several jobs; that I will not deny.
-
-How much have you had for these little jobs?--I declare upon my oath, I
-cannot state particularly how much I had for these little jobs.  I made a
-charge.  I don't recollect exactly what my charge was.
-
-Come, come, the round sum?--I can tell you pretty nearly the round sum,
-if that will satisfy you.  I think it was above seven pounds and under
-seven guineas.  I was sent on other business beside this.
-
-I wish to know what that other business was?--Is it necessary to answer
-that question?
-
-I think it necessary.--Then I will take the sense of the Court upon it.  I
-have no objection to answer that or any other question, if my Lord thinks
-I ought.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST (smiling).--It tends to nothing; but it is as well to
-answer it.
-
-Then I purchased come other different things for the association, but it
-was not in consequence of any general or particular orders I received: I
-went to purchase these publications which I myself thought libels; I
-cannot state exactly now what they were.
-
-Then you did that, I suppose, without any hope of reward?--I don't state
-without any hope of reward; I expected to be paid for my time.
-
-Oh, then, it was not altogether out of virtue and patriotic
-feeling?--Those were two of my motives, most certainly, but not the only
-ones (general laughing).
-
-Has this been the usual way of getting your living?--It has for a year
-and a half past; I have had no other feasible occupation during that
-time.
-
-I suppose you received a considerable sum in the course of this
-honourable employment?--I have told you the sum total was about 7 pounds.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--Do you think that material, Mr. Cooper?
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I do think it material, to show the sort of agents that this
-honourable society employs.  (To witness.)  And what did you do before
-you suppressed vice and libels?--I got my living honourably as an officer
-in his Majesty's customs.
-
-And are you still an honourable officer, &c.?--No; I have lost my
-situation.
-
-Retired upon a pension?--No.
-
-How old are you?--Fifty-four.
-
-No pension, eh?--None.
-
-Re-examined by Mr. GURNEY.--I have been in the employment of the Society
-for the Suppression of Vice for a year and a half; I have been paid by
-them for my services.  In this instance, and in several others, I have
-made some purchases for the Constitutional Association.
-
-_Horatio Orton_ was then called.  A general murmur ran through the Court,
-which was crowded to excess; and all persons most deferentially gave the
-witness way.
-
-Examined by Mr. GURNEY.--I was a witness before the Grand Jury.  On the
-10th of March I purchased another copy of the pamphlet in question from
-Mary Anne Carlile; I had it from her own hand.
-
-Cross-examined by Mr. COOPER.--How came you to purchase this on the 10th
-of March?--I was directed by Mr. Murray, the solicitor, to purchase it.
-
-This is the gentleman? (pointing to Mr. Murray, in court)--Yes.
-
-He is the Honorary Secretary to the Association, and the disinterested
-attorney for this prosecution?--Yes, I was sent by him for the express
-purpose of purchasing this pamphlet; I should not have gone if I had not
-been directed by him.
-
-What is your situation in the society?--My situation to the Association
-is as clerk.
-
-Clerk to Mr. Murray?--No; I am not in Mr. Murray's office.
-
-In the Society's office, separate from the attorney's office?--Yes.
-
-In what situation were you before?--I used to assist my brother in his
-correspondence with country newspapers.
-
-Not for the town papers?--No, for himself; he takes the reports of the
-House of Lords' proceedings, and transmits them to the editors of the
-country papers; I used to assist him in the copying, and he paid me for
-my trouble.
-
-What is your salary in your present honourable situation?--It is not
-fixed.
-
-It depends upon your exertions?--Yes.
-
-Then you work at present by the piece?--No, I do not; the committee have
-not yet come to a determination about my salary; I have not made any
-demand for salary; I have not proposed any sum; I mean to swear that; not
-any sum has been proposed to me; I don't say that I would work for the
-Society gratuitously; if I want five or ten pounds I know where to go for
-it; not of the Association; I can have it of my brother; I expect to
-receive something of the Association.
-
-In your modesty, what may be the extent of your expectations?
-
-Mr. GURNEY submitted that this was not a proper mode of
-cross-examination.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I think it is, and I shall persist in it until I am told by
-my Lord that it is irregular.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I don't think any part of the cross-examination is
-approaching to anything like regularity.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--If your Lordship says I am not to be allowed the same
-latitude which is allowed to counsel on other occasions, I shall not
-persevere.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I have no objection to your taking your own course,
-but I think this course of examination ought to have been stopped long
-ago.  I think every fair and reasonable indulgence ought to be allowed to
-counsel in such a case, but if this was a mere civil case I should have
-stopped you long ago.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--Then I shall proceed in my own way, with your Lordship's
-permission.  (To witness.)  Is this the first job you have been employed
-in?--I don't recollect any other of this kind.
-
-Are you sure you have been employed upon no other job of this kind?--I
-cannot bring to my recollection whether I have not been employed on any
-other.  I may have been, but I am not aware of any.
-
-Do you know a man named King?--Yes, perfectly.
-
-Do you recollect doing a job in which he was concerned?--I don't
-recollect doing a job of this kind against King.  I might if I saw the
-paper before me with my mark upon it.  There are so many of them that I
-cannot recollect any in particular.
-
-Have you not made an affidavit in the job against King?--Yes; but that is
-since this.  I cannot recollect whether I have done any other jobs.  I
-have been in the employment of the Association about six months.  I
-commenced on the 8th of January.  Since the 10th of March, I don't
-recollect how many jobs I have been engaged in; they are so numerous I
-can't recollect.  The orders which Mr. Murray gave me, were to go and
-purchase the Reformers' Address at the defendant's shop.  I had not any
-general directions to buy at this or that shop--not from Mr. Murray.  I
-had from other persons, general directions to make purchase of works; one
-of those persons was Mr. Sharpe.
-
-He is the Honorary Assistant Secretary?--Yes.
-
-(All the preceding questions excited considerable sensations amongst the
-audience, and produced a chorus of humourous tittering).
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--The effect of these questions, Mr. Cooper, you must
-feel.  You cannot wish, I am sure, to excite the sort of response which
-comes from below the bar.  You must see that it is done on purpose.  You
-cannot wish, I am sure, to produce that effect.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, I am the last man in the world to do any thing
-inconsistent with the gravity and decorum of a Court of Justice.  I
-disclaim any such intention; and I must disdain the insinuation of Mr.
-Gurney, that I have taken up this cause for the purpose of adding to the
-public odium in which the honourable Association is held.
-
-Mr. GURNEY said his learned friend, Mr. Cooper, was mistaken; he had
-never insinuated anything of the kind.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I am sure no gentlemen at the bar would wish to
-produce the effect which all the questions put by you have had below the
-bar.
-
-Mr. COOPER said he could not control the feelings of the auditory.  He
-was only anxious to do his duty to the best of his humble ability, and
-nothing should deter him from discharging that duty freely and
-undauntedly.
-
-Cross-examination resumed.--What is the office of the Honorary Assistant
-Secretary?--It is to do every thing at the office.
-
-To superintend the business of the office?--I consider him as the acting
-manager.
-
-Then the Honorary Secretary has a sinecure?--What does the word honorary
-mean but a sinecure?
-
-Mr. COOPER.--"May it please your Lordship; gentlemen of the jury; I am
-exceedingly sorry that some more able counsel has not to address you on
-this most important and momentous occasion.  I should have been unequal
-to the task, under any circumstances."
-
-Mr. GURNEY.--"Stop a minute."  (The learned counsel for the prosecution
-here intimated, that he had something to add to his case; but, after a
-pause, he intimated to Mr. Cooper, that he might proceed.)
-
-Mr. COOPER.--Gentlemen, under any circumstances, this would be a task,
-for which, I fear, I am very ill qualified; but under those, in which I
-stand to address you on this question, I feel my incapacity doubled and
-trebled.  I appear before you without notice, and almost wholly without
-preparation.  I was, indeed, applied to by the defendant, some months
-ago, and negotiated with (if I may use the phrase) to undertake her
-defence.  But, after this, many days and even weeks passed, during which
-I heard nothing of the case; and I began to suppose that the defendant
-had determined to employ some other counsel, or trust herself to her own
-address to the jury against this charge.  At the end of a month, however,
-I was again applied to; and, again, weeks having elapsed, without my
-hearing any more of this prosecution, I dismissed it entirely, not only
-from my mind, but from my memory; nor was it, till last night, that, that
-I was once more informed that I was to be employed as the defendant's
-counsel; and my brief at last put into my hands.  I was then
-unfortunately engaged in other important business: and the time, I have
-taken to collect my own thoughts upon this question, and huddle together
-a few extract's from writers of authority, I have been obliged to borrow
-from sleep; and have, therefore, in a great measure counteracted myself;
-for I have lost in strength, what I have gained in information, and
-appear before you ill able, indeed, to do justice to this cause.  But,
-whilst I make this statement to excuse my own deficiency, I am bound to
-acquit the defendant of any reproachable negligence of her own interests.
-I understand, that the cause of her late application to me, is, that
-having had, as a mere matter of grace, three weeks' notice of trial from
-another society, by which she has been prosecuted, she mistook it for her
-right; and expected the same notice from her present prosecutors.  As she
-had not received any such notice (and indeed she was not in law entitled
-to it), she supposed, that either she was not to be brought to trial at
-these sittings, or that the charge was abandoned; as I wish it had been,
-and as it ought to have been; for I am convinced, that this prosecution
-cannot be sustained by either law or reason; and that it must be from the
-weakness of the counsel alone, that you, gentlemen, can be betrayed to
-pronounce a verdict of Guilty against the defendant.
-
-Gentlemen, it is my duty to clear this case of every possible prejudice
-that may hang about it in your minds before I enter into the merits of my
-defence.  I do not know how you are affected, but I well know, that with
-many persons, I should have a host of prejudices to contend against, in
-the very name alone of Carlile.  Many either believe, or affect to
-believe, that the very sound is an omen and an execration, and that
-either he cannot be sincere and honest in the opinions which he
-professes, or if he be, that those opinions are incompatible with the
-existence or practice of any moral or social virtue.  But, whatever his
-opinions may be, and whatever your sentiments upon them, I have at least
-a right to ask of you not to allow any prejudice against the relation,
-against the brother, to warp your judgment on the trial of the defendant:
-for, what can possibly be more remote from justice, than, instead of
-judging a person fairly for his own conduct, to condemn him by our
-opinion of the sentiments and character of another?  I hope and trust
-that you have entertained no such prejudices: but if you have, I feel
-assured, that you brought them no further than the threshold of the
-court:--at that door they fell from you, like the burthen from the
-pilgrim (in the beautiful allegory) on his reaching the cross; and you
-stand there with your minds unbiassed, free and pure, to decide between
-the crown and the defendant in this cause.  But it is not only my duty,
-gentlemen, to clear the defendant, but to extricate the counsel from
-every unfavourable suspicion, lest it should, possibly, by any confusion
-of the client with the advocate, operate to the disadvantage of the
-defendant.
