Mr. Erskine. Neither have I certainly upon that point, my lord.

Q. Where have you seen him since?

A. At Calais the first time.

Lord Kenyon. I will not have all his life and conversation brought forward; I would not have him give evidence from conjecture or knowledge of what he was doing at Paris; all that I mean to allow is, whether from his general deportment at other times he thinks he was sober at that time?

Q. How many times might you see him, think you?

A. It is impossible to say. I have frequently seen him at a coffee-house.

Q. Are you able to judge from that, whether he was sober or not when you saw him at Percy street coffee-house?

A. He was what you may call a sober man.

Mr. Erskine. Was he like a man that had been drinking?

A. Drinking moderately.

Q. Two bottles of port; what do you say to that?

A. I cannot say.

Q. It is very difficult to judge by weights and scales?

A. I thought he was sober by his manner.

SPEECH OF MR. ERSKINE.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY: I rise to address you under circumstances so peculiar that I consider myself entitled, not only for the defendant arraigned before you, but personally for myself, to the utmost indulgence of the court. I came down this morning with no other notice of the duty cast upon me in this cause, nor any other direction for the premeditation necessary to its performance, than that which I have ever considered to be the safest and the best, namely, the records of the court, as they are entered here for trial, where for the ends of justice the charge must always appear with the most accurate precision, that the accused may know what crime he is called upon to answer, and his counsel how he may defend him. Finding, therefore, upon the record which arraigns the defendant, a simple, unqualified charge of seditious words, unconnected, and uncomplicated with any extrinsic events, I little imagined that the conduct of my client was to receive its color and construction from the present state of France, or rather of all Europe, as affecting the condition of England; I little dreamed that the 6th day of November,

which, reading the indictment, I had a right to consider like any other day in the calendar, was to turn out an epoch in this country, for so it is styled in the argument, and that instead of having to deal with idle, thoughtless words, uttered over wine, through the passage of a coffee-house, with whatever at any time might belong to them, I was to meet a charge, of which I had no notice or conception, and to find the loose dialogue which, even upon the face of the record itself, exhibits nothing more than a casual sudden conversation, exalted to an accusation of the most premeditated, serious, and alarming nature, verging upon high treason itself, by its connection with the most hostile purposes to the state, and assuming a shape still more interesting from its dangerous connection with certain mysterious conspiracies, which, in confederacy with French republicans, threaten, it seems, the constitution of our once happy country.

Gentlemen, I confess myself much unprepared for a discussion of this nature, and a little disconcerted at being so; for though, as I have said, I had no notice from the record, that the politics of Europe were to be the subject of discourse, yet experience ought to have taught me to expect it; for what act of government has for a long time past been carried on by any other means? when or where has been the debate, or what has been the object of authority, in which the affairs of

France have not taken the lead? The affairs of France have indeed become the common stalkinghorse for all state purposes. I know the honor of my learned friend too well to impute to him the introduction of them for any improper or dishonorable purpose; I am sure he connects them in his own mind with the subject, and thinks them legally before you-I am bound to think so, because the general tenor of his address to you has been manly and candid; but I assert, that neither the actual condition of France, nor the supposed condition of this country, are, or can be, in any shape before you, and that upon the trial of this indictment, supported only by the evidence you have heard, the words must be judged of as if spoken by any man or woman in the kingdom, at any time from the Norman conquest, to the moment I am addressing you.

I admit, indeed, that the particular time in which words are spoken, or acts committed, may most essentially alter their quality and construction, and give to expressions, or conduct, which in another season might have been innocent, or at least indifferent, the highest and most enormous guilt; but for that very reason the supposed particularity of the present times as applicable to the matter before you, is absolutely shut out from your consideration, shut out upon the plainest and most obvious principle of justice and law; because, wherever time

or occasion mix with an act, affect its quality, and constitute or enhance its criminality, they then become an essential part of the misdemeanor itself, and must consequently be charged as such upon the record. I plainly discover I have his lordship's assent to this proposition. If therefore the Crown had considered this cause originally in the serious light which it considers it to-day, it has wholly mistaken its course. If it had considered the government of France as actively engaged in the encouragement of disaffection to the monarchy of England, and that her newly-erected republic was set up by her as the great type for imitation and example here; if it had considered that numbers, and even classes of our countrymen were ripe for disaffection, if not for rebellion, and that the defendant, as an emissary of France, had spoken the words with the premeditated design of undermining our government; this situation of things might and ought to have been put as facts upon the record, and as facts established by evidence, instead of resting as they do to-day upon assertion. By such a course the crime indeed would have become of the magnitude represented; but on the other hand, as the conviction could only have followed from the proof, the defendant upon the evidence of to-day must have an hour ago been acquitted; since not a syllable has been proved of any emissaries from France to debauch our monarchial principles;