-
-Whatever, therefore, may be thought of the pamphlet which is before you,
-as a libel, or of the writer or publisher, I most solemnly affirm, that
-there is no one who more warmly admires the English constitution, as it
-stands in theory and ought to exist in practice, than myself, nor is
-there any one who would more willingly shed his blood if it were
-necessary, or even lose his life in its support.  It is needless then to
-say, that a more irreconcileable enemy would not be found than myself to
-the man (if any such there be) who could attempt to overturn our mingled
-and limited forms of government: and substitute a wild democracy in their
-place.  I think, indeed, that a democratic form of government, however
-specious in argument, is by no means so capable of raising a state to
-that eminence of civilization and prosperity, which this country has
-reached; a condition, for which it is indebted to better times, while the
-practice concurred with the theory of our government; but which, unless
-the practice is brought back to the theory, I venture to predict, has not
-much longer to continue.  I, gentlemen, appear here only in the discharge
-of my duty; and to redeem that pledge to defend the accused, which every
-man, upon assuming this gown, gives to the public of England.  I would,
-however, have it distinctly understood, that it is only to guard against
-prejudice to the defendant, and not from any apprehensions for myself,
-that I trouble you with this explanation.  For myself, I am extremely
-careless, what may be thought of me for having come forward to defend
-this unfortunate woman.  I do not expect to escape obloquy in the present
-overheated disposition of the country, How can I expect it? when even the
-present Lord Erskine, whose talents and independence should have rendered
-his character sacred, as soon as it was known that he was to be counsel
-for Paine was overwhelmed with abuse, and threatened with the loss of his
-situation, as attorney general to the Prince, if he did not decline the
-defence.  But he knew his duty and discharged it.  And for which will he
-be most honoured by posterity?  By which most ennobled? for having in
-spite of threats, and all the seductions of self-interest, persevered in
-his duty? or for having been exalted to the peerage of England and
-adorned with the national order of Scotch knighthood?  But, if even my
-humble situation, should not exempt me from the attacks of the malicious
-and furious, I can tell them that their malignity will be disappointed.
-Instead of regret and mortification it will be a source of pride and
-happiness to me.  Small as my chance may be of credit for the assertion,
-I declare, that I propose to myself no reward so high for my exertions,
-as the consciousness of having, in spite of all hopes on one side, or
-fears on the other, honestly discharged my duty.
-
-If ever in my course in the profession, I should find myself wounded
-either in fortune or reputation, instead of regretting and deploring it,
-I will rejoice and exult at it, and, at those hours, when in full
-confidence of his companions, it is neither indecent nor unsafe in a man
-to speak of his own actions, I will boast of it, I will shew it, as an
-honourable scar.
-
-Gentlemen, with these preliminary observations, I will proceed to
-introduce my case to you.  My learned friend, Mr. Gurney, has opened this
-prosecution with all that pomp of eloquence, and solemnity of
-declamation, which he possesses in so ample a manner, and which make him
-so accomplished an advocate.  But what has he done?  All, indeed, that he
-or any one else could have done: yet, nothing more than repeat those
-arguments, which are trite, and worn like a turnpike, and have been
-topics for counsel after counsel, through a thousand of these
-prosecutions; while he has left all the great subjects of consideration
-that present themselves to the mind on these questions, wholly untouched.
-He has declared, indeed, but without showing you why, that the words,
-charged in the indictment are an atrocious libel; in which, as it appears
-to me, he has been rather premature, for a libel they are not, and cannot
-be, unless your verdict should so declare them.  I assert, gentlemen, I
-am sure his Lordship will nod assent to me while I assert it, that you
-are the only judges of the law of libel in this case; and this paper, for
-which the defendant stands before you, is either a libel or not a libel,
-as you may in your consciences think it, and on your oaths pronounce it.
-
-The statute, indeed, which declares this the law, has given, or rather
-left with his Lordship, the right of stating his opinion on that question
-to you; but I am sure he will not think that I exceed my duty, as an
-advocate, when I say, that though it is your duty to receive his opinion
-with respect, and give it the most attentive consideration, yet it still
-leaves you free to your own judgments, and if after weighing his opinion,
-you find yours unaltered, you have not only a right, but it is your duty
-to reject his opinion and to act on your own.
-
-Gentlemen, I submit that it is within your province to take into
-consideration the nature and operation of those writings, which are
-called in prosecutions of this kind libels.  You are sitting there to try
-this charge as an offence by the common law of the land.  The defendant
-is accused of having committed an act in the nature of a nuisance; and
-you are to judge whether that act could operate as a nuisance or not.  You
-are not bound, because pamphlets have been prosecuted as libels time out
-of mind, or even because they have been declared libels by the verdicts
-of preceding juries to tread in no other path than their steps; and to
-find similar, or even the same matter, libels, if you should not think
-them criminal or dangerous.  If you should be convinced by argument, not
-only that the pamphlet before you is not a libel, but that almost all
-those political writings, which it has been the habit of certain people,
-taking up the cry from their leaders, to call libels, are not merely not
-dangerous but beneficial to political society; is it possible to
-conceive, that you can be induced to pronounce a verdict of guilty
-against the defendant!  How can you come to such a conclusion; as that
-there should be punishment where there has been no mischief, and where
-there could have been none, and if there not only has been no mischief,
-but could have been none,--nay, if even there must have been benefit, how
-can you lay your hands on your hearts, and say there has been crime?
-Suppose a man was indicted for a nuisance in doing that for which a
-number of persons had in succession been indicted and convicted, would
-that oblige a jury to find a verdict against a person at this day
-indicted for the same act, if he should prove to them by evidence, which
-their minds could not resist, that what had been complained of as hurtful
-to public health and morals was noxious to neither, but salutary to both?
-Would you, in such a case, though a thousand preceding juries had, in
-their ignorance, pronounced verdicts of guilty, follow their example,
-against your full knowledge and internal conscience?  To illustrate by a
-familiar instance, when hops were first introduced into this country they
-were very generally believed to be pernicious.  Several persons were I
-believe prosecuted and convicted for using them; yet now they are known
-not only to be not pernicious, but nutritious; they form a principal
-ingredient in the daily beverage of our tables, and are even employed
-largely in medicine.  Let us now imagine a man prosecuted for the use of
-hops or any other drugs upon the ground that they injured health, and
-that upon his trial he should fill the box with men of science as
-witnesses, and shew you to moral demonstration, that so far from being
-injurious, they were highly salutary, would you, because other juries had
-convicted in a state of ignorance, imitate their blindness, and convict
-the defendant?  Certainly not.  Then to apply this to writings,
-prosecuted as libels, though there may have been hundreds, and thousands,
-nay tens of thousands of convictions upon them, yet, if you should be
-convinced, that what are usually called libels (and this among them)
-cannot be injurious, but so far from it, that they are innocent and even
-salutary to the state, in which they are published, would you hand over
-the publisher to punishment by a verdict of guilty?  But I am
-anticipating, I fear, my defence, and introducing too early observations,
-which will better be urged in a subsequent part of my address to you.  I
-will, therefore, pass at once to the paper charged as a libel in the
-indictment, and examine, under what circumstances it has come before you.
-And in the first place, as to the publication, without which (whatever
-the nature of the writing may be, there can be no crime) who are morally
-the publishers of this pamphlet?  Have you any evidence, whatever, that
-any one of these pamphlets was in circulation, or ever would have been
-circulated, but for the impertinent, obtrusive, sordid, and base part of
-the ministers of the Constitutional Association?  How otherwise is this
-pamphlet here?  Let us turn back to the evidence of the first witness.  He
-was the worthy servant of the Association in this and a few other recent
-instances, but for the most part, within a year and a half, the servant
-of the Society for the Suppression of Vice: a Society very different,
-indeed, from that with which we have had to deal to-day;--not that I have
-any affection even for that association: I would neither praise nor even
-be suspected of approving it, but I will not be so unjust and scandalous
-as to compare it with the Constitutional Association.  Before this
-witness was employed by that society, he was a Custom-house officer.  Are
-you, I asked him, now a Custom-house officer?  No.  How comes that?  I
-lost my place.  How old are you?  Fifty-four.  Have you any pension?  No.
-Now, gentlemen, I beg to observe, that it is not the habit of the Custom-
-house to turn away officers, who have grown grey in their service,
-without a pension; unless they have richly deserved to be so discarded
-and abandoned.  Such, gentlemen, are the instruments employed as spies by
-the acting members of this Association!  This fellow is sent out with
-instructions from the honorary secretary, Mr. Murray, who is the attorney
-for the prosecution, to purchase, not this pamphlet alone, but any
-political pamphlet, which in his judgment might be libelous.  Good God!
-to what a condition are we reduced, when, under the auspices of this
-blessed Association, discarded tide-waiters, and broken gaugers, are made
-judges of what is libelous, and leagued with an attorney, are to
-determine what may, and what may not, without the terror of a
-prosecution, issue from a free press.  Such was the course pursued: and
-can you conscientiously say, that, but for this hiring of a spy to make a
-purchase of this pamphlet for the sole purpose of founding this
-prosecution upon that very instance of sale, the public would ever have
-heard of it?  Gentlemen, it is a great happiness, and much security
-arises from it, that every person who stands forward as a prosecutor
-exposes his own conduct, as it is connected with the prosecution, to
-scrutiny and animadversion.  I have a right to assume that freedom which
-is the privilege of the bar.  I remember that in the case of the King and
-the Dean of St. Asaph, in which the present Marshal of the King's Bench
-Prison, without any apparent connection with the subject of the
-prosecution, was the prosecutor, the counsel for the defendant exercised
-this right, and the Marshal was successively the object of his ridicule
-and indignation.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--Mr. Cooper do you think it acting fairly to make this
-sort of attack on a gentleman who is not present?  Is this the practice
-of the bar?
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, I make no attack on the Marshal.  I only state
-that--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--These observations being made on one who is not
-anywise connected with this case, who is not present to answer for
-himself, and who would not be permitted if he was, what are we to
-suppose?  Can any gentleman at the bar consider this as fair?
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, I have no design to attack the Marshal either in
-his absence or presence.  I mentioned him but incidentally.  What earthly
-purpose could it answer to this case to attack him?  He _was_ the
-prosecutor in _that_ case, and I rather incautiously, perhaps, mentioned
-who the prosecutor was, by name; when I ought only to have said the
-prosecutor.  If I have done him any injustice, I beg his pardon as
-publicly for it, and thus, I give a remedy as wide as the wound.  I say
-then, gentlemen, that the prosecutor in that case, was alternately the
-object of the keenest indignation, and the most jeering ridicule, and I
-have a right to be equally as free, as the counsel in that case, with the
-prosecutors in this: but I shall by no means follow the example.  On the
-contrary, I think, we are deeply indebted to the Constitutional
-Association.  Consider how we were circumstanced when they first arose
-amongst us.  There was the state, with a standing army of only a hundred
-thousand men, and nothing besides, except the whole civil force of the
-realm, a revenue of no more than seventy millions; and the feeble
-assistance of the established law officers of the crown to prosecute
-public offenders, when this Constitutional Association in the pure spirit
-of chivalry, steps forward to help the weakness of Government, and
-succour its distress.  Now, whatever men may talk of justice, who can say
-that disinterestedness has altogether abandoned the earth?  Who can say
-that generosity has forsaken us and flown to heaven?  Let it be
-considered too, that but for their active vigilance Carlile's shop would
-not have been known.  No productions from it had ever been the subject of
-prosecution, and but for the keen scent of the Association, the rank and
-huge sedition contained in the New Year's Address might have lain in its
-covert undetected and undisturbed.  But to drop this irony and be
-serious, the law officers of the crown are fully adequate to their
-duties, and Carlile's shop was as well known to the Attorney General as
-St. Paul's to you.  For years he has not had his eyes off it.  I will
-engage that every publication, that has issued from it, and this very
-pamphlet among the rest, has passed through his hands, and under his
-review.  Yet the law officers of the crown do not appear here to
-prosecute it as a libel against the state; and I entreat you to mark
-this, for I have a right to urge it, as a strong negative proof, that
-they do not so consider it; and how can that require your condemnation
-which they (with a judgment surely very much superior to that of the
-Committee of the Constitutional Association) have not thought worthy of
-prosecution or notice?  Yes, you are actually called upon by this
-Association to deliver over to punishment the publisher of this paper,
-whilst the law officers of the crown (who neglect their duty, if they do
-not prosecute offences against the state) have thought it of a nature not
-at all requiring their interference What can be so preposterous?  So
-monstrous?  And in taking leave of this view of the case, let me once
-more ask you who have been actually the publishers of this paper?  Have
-you a single iota of evidence, which ought to satisfy your minds, that,
-but for the insidious conduct of the Association, and its spies, this
-pamphlet would ever have been before you or the public?  Is there a
-shadow of proof that one copy was ever sold, except those bought by the
-creatures employed by the honorary secretary (who is also the feed
-attorney in this prosecution) for the sole object of entangling the
-defendant in this indictment?  None, whatever.  None.  They conspired you
-see to procure and seduce (the word is neither too broad nor too long for
-their conduct) the publication for the very purpose of this prosecution.
-How then having thus suborned the offence of which they complain, can
-they dare to stand forward as prosecutors, when they themselves are the
-criminals, and ought to be the defendants.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--You mean.  Mr. Cooper, to offer some evidence of that,
-I suppose.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--None, my lord, but the evidence already before the court and
-the jury, and the strong and necessary inference from the facts proved by
-the witnesses for the prosecution themselves.
-
-Mr. GURNEY.--There were many others lying on the counter.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--What of that, does it follow that they must, therefore, have
-been sold?  In the absence of all other proof of any publication, I have
-a right, I am forced to consider the Association as the only publishers.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--In the evidence there is nothing like it.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--What, gentlemen, is it a necessary conclusion, that because
-the pamphlets were lying in the shop, they must have been sold to other
-persons?  The defendant but for their intrusion, for the sole design of
-prosecution, might have sold no others.  She might have changed her
-intention to sell.  The pamphlets might have lain like bad verses
-untouched on the shop counter, till they were turned over for waste
-paper, and not a soul have ever known of their contents.  The
-Association, therefore, by their insidious and plotted purchase for the
-sole object of prosecution, have provoked the act of publication, and
-they, who provoke crimes are the criminals, and ought to be the culprits;
-and those, who would punish the crimes that they have provoked, are
-devils, and not men; "the tempters ere the accusers."  When I contemplate
-such conduct--but I will not waste another word, or another moment of
-your time upon this miserable Association.  If I had consulted my better
-judgment, I should have passed them in silence; thus much my indignation
-has wrung from my contempt.
-
-I shall now, gentlemen, proceed to the examination of the libel, or
-rather that which is charged as a libel itself; and I shall begin with
-the last part so charged in the indictment, instead (as my learned friend
-has done) with the first; and let me beg your regard to one remarkable
-fact, that at the very point of the paper, at which the motives, and
-design of the writer present themselves to the reader; at that very point
-this indictment stops.  It has not, as you will presently see, the
-candour to proceed a single syllable farther.  I will now read the
-passage, "Reform," it says, "will be obtained when the existing
-authorities have no longer the power to withhold it, and not before, we
-shall gain it as early without petitioning as with it; and I would again
-put forward my opinion that something more than a petitioning attitude is
-necessary."  This it has been urged to you, with great emphasis, is an
-excitement to insurrection; and you are called upon to draw that
-inference, though the author immediately afterwards disavows, expressly
-disavows any such intention.  But even, if the words stood alone, I deny
-that you are compelled to such a construction.  Gentlemen, will any one
-venture to say, that I, standing in this place, and in the very exercise
-of my profession, mean any thing, but what is strictly legal, when I say
-myself, that supposing reform in Parliament be necessary, something more
-than mere petitioning is requisite to obtain it?  But in saying this, do
-I mean any thing violent or illegal?  Heaven forbid; No: but I would have
-societies formed, and meetings held for the purpose of discussing that
-momentous subject.  If reform be necessary, and the desire of a great
-majority of the country, I would have that desire shown unambiguously to
-the legislature, by resolutions and declarations at such meetings.  Who
-will deny such societies and meetings to be legal?  Yet, such meetings
-would be more than mere petitioning, much more: and the author means
-nothing beyond this; for I say, that in the absence of all other
-criteria, the only means of judging of a writer's intentions are his
-words.  Look then at the words which immediately follow the assertion,
-that "something more than a petitioning attitude is necessary."  If those
-words had been included in the indictment, this prosecution must have
-been at an end upon merely reading the charge, and those words,
-therefore, the Association avoided, as cautiously as they would the
-poison of a viper.  They felt, that though the indicted words standing
-alone might perhaps admit of a doubt for a moment, yet the context
-completely explained them, and gave an air of perfect innocence to the
-whole passage.  But you shall judge for yourselves: I will read the
-passage,--"Something more than a petitioning attitude is necessary.  At
-this moment I would not say a word about insurrection; but I would
-strongly recommend union, activity, and co-operation.  Be ready and
-steady to meet any concurrent circumstance."  Now what kind of union,
-activity, and co-operation does he mean?  Is it military association,
-marches, and attack?  No.  Hear the writer's own words again:--"The Union
-Rooms at Manchester and Stockport are admirable models of co-operation,
-and are more calculated than any thing else to strengthen the body of
-reformers."  For what do the reformers assemble in these rooms?  How do
-they co-operate there?  Is it to consult how they shall arm and organize
-themselves, and seize with a violent hand the reform which they despair
-of gaining by petition?  Nothing like it.  The writer himself still tells
-you his meaning.  "Here (that is at the Manchester and Stockport rooms)
-children are educated, and adults instruct each other.  Here there is a
-continual and frequent communication between all the reformers in those
-towns."  This, then, and no other, is the co-operation which the author
-intended, and proposes.  If any man, taking the paper in his hand and
-reading the whole paragraph, can say that any thing more is meant, to his
-reason I should cease to appeal.  I should sit down in silent despair of
-making any impression on such an understanding; but you, gentlemen, I ask
-you, adding the words which I have read to the broken passage, which is
-insidiously separated and included in the indictment, can there be a
-doubt remaining in any rational and unprejudiced mind, that the union and
-co-operation called for by this Address from those who desire reform in
-Parliament, is nothing more than the establishment at other places, of
-rooms, on the model of those at Stockport and Manchester; where children
-and adults are instructed, and information disseminated on the subject of
-Parliamentary Reform.  And if this is all that is meant, there is an end
-of this part of the indictment; for it cannot be libelous to recommend in
-a writing the people to do that, which it is perfectly legal to do.
-
-With regard to reform itself, I cannot know, whether any of you are
-advocates for it or opposed to it, nor is it requisite that I should; I
-do not ask you to think or say with me, and others, that reform in
-Parliament is necessary, and that nothing but reform can save the country
-from ruin; all that I ask of you is to allow me and others credit for the
-conscientiousness of our opinions, and charitably admit, if yours are
-opposite, that though we may be mistaken in our judgments, we must not of
-necessity be criminal in our intentions.  I leave you and every man to
-the free exercise of your thoughts, and the free enjoyment of the
-conclusions to which they lead you.  Let this liberality be reciprocal,
-and concede the same freedom to others which you demand for yourselves.  I
-have always thought that a difference in religious and political matters
-need not and ought not to create hostility of feeling, and sever those,
-who would otherwise be friends.  I myself enjoy the friendship of
-several, who entertain very different opinions from mine upon those
-subjects; and yet that difference has not, and never shall, on my part,
-at least, disturb our friendship.  In all questions in which you cannot
-have mathematical demonstration, there may be fair, honest, conscientious
-difference of opinion; and you cannot have geometrical proof in questions
-of religion, politics, and morals.  The very nature of the subjects
-altogether excludes it.  To expect it, as Bishop Sanderson says, would be
-as absurd as to expect to see with the ear and to hear with the eye.  So
-various are our opinions upon these subjects, that we not only differ
-from one another upon them, but at different times we find we differ from
-ourselves; and, as another learned churchman, in more recent times, has
-said, what could be more unjust than to quarrel with other men for
-differing in opinion from him, when no two men ever differed more from
-one another than he at different times differed on the very same subject
-from himself.  Under this state of uncertainty in human judgment, I call
-upon you, and I am sure I shall not call in vain, to be slow to condemn
-the opinions of others, because they are different from your own; and,
-therefore, if any of you should think reform in Parliament needless, or
-even dangerous, I still call upon you (though the writer of this paper
-should be a reformer, and even though he is called in reproach a radical
-reformer) not to condemn the defendant in this case through prejudice
-against the author's opinions; but solely to enquire (be those opinions
-ever so just or ever so absurd) whether he is sincere in entertaining
-them; for, if he be (as I shall show you presently from the highest
-authority) the law does not consider him criminal.  Try him by this test,
-and this test, and this alone; and then, whatever may be your verdict,
-you will be free from reproach, and secure to yourselves quiet by day,
-and sound slumbers by night; for you will have discharged your duty to
-yourselves, to the defendant, and to the country.
-
-With regard, gentlemen, to the other part of the alleged libel, I must
-bespeak your patience; for I am afraid that I shall be drawn by my
-comments upon it into considerable length.  (I am afraid, gentlemen, I
-weary you, and I am sorry for it.  If I had had leisure, I would have
-condensed my observations; but, under the circumstances I have disclosed
-to you, I hope you will forgive me for occupying more of your attention
-than I would otherwise have done.  I really have not had time to be
-short.)  To return to the passage in the paper, which is first charged as
-a libel: it denies the existence of any constitution in Great Britain.
-Now whether there be anything malicious and criminal in this, depends
-entirely upon the meaning which the author attaches to the word
-constitution.  I confess it is a word that gives me a very indistinct and
-uncertain idea; and I believe that if any of you were now suddenly to ask
-yourselves what you understood by it, you would find you were not very
-ready to give yourselves an answer; and if you could even satisfactorily
-answer yourselves, you would find if you were to go further and question
-your neighbour, that he would give you a very different definition from
-your own.  In itself it means nothing more than simply a standing or
-placing together; and it really seems to me rather hard and venturous to
-indict a man for denying the existence of something (whatever it may be)
-expressed by the most indefinite term in our whole language.  But, if we
-were agreed upon the ideas which should be attached to the word, let us
-examine whether, allowing for a certain freedom of expression and the
-earnest eagerness with which a man who is sincere in his doctrines
-enforces them in his composition, a writer may not, without being exposed
-to a charge of criminal intention, assert that there is no constitution
-in this country.  And let us take with us to this examination, that a man
-is not to be too strictly tied to words, when under the impulse of warm
-and keen feelings, and when the thoughts flow, as it were, at once from
-the heart into the pen, he sits down to excite his countrymen to their
-good, or warn them of their danger.  You must not think to bind him down
-with the shackles of verbal criticism, when he is too intent upon his
-theme exactly to measure his expressions.  Now, that the writer of this
-paper is sincere in his opinions, whatever the quality of those opinions
-is, it is difficult not to believe.  He published his opinions, though he
-exposed himself to punishment for them, and he perseveres in them while
-he is suffering a heavy punishment.  You can have no more convincing
-proof of sincerity than this.  But, what if a political writer has, in
-the warmth of composition, asserted that in England we have no
-constitution, who can misunderstand him?  We cannot suppose he meant that
-there was a dissolution of all law and government; because we know and
-feel the contrary.  Few would have occasion to ask him what he meant.  If,
-however, he were asked, he should explain by telling you, that the
-constitution in theory is very much corrupted from the practice; and I
-and you, and every person must admit, that the practice has strayed wide
-from the theory; and, forced to admit this, I assert with a writer, who
-(whatever was thought of him once, and whilst those who were the objects
-of his reproach still lived) is now the pride and boast of the country,
-both for the supreme elegance and the principles of his political
-writings, that "wherever the practice deviates from the theory so far the
-practice is vicious and corrupt."  Now, saying no more than this, and
-when it would have been the merest stupidity to understand him literally,
-how can the writer be convicted of a design to bring the Government into
-hatred and contempt, because he has expressed his meaning by saying
-figuratively "there is no Constitution."  But he has previously said,
-that to talk about the British Constitution is, in his opinion,
-dishonesty.  I know he has.  I did not mean to pass it, I will not,
-gentlemen, shrink from any part of the passage, for I feel that it cannot
-bear with any heavy pressure against me.  "To talk of the British
-Constitution is, in my opinion, a sure proof of dishonesty."  Here it
-will be seen that the only exception that can be taken to this sentence
-is the mere mode of expression.  If a man were to talk to me of the
-Constitution of England, and, by omitting all notice of its aberrations
-in practice from its theory, by which he would leave it free to me to
-suspect, that he would insinuate that the theory and the practice were
-the same, I should certainly say, that he was exhibiting want of candour.
-I might, perhaps, think dishonesty, rather too strong a term for such
-conduct; but I should not scruple to say, that he was disingenuous, and
-he _would_ be guilty of a species of dishonesty; for all the
-disingenuousness is to a degree dishonest; and, since the meaning is the
-same, why should we quarrel at a mere difference of expression?  The
-author proceeds to say, "If we speak of the Spanish Constitution, we have
-something tangible; there is a substance and meaning as well as sound."
-So that it is clear he was saying, that we had no Constitution in
-comparison with that just promulged by the Spanish nation.  The Spaniards
-we know have recently gained by their own glorious efforts, that
-political liberty to which they had been so long strangers; and their
-Legislature had just published a code of fundamental laws, few in number,
-but most comprehensive in securing freedom to the people, for whom they
-are framed.  They are (comparatively with the laws of countries, in which
-the frame of government is old, and complicated) not numerous, but the
-mind may collect them almost at a glance, and possess itself of them with
-a single effort of the understanding.  In this view of the subject,
-without doubt, the Constitution of Spain is tangible; and in this sense
-he is justified in asserting that our own Constitution is not tangible;
-for is it not notorious that our laws are spread through so many Acts of
-Parliament of doubtful and difficult construction, and so many books of
-reports, containing the common law of the land (and in which there are no
-few conflicting decisions) that the whole life of a man does not suffice
-to achieve a knowledge of them.  So multifarious and infinite and
-perplexed is our code, that even amongst those whose profession is the
-law it is not possible to meet with an accomplished lawyer.
-
-The defendant here fainted, and was taken out of court.  After the
-interruption which this circumstance occasioned had subsided, Mr. COOPER
-proceeded--
-
-Gentlemen, I lament in common with many others that this evil has
-attended an extended degree of civilization and trade--that our laws have
-become too numerous and complicated for the capacity of the mind.  That
-they are so, is not my opinion alone, but that of the Legislature itself.
-I believe that a committee of the Houses of Parliament has been sitting
-and still sits for the object of reducing our laws to some limit in their
-number and some order as to their design; without which our Constitution,
-to use the words of the writer, cannot be tangible; a tangible shape, at
-present it does not possess, for that cannot be tangible which spreads
-itself over a boundless extent, that eludes, and defies the grasp of the
-human intellect.
-
-Having disposed of thus much of this paragraph, I come to the words, on
-which my learned friend, Mr. Gurney, laid such extreme stress in his
-address to you.  "Our very laws, are corrupt and partial both in
-themselves, and in their administration.  In fact corruption _as
-notorious as the sun at noon-day_ is an avowed part of the system, and is
-denominated the necessary oil for the wheels of Government.  It is a most
-pernicious oil to the interests of the people."  This is strong language
-I admit, and would perhaps be censurable as imprudent, at least, if the
-very expressions themselves, which the writer uses, did not guide us
-directly to the facts to which he alludes, and explain the passage.  He
-alludes most manifestly to the celebrated exclamation of a person at the
-time that he was in the seat of office, the first commoner of the realm,
-and who instead of being reproached for his words has retired from his
-office with the honours which he has merited for his services in it.  It
-transpired in the House of Commons, that seats had been trafficked for as
-articles of sale and purchase for money.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--Is that a subject at all relating to the question
-which is now before the jury?
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, I am going to use the declaration of the Speaker,
-as a matter of history, and to show, that the words charged as criminal
-were an allusion to it; and if so, were not criminally used.  I do not
-wish, nay I would avoid the introduction of any improper or inflammatory
-topics.  I would not attempt to serve my client by such means.  When it
-was exposed, that there had been certain trafficking for seats in the
-House of Commons, the Speaker used these words (and it is to them, I
-would show the jury, the writer of the paper alludes), "practices are as
-notorious as the sun at noon-day at which our ancestors would have
-started with indignation," and that gentlemen--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--Will you allow me to ask you Mr. Cooper, I want to
-know where you get that from.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, from all the reports of the speeches in the
-newspapers of the day which were never contradicted.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I beg to state, that, whatever passed in Parliament,
-cannot be questioned anywhere else.  Whatever the Speaker said in
-Parliament, he was justified in saying.  But I have no means of knowing,
-nor have you, whether he ever did say so or not.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I am not questioning anything he said in the House of
-Commons--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--If Mr. Abbot had said it any where else, it would have
-been a libel on the constitution; if he said it there, we cannot enquire
-about it; it would be a breach of privilege.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--Your Lordship asked me, how I came to know that he said so.
-My Lord, I have seen it in all the recorded speeches of the House of
-Commons in the published debates in Parliament, and--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I say there are no recorded speeches of the House of
-Commons to which we can listen or attend.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--Certainly, there are no records of speeches in the House of
-Commons in the sense in which the proceedings of courts of law are
-records, nor is there in that sense any recorded speech of Cicero or of
-Lord Chatham; but, my lord, will your lordship say, that I am not
-entitled in my address to the jury to use that which has been reported as
-part of a speech of Lord Chatham or of Cicero; because there are no
-records filed, as in the courts of law, of their speeches!  I submit that
-they are matters of history; and that, as such, I am at liberty to use
-them.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I tell you, Mr. Cooper, what the distinction is.  If
-you publish, that, which may be said to be a speech of Lord Chatham's,
-and it may be an accurate report of his speech, you may be guilty of
-publishing a libel, though the place, in which that speech was delivered
-gave a liberty to the speech.  You know it has been so decided in my Lord
-Abingdon's case, who published his own speeches.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--That, my Lord, was a libel upon a private individual.  I
-say--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I say you have no knowledge of anything which is said
-in the Houses of Parliament.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--With great submission I re-urge it as a matter of history,
-and as such I would use it whether the fact is ten years old or ten
-thousand, I submit makes no difference.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--Mr. Cooper, I have told you my opinion; if you don't
-choose to submit to it, the best way will be to go on, perhaps.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--With the utmost deference to your Lordship--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--The Court of King's Bench has decided this very point,
-within the last two terms, against what you are contending for.  If your
-own opinion be the better one, proceed.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--Gentlemen, I was going to say, when the Speaker of the House
-of Commons exclaimed (I will not repeat particularly upon what occasion)
-that our ancestors would have started with indignation at practices which
-were "as notorious as the sun at noon-day," can you have any doubt in
-your mind that the writer of this pamphlet alluded to that exclamation?
-Why look at the passage, see, he uses the same words.  "Corruption is as
-notorious as the sun at noon-day" is his very expression.  He is citing
-the Speaker's own words, and cannot but be supposed to be speaking of the
-very same facts.  It was proposed, on that occasion, to impeach a
-nobleman, whom I will not name and need not, for those practices.  This
-however was resisted by almost all, and even by some who were friendly to
-Parliamentary reform, and politically adverse to the noblemen, to whom I
-allude, not, indeed, upon any pretext of his innocence of the practices,
-charged against him; but on the sole ground that those practices were so
-general and notorious that they would condemn themselves in sentencing
-him; and among so many guilty, it would be unjust to single him alone for
-punishment.  Yes; although they were practices, at which our ancestors
-would have started with indignation, they were the practices of numbers,
-and the practices were as notorious as the sun at noon-day; and,
-therefore, the proposition of impeachment was rejected, and rightly; for
-as it has been said by the first speaker of all antiquity, we cannot call
-men to a strict account for their actions, while we are infirm in our own
-conduct.  If this is the state of one branch of our Legislature, and if
-it is avowed, and by those who would conceal it, if concealment were
-possible (but it would be as easy to conceal the sun).  Good God! shall a
-man be prosecuted and pronounced guilty, and consigned to punishment for
-affirming that our laws are corrupt; that there is corruption in the
-system, and that corruption is an avowed part of that system? when in so
-affirming he only echoes the exclamation of the Speaker himself, that
-"practices, at which our ancestors would have started with indignation,
-were as notorious as the sun at noon-day?"  Why, if as the Speaker
-declared, such practices exist, and affect the most important branch of
-the Legislature, I myself say, that there is corruption in the very
-vitals of the Constitution itself.  In such a state of things, to talk of
-the Constitution, is mockery and insult; and I say there is no
-Constitution.  What, then, has the writer of this pamphlet said more than
-has been avowed by the highest authority, and everybody knows?  And now,
-can you lay your hands on your hearts, and by your verdict of Guilty send
-the defendant to linger in a jail for having published what the author
-has, under such circumstances, written?
-
-Having thus concluded my observations on the passages selected from this
-paper for prosecution, I will, for I have a right to read it all if I
-please, direct your attention to another part of it.  Let us examine
-whether other passages will not convince us, that (though he should be
-mistaken in some of his opinions) the whole was written with a single and
-honest intention.  I myself never read a paper, which, on the whole,
-appeared to be written with more candour.  There is an openness that does
-not even spare the writer himself.  Indeed, with regard to his opinions,
-peculiar and mistaken as he may be, he seems himself, sincerely to
-believe in them.  He is now suffering for those opinions, and suffering
-with a firmness, which to those who think him wrong, is stubbornness;
-and, thus, he affords another proof of the extreme impolicy of attempting
-to impose silence by prosecutions, and extort from the mind the
-abjuration of opinions by external and physical force.  It never
-succeeds; but, on the contrary, works the very opposite effect to that
-which is its object.  As the author from whom I have just now cited says,
-with extreme force and equal beauty, "a kind of maternal feeling is
-excited in the mind that makes us love the cause for which we suffer."  It
-is not for the mere point of expression that it has been said, the blood
-of the martyrs is the seed of the church.  It is not theological doctrine
-alone, that thrives and nourishes under persecution.  The principle of
-the aphorism applies equally to all opinions upon all subjects.  There is
-widely spread through our nature an inclination to suspect that there is
-a secret value in that from which others attempt to drive us by force;
-and from this, joined to other powerful motives, the persecution of men
-for their tenets, whatever they may be, only draws their attachment
-closer, and rivets their affections to them.  Every effort to make them
-abandon the obnoxious doctrine renders them more steadfast to it.  The
-loppings, which are designed to destroy, serve but as prunings, from
-which it shoots with increased vigour, and strikes its root still deeper.
-Has it not always been seen, that persecution has bred in men that
-stubborn resolution, which present death has not been able to shake; and,
-what is more, an eagerness to disseminate amongst others those principles
-for which they have themselves been prosecuted and pursued.  I therefore,
-from my very soul, deprecate every species of persecution on account of
-religious and political opinions, not only from its illiberality, but bad
-policy; and I am full of hope, that you will by your verdict to day show,
-that you have an equal aversion to it.
-
-To recur, gentlemen, to the pamphlet; I submit to you that there is a
-general air of sincerity in the language of the writer throughout the
-composition, which obliges us to believe, that, however mistaken you may
-think him in his opinions, he is honest in his intentions.  He says in
-another part of the address "Every government must derive its support
-from the body of the people; and it follows, as a matter of course, that
-the people must have a power to withhold their supplies."  Which is very
-true: for, where there is a shadow of political liberty, a revenue can
-only be raised by taxes to which the people have consented: it being
-allowed that where there is taxation without representation tyranny
-begins.  Now, if the writer really believes that there are corrupt
-practices in the Government, who can blame him, for proposing (by
-abstinence from those articles which are taxed and yield a revenue so
-large that it supports a system of misgovernment) to compel our rulers,
-by a diminution of their means of undue influence to a regard to economy
-and a just administration?  I know, indeed, that this doctrine is
-considered offensive; nor am I prepared to say with confidence that under
-the wide construction which has been given to the law against conspiracy,
-persons who were to combine to force such a change by abstaining from all
-exciseable articles might not be indicted for it as a conspiracy.  It
-may, for aught that I know, be even indictable to unite and desist from
-using tea, tobacco and snuff to coerce the government into reform by a
-reduction of the revenue raised from those articles; but you are not
-sitting there to try an indictment for a conspiracy; and, therefore,
-though this passage may not be pleasing, I read it, without hesitation,
-because it leads to others, which I think demand your consideration and
-attention.  "We must deny ourselves, he proceeds to say, those little
-luxuries in which we have long indulged.  Why not?  Who gains, and who
-loses by this denial?  We do not rob ourselves, we only check our
-passions; and, in doing this, we strengthen both our bodies and our
-purses.  I would appeal to those, who, for the last year, have had the
-courage and the virtue to abstain from the use of malt and spirituous
-liquors, foreign tea and coffee, tobacco, snuff, &c., whether they do not
-feel satisfaction from the change of habit; and whether they are not
-better in health and pocket, without the use of these things."  This,
-gentlemen, is a sermon on temperance, and I wish it were generally
-followed.  I apprehend that this is not only innocent, but highly
-meritorious.  For my own part I shall maintain the opinion (though ten
-thousand Mandevilles should write, and imagine they have proved private
-vices public benefits) that it is infinitely more important and
-beneficial that the mass of the people should be temperate and healthy,
-though poor, than that an immense revenue should be collected from their
-addiction to sensual pleasures and vicious luxuries.  I say vicious,
-because all moral writers concur in calling those sensualities vices, as
-free indulgence in them leads to a state of total dissipation of mind
-under which scarcely any profligacy seems a crime.  The writer continues:
-"There are a variety of other things which are heavily excised, the use
-of which might be prudently dropped; and which are not essential either
-to the health or comfort of mankind.  Speaking for myself, I can say, I
-do not recommend more than I practise; and that my food for the last year
-has consisted chiefly of milk and bread and raw native fruits.  I have
-been fatter and stronger than in any former year of my life; and I feel
-as if I had obtained a new system by the change.  _My natural disposition
-is luxurious_, and under a better system of government, or when this
-rational warfare was not called for, I should at all times live up to my
-income."  And here, gentlemen, I beg you to mark, that so unreserved, so
-much in earnest is the writer in his object, that he does not attempt
-even to conceal his own faults, and weakness.  I ask, whether you have
-ever found men, who were acting and writing with duplicity and sinister
-intentions, reproach or expose themselves?  But the writer of this paper
-practises no reserve; he conceals nothing, though the disclosure should
-be against himself, but
-
-         Pours out all himself as plain,
-   As dowright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.
-
-He concludes this exhortation to temperance with this sentence, "Shrink
-not then you male and female reformers from this virtuous mode of
-warfare; for to conquer our injurious habits and our enemy at the same
-time is a double conquest, to obtain which both man and woman and child
-can very properly assist."  I read this conclusion of the paragraph,
-gentlemen, and I beg your attention to it, because it makes it manifest
-that the change which the writer proposes to compass is a change by a
-moral operation through legal and peaceful means; and that he never
-dreamed of inculcating, as it is insinuated, any appeal to violence and
-arms.
-
-I have now, gentlemen, concluded all the particular observations which I
-had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the
-least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to
-the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal?  For it is your duty to
-construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if
-they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless
-you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any other
-than a criminal sense.  That he had no criminal design, is apparent
-enough, even from the indicted passages; and by reading the context is
-put beyond the possibility of a doubt.  There are many other passages as
-well as that, which I have read, which tend equally to the inference of
-the sincerity with which the whole paper was written, but which I will
-not consume your time in reading, as you will have the whole before you
-when you deliberate on your verdict, and they must themselves strike your
-attention.
-
-Now, gentlemen, I cannot tell, how you feel, but I have no opinion more
-deeply impressed on my mind than that the prosecution of such political
-papers as this before you, as state libels, is perfectly unnecessary;
-and, so far from doing good, is, if any mischief can be produced by such
-writings, mischievous.  Prosecution excites the public regard, and a
-curiosity that will not rest till it is gratified, towards that which,
-under silent neglect, would hardly gain attention; if indeed, it did not
-drop quite dead-born from the press.  But I deny wholly that any
-political writings, whatever their nature, have done or ever could do any
-harm to political society.  Let those who advocate the contrary opinion
-show you a single instance of a state injured or destroyed by
-inflammatory political writings.  The republic of Athens was not thrown
-down by libels: no--she perished for want of that widely diffused
-excitement to courage, and patriotism, and virtue, which a press
-perfectly free and unshackled can alone spread throughout a whole people.
-She was not ruined by anarchy into which she was thrown by seditious
-writings, but because, sunk in luxury and enervated by refinement, it was
-impossible to rouse the Athenians to the energy and ardour of facing and
-withstanding the enemy in the field.  Rome too--as little was her
-gigantic power levelled with the dust by libels, but perished from the
-corruptions of the tyrannical government of the Emperors, which drained
-the nation of all its ancient virtue, and bred the slavery which produces
-an utter debasement of the mind (and which never could have been, if a
-free publication of political opinion had been suffered), and thus she
-fell an easy conquest and prey to the barbarians and Goths.  Both these
-renowned states fell, because their governments and the people wanted the
-goad of a free press to excite them to that public spirit and virtue,
-without which no country is capable of political independence and
-liberty.  How our ears have been dinned with the French revolution, and
-how often have we been gravely told, that it was caused by the writings
-of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Helvetius.  Ridiculous!  I have read the
-history of those times and have read it very differently.  I am forced to
-understand that the inextricable and utter embarrassment of the French
-finances, the selfish and insolent luxury of the nobles, the desperate
-wretchedness of the lower orders of the people, and the profligate
-licentiousness of the Court, were the causes and the only causes of that
-great event.  If the finances of that country had been in order, the
-nobles moderate, the poor unoppressed, and any public spirit in the
-Government, Voltaire, and Helvetius, and Rousseau, might have racked
-their brains for thought, and written themselves blind, before they would
-have raised a single arm, or even excited a single voice to exclaim for
-change.  A perfect freedom of the press would, indeed, have prevented the
-causes which roused the people to assert themselves; but the causes once
-in existence, all the writers in the world could not one moment have
-either retarded the revolution or accelerated it.  It is not the
-representations of a political writer that can alter the nature of
-things.  Whose ingenuity, and wit, and eloquence, will persuade me that I
-am cold when I am warm; that I am hungry when I am full; a slave when I
-am free; and miserable, when I feel myself happy?  While such is my
-state, what writings would drive me into insurrection?  And if the
-contrary is my condition, what stimulus could I want to free myself from
-it?  What persuasions could possibly even delay my utmost efforts for a
-change?  It is not by the prosecution of political libels that the
-stability of a government and domestic peace is ever secured.  No; let
-the Government pursue its only end, the public good, and let every man,
-or at least a large majority, have more or less an interest in the
-preservation of the State, and then all the writers in the country, from
-the highest down to the obscurest corners of Grub-Street, may wear their
-fingers to the roots of the nails with their pens, before they will work
-the slightest discontent in the public or change in the government.
-Nothing, gentlemen, is more common with writers and speakers, than to
-discourse of states by figures drawn from the government of a ship; and I
-will tell you what I once heard from a friend of mine who has served his
-country in our navy, and which at the time most forcibly struck my mind.
-"When I was stationed in the Mediterranean (he said, speaking of the
-occurrences of his professional experience) we made captures of the
-vessels of all countries except the Greeks, but we never captured them;
-for they were always vigilant, active, and brave.  We never surprised
-them; if we chased them, they escaped us; and if we attempted to cut them
-from the shelter to which we had driven them, we were repulsed."  What
-created this difference?  By the rules of navigation amongst the Greek
-islands, every man, from the captain down to the lowest cabin-boy, has,
-more or less, a share in the vessel.  They watched, therefore,--they
-laboured and fought for their own interest and property.  Let those who
-sit at the helm and govern us imitate this policy.  Let them extend the
-elective franchise; let them restore us to a condition in which industry
-and skill may find employment and be secure in their gain.  Give men an
-interest and ownership in the state, and it shall never be upset by
-libels; not a seditious or mutinous voice shall be heard; and what
-foreign enemy shall dare to lift a hand against us?  But keep the people
-excluded from their share in the representation, and pressed down by
-taxation, and millions of prosecutions against libels will not save the
-country from sinking in ruin.
-
-Let me now, gentlemen, call your attention back to the argument I used
-almost at setting out in my address to you, by which I attempted to
-maintain that you are not bound, whatever you may judge the intention of
-the writer to have been, to pronounce a publication a libel by your
-verdict, if you should be of opinion that such a publication cannot be
-mischievous, and that prosecution of it is unnecessary.  If it can do no
-harm, it is no nuisance at common law to have written a paper, whatever
-its nature may be, and if it could be no nuisance, you are bound in duty
-to acquit the defendant, who is only the publisher.  The doctrine for
-which I am contending with regard to this paper, has been acted upon by
-the government of one free country, with regard to all political
-writings, whatever their intention or nature.  The Legislature of the
-State of Virginia has actually _legislated against_ such prosecutions,
-and declared them totally unnecessary.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--That is not the law of this country.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I only use it my Lord as part of my speech in argument.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I will tell you what I am bound to tell the jury.  I
-shall tell them that we have nothing to do here with what may be
-expedient, we are not legislating here--the question is whether this is a
-proper prosecution?
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I feel that it is exceedingly important to use as matter of
-argument, and as a part of my speech.  If your Lordship stops me I know
-that it will be my duty to submit.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--All this is only drawing them away from the question
-they are to consider.  With the propriety of instituting the prosecution
-they have nothing to do; the only questions they have to determine,
-are--Is that paper a libel, and has the defendant published it?  An Act
-of the Assembly of Virginia has no validity in this country.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, I do not cite it as a statute of this realm to
-which we are bound to pay legal attention--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--We are bound to pay no attention to it.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--My Lord, I only use it to show that other men have been of
-the opinion which I have expressed to your Lordship and the jury.  If
-your Lordship insists on my not addressing myself to the jury upon it, I
-know too well the deference that is due from me to the Bench to persevere
-in attempting it.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--No, I don't insist upon it.  But, Mr. Cooper, can you
-deceive yourself so much as to think this has anything to do with the
-question?  I shall tell the jury to pay no attention to it.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--Your Lordship will make any observations your condescension
-may lead you to make, as well on this as on any other part of the
-defence.  I believe the course which I wish to take was taken on a
-similar occasion by a man who united the soundest and correctest judgment
-with the brightest imagination--I mean Lord Erskine--he--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I knew him for thirty odd years at the bar, and I
-never in all my life knew him address himself to points such as
-these--that is all I can say.  I know what is due to the liberty of the
-bar, and I shall cherish a love for its freedom to the latest hour of my
-life.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--If your lordship refuses me--
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--No, I don't refuse you.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I think it necessary to my case.  The preamble
-is--(gentlemen, I am sorry to detain you, but I have a most important
-duty to discharge.  If in addressing you, I am taking a course which I
-ought not, I assure you it is an error of judgment and not of design.  I
-declare most sincerely, that I am addressing to you arguments which I
-should attend to if they were addressed to myself in such a case.  His
-Lordship will have a right to make what observations he pleases, and of
-course I offer this and every other argument to you liable to the honour
-he may confer upon me of condescending to notice anything I have said or
-may say.  You, gentlemen, will, I know, regard my observations or
-arguments solely as you think them forcible or weak; if they are the
-former you will attend to them, if the latter reject them.  And with this
-observation I shall now proceed to read to you the preamble to the Act of
-the Legislative Assembly of Virginia.)
-
-   "It is time enough for the rightful purposes of Civil Government, for
-   its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
-   against peace and good order, and that truth is great and will prevail
-   if left to herself, and that she is the proper and sufficient
-   antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict,
-   unless, by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free
-   argument and debate: errors ceasing to be dangerous, when it is
-   permitted freely to contradict them."
-
-Thus, you see, by an Act of the Legislature of that country, passed by
-those who had all the knowledge of history before their eyes, and ample
-experience in their own times, I am fully supported in the position that
-prosecutions of this kind are not only useless but hurtful.  By free
-argument and debate errors cease to be dangerous, if they are not
-exploded; but attempts to stifle even errors by power and punishment,
-provoke a stubborn adherence to them, and awake an eager spirit of
-propagation.  If erroneous positions are published, meet them by
-argument, and refutation must ensue.  If falsehood uses the press to
-promulge her doctrines, let truth oppose her with the same weapon.  Let
-the press answer the press, and what is there to fear?  Shall I be told
-that the propensity of human nature is so base and evil that it will
-listen to falsehood and turn a deaf ear to truth?  To assert so is not
-only scandalous to human nature, but impious towards the Creator.  We are
-placed here imperfect indeed, and erring; but still with preponderance of
-virtue over vice.  The Deity has sent us from his hands with qualities
-fitting us for civil society: it is our natural state; and we know that
-civil society is sapped by vice and supported by virtue: if, therefore,
-our disposition to good did not redound over the evil a state of society
-could not be maintained.  It would indeed be an impiety little short of
-blasphemy to the great Being who has created us, to say, that mankind at
-large are eagerly inclined to what is vicious, but turn with aversion
-from what is moral and good.  Yet this, whatever they may avow, must be
-the opinion of those who say that good doctrine from the press cannot be
-left with safety to oppose bad.
-
-Now, gentlemen, not only am I not without the corroboration of this
-enactment of the Legislature of Virginia for my humble opinions, but the
-Act of Virginia is itself not without the very highest human sanction, as
-I shall show you by a passage which I am about to cite from the work of a
-man, with whom, in my mind, the writings of all other men are but as the
-ill-timed uninformed prattlings of children--a man from whom to differ in
-opinion is but another phrase to be wrong.  Need I, after this, name him?
-for was there ever more than one man who could be identified with such a
-description?  I mean Locke, the great champion of civil freedom.  In this
-work on government he says--
-
-   "Perhaps it will be said, that the people being ignorant and always
-   discontented, to lay the foundations of government in the unsteady
-   opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose it to certain
-   ruin, and no government will be able long to subsist if the people may
-   set up a new legislature whenever they take offence at the old.  To
-   this I answer, quite the contrary, people are not so easy got out of
-   their old forms as some are apt to suggest; they are hardly to be
-   prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have
-   been accustomed to, and if there be any original defects or
-   adventitious ones introduced by time or corruption, it is not an easy
-   thing to be changed, even where all the world sees there is an
-   opportunity for it.  This slowness and aversion in the people to quit
-   their old constitutions has in the many revolutions which have been
-   seen in this kingdom still kept us to, or, after some intervals of
-   fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to our old legislature
-   of King, Lords and Commons."
-
-Such is the opinion of this greatest of men, formed on the most
-consummate wisdom, enriched by observation, during times which afforded
-no small degree of experience.  Upon his authority, then, that men are
-not to be excited to sudden discontent, and passion for hasty change, I
-assert, that there is no danger to be apprehended from the freest
-political discussions; and consequently no need of their condemnation by
-a jury's verdict of Guilty.
-
-Milton, too, the greatest of poets, and hardly less a politician, was of
-the same sentiment as to the firmness of the people, and thought it might
-safely be left to them to read what they pleased, and to their reason and
-discretion, what to object and what to adopt, without any other
-interference.  It is his Areopagitica, in which he contends for
-unlicensed printing--an oration addressed from his closet to the
-Parliament of England, and which has been cited by Lord Mansfield
-himself, on the bench.  His words are--"Nor is it to the common people
-less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous of them that we cannot
-trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a
-giddy, vicious and ungrounded people?  That this is care or love of them
-we cannot pretend."
-
-Such are the sentiments of Milton, in that noble effort of united
-argument and eloquence, which I should not fear to hold up against the
-most splendid orations of antiquity.
-
-Having thus, I submit, made good my position, that political papers,
-whatever their description, can produce no mischief, and that there is no
-need to prosecute them; I will now show you, that not only can
-publications, containing false opinions, do no mischief, but that they
-actually produce benefit, and that therefore not they, but the
-prosecutions, which would check, and stifle them are injurious.  Is it
-meant to be contended that error is stronger than truth; folly more
-powerful than reason, and irreligion than religion?  No man, in his
-senses, will maintain such propositions.  On the contrary, error has
-always been dispersed before reason, and infidelity by religion.  The
-appearance of error and falsehood has always roused Truth to rise to the
-work of refutation.  Even the sublime truths of religion have never been
-so completely demonstrated, and conviction and faith have never been so
-firmly fixed in the minds of men as by those books of controversy which
-have been drawn forth by attacks upon Christianity; and which, but for
-the publications denying the authenticity of the religion, would never
-have been in existence; but, invaluable as they are, the world must have
-wanted them.  As to political writings, is it not notorious, that the
-very best expositions of the nature of civil society and government, are
-solely to be ascribed to the conflicts of reason with the false and
-loathsome doctrines of passive obedience and divine indefeasible right,
-which found their way into the world by the freedom of publication?  Even
-that great work, the treatise of Locke on Government, itself, which is
-justly regarded as the political Bible (I mean no irreverence) of
-Englishmen, would never have seen the light, but that it was written to
-refute the base and detestable tenets of Barclay and Filmer.  Their
-political treatises were false and slavish, and even illegal; for they
-were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the
-Parliament; and which he would not have been if it had not been an
-offence to maintain and publish such opinions.  Yet were not their
-falsehoods and errors useful and beneficial?  Did they not provoke Locke
-to rise in all the majesty and strength of truth and cast down Filmer and
-his doctrines into the lowest abyss of contempt, never again to emerge?
-See, now, if the government of those days had prosecuted Barclay and
-Filmer, and suppressed their books by power instead of leaving them to be
-demolished by reasoning, what would have been the consequence?  The
-mighty mind of Locke would not have been called into action, and the
-total refutation and utter explosion of Filmer would not have been
-effected.  By criminal prosecutions the odious positions would only have
-been suppressed for a time, not as they now are, extinguished for ever;
-and the base and degrading doctrines of passive obedience and divine
-right, which are the stigma of the times in which they prevailed, might
-have been the disgrace and reproach of ours.
-
-But supposing that prosecutions for political writings were in any
-respect politic, useful, or wise, will they prevent their publication?  No
-more than your strong and violent revenue laws have been able to suppress
-the rise of illicit stills in Ireland and Scotland.  Even if by dint of
-the terror of prosecutions the press in this city could be reduced to
-such awe and subjection, that everything that issued from it was as flat
-and unmeaning as the most arbitrary government could desire, its
-inhabitants would still gratify their thirst for political discussion and
-information.  They would compose and print as they distil, in the depth
-of deserts and the solitude of mountains, and under the cover of darkness
-drop the pamphlets into the houses, or scatter them in the streets, and
-the obstacles to circulation will serve only to inflame the desire for
-possession.  This would be the result of a determination to suppress
-everything in the shape of political discussion that did not please the
-humour of a set of men in authority, while by far the greater part if not
-all those publications which inspire so much apprehension, would if
-passed in silence either never be noticed, or read their hour and
-forgotten.  It is these public trials that give them importance and
-notoriety.  They would not draw an eye but for the glare thrown on them
-by these luminous prosecutions.  These indictments (though I would not
-willingly be ludicrous on so serious an occasion) force into my mind the
-course once adopted with regard to houses of ill-fame, by the Society for
-the Suppression of Vice.  They paid men who were fixed before the doors
-of such houses with huge paper lanterns, on which there was painted in
-large illuminated letters, "This is a house of bad fame."  But, instead
-of causing a desertion of the houses, they operated as an advertisement
-and an allurement, and increased the numbers who resorted to them.  Those
-who had before frequented them did not discontinue their visits, and
-those who were ignorant of such places and seeking them, on seeing the
-emblazonment by the doors, cried out--that is just what we wanted, and
-turned in.  The society at last discovered their mistake.  They found
-that they were encouraging what they wished to abolish, and discontinued
-the plan.  My learned friend, who is counsel for the society, can confirm
-me when I assert that they do not now carry it into practice.  Precisely
-the operation that these lanterns had with regard to houses of ill-fame,
-have these trials upon obnoxious writings.  They are illuminated by the
-rays which are shed on them by these proceedings.  They attract every
-eye, and are read in the light (as it were) of the notoriety which is
-thus thrown upon them by these prosecutions.
-
-Gentlemen, it just occurs to my recollection, that I have omitted in its
-proper place something which I ought to have mentioned, and urged to you,
-and I beg your indulgence to supply the omission.  You will remember that
-in one of the passages charged as libelous, the words "I will not, now,
-say a word about insurrection" are to be found, and my learned friend,
-Mr. Gurney, suggested to you that it was an excitement, at some future
-period, to insurrection.  I, gentlemen, repeat that these words are not
-only no excitement to insurrection, but an express disavowal of it.  If
-you infer that he means insurrection at any future time, you must also
-suppose that the insurrection he contemplates is conditional, and in
-speculation of conduct in the government that may justify it.  Is there
-any extrinsic evidence to show that he means something beyond the words?
-None--and the words themselves are a literal disclaimer of any intention
-of insurrection.  And it is by the words then that you will judge of his
-design, and not take it from the vague and partial declamation of the
-counsel for the prosecution, whose opinions ought no more than my own, to
-have any weight with you, except as they are supported by reason.  If you
-can find any such meaning as an intention to excite insurrection in the
-words, so much the worse for the defendant; but, if you cannot, and I am
-sure you cannot, then you will not hesitate to adjudge the words
-innocent.  What! may not I, or any man, say there is no occasion for
-insurrection at this moment, but there may be at a future time?  Good
-God! are there no possible situations in which resistance to a government
-will be justifiable?  There have been such situations, and may again.
-Surely there may be.  Why, even the most vehement strugglers for
-indefeasible right and passive obedience have been forced (after
-involving themselves in the most foolish inconsistencies, and after the
-most ludicrous shuffling in attempting to deny it) to admit, that there
-may be such a conjuncture.  They have tried to qualify the admission
-indeed--admitted, and then retracted--then admitted again, and then
-denied in the term, what they admitted in the phrase, till, as you shall
-see, nothing ever equalled the absurdity, and ridiculousness of the
-_rigmarole_ into which they fell, in their unwillingness to confess, what
-they were unable to deny.  Yes, gentlemen, there are situations in which
-insurrection against a government is not only legal, but a duty and a
-virtue.  The period of our glorious revolution was such a situation.  When
-the bigot, James, attempted to force an odious superstition on the people
-for their religion, and to violate the fundamental laws of the realm,
-Englishmen owed it to themselves, they owed it to millions of their
-fellow-creatures, not only in this country, but all over the world; they
-owed it to God who had made them man to rise against such a government;
-and cast ruin on the tyrant for the oppression and slavery which he
-meditated for them.  Locke, in the work from which I have already cited
-to you, in the chapter entitled, "On Dissolution of Government," contends
-with Barclay, an advocate for divine right and passive obedience, and
-refutes him on this very question, and proves that subjects may use force
-against tyranny in governments.  He cites Barclay who wrote in Latin, but
-I read to you from the translation.
-
-   "Wherefore if the king shall be guilty of immense and intolerable
-   cruelty not only against individuals but against the body of the
-   state, that it is the whole people, or any large part of the people,
-   in such a case indeed it is competent to the people to resist and
-   defend themselves from injury, but only to defend themselves, not to
-   attack the prince, and only to repair the injury they have received;
-   not to depart, on account of the injury received from the reverence
-   which they owe him.  When the tyranny is intolerable (for we ought
-   always to submit to a tyranny in a moderate degree) the subject may
-   resist with reverence."
-
-In commenting on this passage, Mr. Locke, mixes with his reasonings the
-ridicule it deserves:--"'He (that is Barclay) says, it must be with
-reverence.'  How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike
-with reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible.  He that shall
-oppose an assault only with a shield to receive the blow, or in any more
-respectful posture without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence
-and force of the assailant will quickly be at the end of his resistance,
-and will find such a defence serve only to draw on him the worse usage:
-this is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as Juvenal thought of fighting,
-'Ubi tu _pulsas_, ego _vapulo_ tantum,' and the result of the combat will
-be unavoidably the same as he there describes it.
-
-         Libertas paupcris haec est.
-   _Pulsatus_ rogat, et _pugnis_ concisus adorat,
-   Ut _liceat_ paucis cum dentibus inde _reverti_.
-
-"'This is the liberty of the slave: when beaten and bruised with blows,
-he requests and implores as a favour to be allowed to depart with some
-few of his teeth.'  This will always be the event of such an imaginary
-resistance, when men may not strike again.  He, therefore, who may resist
-must be allowed to strike.  And then let our author, or anybody else,
-join a knock on the head, or a cut on the face, with as much reverence
-and respect as he thinks fit.  He that can reconcile blows and reverence
-may, for aught I know, deserve for his pains, a civil respectful
-cudgeling whenever he can meet with it."
-
-So much, gentlemen, for the doctrine of non-resistance.  Therefore the
-author of this paper in stating that there may be times when insurrection
-may be called for, has done no more than a hundred other writers, and
-among them Locke, have done before him.
-
-Locke proceeding still with the discussion of the question, whether
-oppressive governments may be opposed by the people, and, having
-concluded in the affirmative, says, "But here the question may be made,
-who shall be judge whether the prince or legislature act contrary to
-their trust.  This, perhaps, ill affected and factious men may spread
-among the people, when the prince only makes use of his just prerogative.
-To this, I reply, the people shall be judge; for who shall be judge
-whether the trustee or deputy acts with and according to the trust that
-is reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed
-him, have still a power to discard him when he fails in his trust.  If
-this be reasonable in particular cases of private men, why should it be
-otherwise in that of the greatest moment when the welfare of millions is
-concerned, and also when the evil if not prevented is greater, and the
-redress very dear, difficult, and dangerous."
-
-Locke, therefore, most unambiguously concludes that insurrection may be
-justified and necessary.  A greater and more important truth does not
-exist, and we owe its promulgation with such freedom and boldness to that
-most extraordinary and felicitous conjuncture at the revolution which
-called upon us to support a king against a king, and obliged us to
-explode (as has been done most completely) the divine right and passive
-obedience under which one king claimed, to maintain the legal title of
-the other.
-
-Locke goes on further to say--
-
-"This question, who shall be supreme judge? cannot mean that there is no
-judge at all.  For where there is no judicature on earth to decide
-controversies among men, God in heaven is judge.  But every man is to
-judge for himself, as in all other cases, so in this, whether another
-hath put himself in a state of war with him, and whether, as Jeptha did,
-he should appeal to the Supreme Judge."
-
-I beg that I may not be misinterpreted, I hope it will not be said I mean
-to insinuate that any circumstances at present exist to justify
-insurrection.  I protest against any such inference.  Nothing can be
-further from my thoughts, and I regret that such an extravagant mode of
-construing men's words should be in fashion, as to render such a caution
-on my part needful.  All I say is, that the writer of this paper spoke of
-insurrection conditionally, and prospectively only, and, in doing so, has
-done no more than Locke, in other terms had done before him.
-
-Gentlemen, I have but a very few more arguments to address to you, and I
-am glad of it, for I assure you, you cannot be more exhausted in patience
-than I am in strength.
-
-I now, gentlemen, ask you even admitting that the _style_ and manner, in
-which the opinions of the writer of this address are expressed, should
-verge upon intemperance and impropriety, would you venture, merely upon
-the ground of such a defect in style, to say the defendant is guilty;
-when the very same opinions in substance, expressed in a different style,
-would be innocent and legal, and unquestionable?  Gentlemen, I have heard
-it asserted, with a surprise that I cannot express, that if persons will
-write in a moderate, delicate, temperate, and refined style they may
-discuss questions which become exceptionable and forbidden if they are
-handled in a coarse and illiberal style.  Now I should have thought, that
-the very reverse of this would have been the case; for by a refined and
-guarded style you may insinuate and persuade--by vulgar coarseness and
-intemperance you disgust and nauseate.  To say that a political paper of
-the very same sentiments, and principles would be innocent, written in a
-calm and delicate style which would be criminal, written in an abrupt,
-vehement and passionate manner, is to remove guilt from the thought and
-conception and substance of a writing, and impute it to the medium only
-of the thought, the mere expression.  So that upon such a rule and
-principle of decision, if I were to heap violent and gross abuse even on
-Abershaw, or any other highwayman, who was deservedly hanged a hundred
-years ago, I might actually be indicted for a libel.  Such a course,
-gentlemen, would be to degrade your judgments from a decision upon the
-thought, and opinions (which, are alone important) of an author to a
-criticism and condemnation of his words, and would be waging war with the
-vocabulary and the dictionary, a degradation, to which I trust, your
-reason will never submit.  A difference of style in political writings is
-much too refined and subtle to found a distinction upon between innocence
-and crime.  Difference of style is so minute, and is a subject of such
-nice discrimination, that it would not only be difficult, but almost
-impossible, and most unsafe for any jury to attempt by it to draw a line
-between guilt and innocence; besides, what would be the effect upon the
-press?  If I were told, when I sat down to write upon any topic, that I
-must treat it in a given style, and no other, or risk prosecution, I
-should be confounded, and throw down my pen without writing at all.  At
-least I should either not write at all, or write in such a manner that I
-might as well not have written at all, for I should most certainly never
-be read.  Good God! to leave a man the alternative of a particular style,
-or an indictment for a libel, when he sat down to compose, would be like
-placing a torpedo on his hand; for you cannot, as was most forcibly, and
-beautifully said by Lord Erskine, "expect men to communicate their free
-thoughts to one another under the terror of a lash hanging over their
-heads;" and again, on another occasion, "under such circumstances, no man
-could sit down to write a pamphlet, without an attorney at one elbow, and
-a counsel at the other."  Gentlemen, if you, sitting coolly and
-dispassionately to give a deliberate judgment upon the manner and style
-of an author's composition would find it difficult to form a certain
-judgment, how great, how insuperable, must be the difficulty of the
-writer himself.  How is he when he sits down intent on his subject and
-when vehement and ardent (as he must be, if he is in earnest, and that he
-may persuade others of that, which he feels himself) and his ideas are
-thronging and pressing upon him for expression--how is he to be select
-and cautious and measured in his words?  Would you not by subjecting the
-freedom of political discussion to such a restriction run the hazard of
-destroying it altogether?  Upon this question of the difficulty of
-distinguishing between propriety and impropriety in the style of writings
-I can not abstain from reading to you a passage from a speech of Lord
-Chesterfield, which was quoted by Lord Erskine, when he was at the bar,
-upon a trial for libel.  On that occasion, indeed, Lord Kenyon told him,
-that he believed it flowed from the pen of Dr. Johnson, and _that_ Lord
-Erskine took as a valuable concession; for from the frame of mind and
-bias of that learned man on political subjects, he was certainly not a
-friend to popular liberty, while Lord Chesterfield, I believe, acted
-without deviation upon Whig principles, and was a constant advocate for
-the freedom of the press.  From Dr. Johnson, however, it was most
-important, as it had the effect of an unwilling admission, and if Lord
-Kenyon was correct in attributing the speech to Dr. Johnson, its
-excellence is to be inferred from the fact, that Lord Chesterfield never
-discountenanced the opinion that he was its author.  The passage is
-this:--
-
-   "One of the greatest blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings
-   a people, my Lords, can enjoy, is liberty; but every good in this life
-   has its alloy of evil; licentiousness is the alloy of liberty; it is
-   an ebullition, an excrescence--it is a speck upon the eye of the
-   political body: but which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a
-   trembling hand, lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye upon
-   which it is apt to appear.
-
-   "There is such a connection between licentiousness and liberty, that
-   it is not easy to correct the one, without dangerously wounding the
-   other: it is extremely hard to distinguish the true limit between
-   them: like a changeable silk, we can easily see there are two
-   different colours, but we cannot easily discover where the one ends,
-   or where the other begins."
-
-Mr. GURNEY.--You should state, in fairness and candour, that that was an
-argument against licensing.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--I know it was.  The argument contends for the difficulty,
-next to impossibility, of distinguishing where that which is allowable
-ends, and that which is licentious begins.  A licenser could not tell
-where to allow, and where to object, yet a licenser, gentlemen, would
-have had just the same means of judging that you possess; and if he could
-not tell with distinctness and certainty what to let pass and what to
-stop, how, with no greater power, and means of judgment, can you?  With
-what justice, then, can it be objected to me, that I have shown any want
-of candour in not stating the precise question on which the argument was
-delivered, when in the principle there is not a shadow of difference?  My
-application of the passage is therefore perfectly just.
-
-Gentlemen, I have only one more quotation to trouble you with before I
-conclude.  That is the opinion of Lord Loughborough, afterwards
-Chancellor of England.  I do not know in what case, or on what occasion
-it was delivered, but I believe in a judgment on a case of libel.  "Every
-man (says that judge) may publish at his discretion, his opinions
-concerning forms and systems of government.  _If they be weak and
-absurd_, _they will be laughed at and forgotten_; _and_, _if they be_
-bona fide, _they cannot be criminal_, _however erroneous_."
-
-This is the opinion of a great judge upon political publications, sitting
-under the authority of the king himself to administer the laws; and to
-apply this authority to the paper before you, what reason on earth have
-you to suppose, that the writer from the beginning to the end was not
-bona fide in his opinions; and then, however erroneous they may be, I
-say, under the sanction of Lord Loughborough himself, they are not
-criminal.
-
-Having, gentlemen, submitted these observations to you, I declare most
-unfeignedly that I have uttered them with the most conscientious belief,
-that they are founded in reason, justice, and truth.  I have not advanced
-a proposition nor uttered a sentiment as an advocate, which I am not
-prepared to avow and maintain as a man.  If I am wrong in my judgment,
-you will correct me.  You will, however, consider my reasonings, and the
-passages which I have cited to you in support of them, and judge if I
-have not maintained the propositions, which I have submitted to you.
-
-No argument can be drawn from any of the observations, which I have
-addressed to you for impunity to libelers and defamers of private
-character.  No, they are justly called assassins; for they who destroy
-that without which life is worthless are as guilty as those who destroy
-life itself, and let them feel the heaviest vengeance of the law.  Private
-persons may be attacked and have no power to defend themselves.  They may
-not only be unable themselves to answer published calumnies against their
-character; but also unable to employ those who can.  But such can never
-be the case with those who administer the affairs of the nation.  All the
-wealth and power of the country is in their hands.  They may hire a
-thousand writers to support their measures, and vindicate their
-characters, and they will not want volunteers; they can command the
-press; and, for their protection, it is sufficient, that the press should
-be opposed to the press.  Private individuals cannot command the press;
-and, therefore, let slanderers of private character suffer the utmost
-punishment that the law can inflict.
-
-And now, gentlemen, I ask you to give me your verdict for the defendant.
-I make no attempt to move your compassion.  I will not urge you to
-consider that the defendant is a woman, and unable, from the tenderness
-of her sex, to sustain hardship; nor call upon you to remember, that
-which you cannot but know, that she has already been convicted upon one
-prosecution, for which she will, without doubt, be the subject of severe
-punishment.  I ask it on the higher ground of justice; though, I confess,
-that I hope and wish it with more anxiety, because I trust it will send
-these embodied prosecutors, this Constitutional Association, as (by the
-figure, I suppose, of _lucus a non lucendo_) they entitle themselves,
-into that obscurity to which they properly belong, or at least if they
-will obtrude further upon the impatience of the public, let them carry
-with them the ill omen of a failure in their first attempt to insinuate,
-either that the English Constitution is deficient in its establishment of
-responsible law officers of the crown, or that those officers are
-incapable of fulfilling the duties of their station.  It is said, and I
-hope truly, that the country is gradually recovering from the distress,
-under which it has so long suffered, and that plenty and prosperity have
-again begun to flow in upon us.  May it be so! but we shall never derive
-enjoyment from any improvement in our physical condition; unless it is
-accompanied with domestic tranquillity.  To be happy we must be at peace
-amongst ourselves; and nothing will have the effect of allaying the heart-
-burnings of political animosity and uniting us, as it were, in bands of
-harmonious brotherhood, so much as a discouragement of these party
-prosecutions, which, while they kindle feelings of indignation, and
-hostility, and hatred in large numbers of the people, are of no general
-benefit to the state.  Fling back this prosecution, then, in the faces of
-those who have instituted it; and, instead of sending this unfortunate
-woman to a prison, send her back by your verdict of acquittal to the
-children of her brother, who, deprived (in the manner you know) both of
-their father and mother, are as much orphans as they would be by their
-death; and who, sordid and neglected in her absence, are requiring her
-care.  And, what is more, you will, by your verdict of Not Guilty, give
-security to the free expression of public opinion, compose our
-dissensions, and protect both yourselves and posterity; since in calling
-on you to acquit the defendant, I call on you to protect the freedom of
-the press, and with it the freedom of the country; for unless the press
-is preserved, and preserved inviolate, the political liberties of
-Englishmen are lost.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--It was his duty to call back the attention of the jury
-to the question which they were to try.  A number of observations had
-been made relative to what had taken place in Virginia, but which had
-nothing to do with the verdict which they were to give.  One observation
-had been made, in the propriety of which he perfectly agreed, which was
-that they would dismiss from their minds all prejudices.  The learned
-counsel for the defendant seemed to think that the name of Carlile was
-sufficient to create prejudices.  If that were the case, he hoped the
-jury would forget that the present defendant was of that name.  They had
-nothing now to do but to exercise their judgment upon the facts before
-them.  The jury were told, and truly told, that they were the judges as
-to whether this was a libel or not.  The statute gave the jury the power
-of finding a general verdict; but they still were bound under the
-sanction of their oaths to find it according to law.  He should give his
-opinion, and the jury were at liberty to differ with him; but he must beg
-in the most distinct terms to state that the jury or the court had
-nothing to do with the propriety or impropriety of these prosecutions, or
-with the association by which the prosecution had been instituted.  For
-his own part he did not know by whom it had been instituted until he had
-been requested by the defendant to ask the jurors as they went into the
-box, whether or not they were members of that association.  The two
-questions to be decided were, first, Was this pamphlet a libel? and
-secondly, Was the defendant the publisher?  They must lay out of their
-consideration acts of parliament passed in Virginia.  The principles laid
-down in the preamble of the act alluded to, might be a good principle for
-America, but he was bound to tell them that it was not law in England.  In
-the book quoted from by the learned gentlemen, it was said "how wretched
-must be the state of society in a country where the laws were uncertain;"
-and that must be the case where the jury take into consideration the
-propriety or impropriety of laws.  In his opinion this publication was
-libelous, and if the jury were not satisfied of the contrary, the safer
-course would be for the jury to agree in opinion with one who must be
-presumed to be acquainted with the law, and who gives that opinion upon
-his oath.  No man could be a more ardent admirer than he of the press, to
-the freedom of which Europe was principally indebted for its happiness;
-and God forbid that he should do anything which would for a moment
-extinguish that liberty!  The learned counsel for the defendant had said,
-that the libel upon a private individual was a species of moral
-assassination.  It was odd that an individual could not be libeled with
-impunity, and yet that society might be set by the ears.  The government
-were equally protected with all others against the malevolence and
-virulence of the press.  He would again repeat, but he would say nothing
-as to what the law ought to be, but he stated what it was.  What he
-conceived to be the true liberty of the press was this, that any man
-might, without permission, publish what he please, if he were responsible
-for what he might publish.  It might be asked, then is a man answerable
-for every expression?  To that he would answer, no; if a man's intention
-were to convince the people that the government was not acting right, he
-had a right to publish his opinions; and if some sparks should fly out
-beyond decorum when the real apparent object was to instruct, the
-expressions ought not to be visited with punishment.  But men must not go
-farther than instruct: they must not say that the system of government is
-a system of tyranny; which meant nothing more than that the people ought
-to pull down such systems.  The learned counsel had alluded to Athens and
-Rome, but it was well known that those States punished offences of this
-description with greater severity than the laws of England inflicted.
-Every man had a right to point out with firmness, but with respect, the
-errors of government.  Every man has a right to appeal to the
-understanding, but not to the passions; and the man who wished to do so
-need not be afraid to write.  The distinction between fair discussion and
-libel was this, that one was an appeal to the passions, and the other to
-the understanding.  If the jury were of opinion that this pamphlet was an
-address to the people of the country, to induce them by legal and
-constitutional means to procure a redress of grievances, then they would
-acquit the defendant; but, if on the other hand, they should be of
-opinion that the intention was to appeal to prejudices and passions (as
-he thought) it was their bounden duty, whatever they might think of the
-propriety or impropriety of the prosecution, to return a verdict of
-guilty.  He next felt it his duty to remark upon the passages in the
-record, and if the learned gentleman had gone through the pamphlet, he
-would have found in the next page, in which the writer said, that the
-making and administration of laws was corrupt, a sufficient explanation
-of what was intended by the sentence, "to talk of the British
-Constitution, &c."  There was in the country a constitution not like the
-Spanish Constitution, created in a day; but matured by the sense of ages,
-altering and adapting it to times and circumstances until it became what
-was a practical and not theoretical system of liberty.  The learned
-counsel had made some observations upon what had fallen from Lord
-Colchester in the House of Commons; such observations he thought
-irregular, but he permitted them sooner than it should be said that the
-defendant, to use a familiar expression, had not "fair play."  He did not
-want the authority of Lord Colchester with respect to these corruptions,
-because he had evidence of it in a case in which he tried twenty-four
-persons for such practices.  But was it the meaning of the passage, that
-there was corruption in the House of Commons?  No, the expression was
-that the laws (which were corrupt enough to bring to punishment persons
-guilty of those practices) were corrupt.  Was this true?  If there were
-anything for which this country was more distinguished than another it
-was the equity of the laws, and it was for this that the laws of England
-were extolled by all foreigners.  The writer could not mean the borough
-of Grampound, or any other borough, when he said that corruption was the
-oil of the system.  When the writer said he did not "at that moment speak
-of insurrection," what was his meaning?  Why that insurrection would not
-do then, but at some future time they might, when satisfied of their
-strength, take advantage of all circumstances.  As far as he understood
-the nature of the Manchester and Stockport Rooms they were for
-instruction, and if the writer did not go farther, then indeed would the
-pamphlet be harmless.  "Delay some time."  "Have such meetings as those
-at Manchester and Stockport; be assured of your numbers, and you can
-overpower the Government."  There could be no doubt that these passages
-were libelous.  The next question was, whether the defendant had or had
-not published the libel? and it was in evidence that these copies were
-purchased at two different times.  The jury were not to take into
-consideration the former conviction; and he could assure the jury that no
-greater severity would be used than was sufficient to restrain this
-licentiousness, which, if not restrained, would overturn this or any
-other Government.  The revolution recommended by this pamphlet would not
-be an ordinary change of masters, but a transfer of property.
-
-At about four o'clock the jury retired; and, having returned at quarter
-before five,
-
-Mr. Justice BEST said, he had received a communication that they were not
-likely to agree; and as they must agree at some time or other, he sent
-for them in order to give them any information in his power upon such
-points as they disagreed upon.
-
-A Juror.--The Foreman was rather precipitate in writing to your Lordship;
-we have not wasted much time, and we are discussing it among ourselves.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I am not in a hurry.
-
-The Foreman said, there were four of the jurors obstinate, and he would
-wish his Lordship to draw a juror.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--I have not the power to do so.
-
-A Juror.--I throw back the charge of obstinacy in the teeth of the
-Foreman--he is obstinate.
-
-Another Juryman.--My Lord there is obstinacy.
-
-Second Juryman.--This is invidious; I am not the only one who stands out;
-there are four of us.
-
-The Foreman again expressed his opinion that they should not agree.
-
-Mr. Justice BEST.--Gentlemen, you must see the impropriety of this public
-discussion; you had better retire, and endeavour to agree among
-yourselves.
-
-The jury again retired, and at eight o'clock desired their families might
-be informed that it was not likely they would return home before the
-morning.
-
-
-Wednesday, July 25th.
-
-
-This morning the jury were still enclosed without the least chance of any
-agreement.  A number of persons were in waiting to hear the verdict.  At
-half-past nine o'clock, Mr. Justice HOLROYD appeared on the bench, and an
-intimation was conveyed to his Lordship that there was no probability
-that the jury would agree.
-
-A conference took place between the counsel for the prosecution and
-defence who appeared to be both willing to enter a _Noli Prosequi_ and
-discharge the jury without a verdict.
-
-A gentleman in black (said to be Mr. Longueville Clarke, one of the
-Committee of the Constitutional Association, and one of the _State
-Locusts_) suddenly started up, and declared that he would not consent to
-such a course.
-
-Mr. COOPER (to the man in black).--Are you the attorney for the
-prosecution, sir?
-
-Mr. LONGUEVILLE CLARKE.--No: I am a member of the Constitutional
-Committee; and _I will_ have a verdict.
-
-Mr. COOPER.--However potent, sir, your word might be in the committee-
-room, it has no power in this Court.
-
-Mr. GURNEY, as counsel for the prosecution, in the absence of Mr. MURRAY,
-the attorney, would take upon himself the responsibility of consenting to
-discharge the jury.
-
-Mr. COOPER, thinking it cruelty to confine the jury any longer would
-yield also to a consent for their discharge.
-
-The jury were then sent for, and in their passage to the Court were
-loudly and rapturously cheered by the bystanders.  Having answered to
-their names,
-
-Mr. Justice HOLROYD addressed them.--Gentlemen of the jury, I am glad
-that it is in my power to relieve you from your present unpleasant
-situation.  The learned counsel on both sides have consented to discharge
-you without your returning a verdict.
-
-The jury then left the Court, and were again loudly cheered in their
-passage through the Hall.
-
-Thus ended the first attempt of the Constitutional Association, or the
-Bridge-street Banditti, to get a verdict; particularly important to the
-country--particularly honourable to the counsel for the defendant, and
-the honest Jurors who made so noble a stand for the Liberty of the
-Press--and particularly disgraceful to all parties connected with the
-prosecution.
-
-LONDON:
-W. & H.  S. WARR, Printers, 3, Red Lion Passage, & 63, High Holborn.
-
-
-
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