England, nor any other prosecution instituted except upon the unsupported evidence of the same miserable wretch who stands before you:-the town, neighbourhood, and county, remaining in the same profound state of tranquillity as it is at the moment I am addressing you.

Gentlemen, when Parliament assembled at the end of 1792, previous to the commencement of the war, these unhappy differences were suddenly (and, as you will see, from no fault of Mr. Walker's) brought to the crisis which produced this trial:-a meeting was held in Manchester to prepare an address of thanks to the King for having embodied the militia during the recess of Parliament, and for having put the kingdom into a posture of defence; I do not seek to question the measure of Government which gave rise to this approbation, or the approbation itself which the approvers had a right to bestow ;-but others had an equal right to entertain other opinions. On all public measures the decision undoubtedly is with Government; but the people at the same time have a right to think upon them, and to express what they think ;-surely war, of all other subjects, is one which the people have a right to consider ;-surely it can be no offence for those whose properties are to be taxed, and whose inheritances are to be lessened by it, to pause a little upon the eve of a contest, the end of which no man can foresee,-the expenses of which no man can calculate, or estimate the blood to flow from its calamities. Surely it is a liberty se

cured to us by the first principles of our constitution, to address the Sovereign, or instruct our representatives, to avert the greatest evil that can impend over a nation.

Gentlemen, one of those societies, called the Reformation Society, met to exercise this undoubted privilege, and in my mind upon the fittest occasion that ever presented itself; yet mark the moderation of Mr. Walker, whose violence is arraigned before you. Though he was no member of that body, and though he agreed in the propriety of the measure in agitation, yet he suggested to them, that their opposition might be made a pretence for tumult,—that tranquillity in such a crisis was by every means to be promoted, and therefore advised them to abstain from the meeting; so that the other meeting was left to carry its approbation of Government and of the war, without a dissenting voice. If ever therefore there was a time when the Church and King might be said to be out of danger at Manchester, it was at this moment :-yet on this very day they hoisted the banners of alarm to both ;-they paraded with them through every quarter of the town ;mobs by degrees were collected, and in the evening of this very eleventh of December, the houses of Mr. Walker and others were attacked. You will observe, that before this day no man has talked about arms at Mr. Walker's:-if an honourable gentleman upon the Jury who has been carefully taking notes of the evidence, will have the goodness to refer to

them, he will find that it was not till near a week after this (so Dunn expresses it) that a single firelock had been seen; nor indeed does any part of the evidence go back beyond this time, when Mr. Walker's house was thus surrounded and attacked by a riotous and disorderly mob. He was aware of the probable consequences of such an attack ;-he knew, by the recent example of Birmingham, what he and others professing sentiments of freedom had to expect; he therefore got together a few fire-arms, which he had long had publicly by him, and an inventory of which with the rest of his furniture at Barlow Hall, had been taken by a sworn appraiser, long before any thing connected with this Indictment had an existence; and with these, and the assistance of a few steady friends, he stood upon his defence. He was advised indeed to retire for safety; but knowing his own innocence, and recollecting the duty he owed to himself, his family, and the public, he declared he would remain there, to support the laws and to defend his property,—and that he would perish, rather than surrender those privileges, which every member of the community is bound, both from interest and duty, to maintain.-To alarm the multitude, he fired from the windows over their heads, and dispersed them but when, the next morning, they assembled in very great numbers before his house, and when a man got upon the churchyard wall, and read a most violent and inflammatory paper, inciting the populace to pull the house down; Mr. Walker

went out amongst them, and expostulated with them, and asked why they had disgraced themselves so much by attacking him the night before; adding, that if he had done any of them, or any person whom they knew, any injury, he was, upon proof of it, ready to make them every satisfaction in his power: he also told them, that he had fired upon them the night before, because they were mad as well as drunk; that, if they attacked him again, he would, under the same circumstances, act as he had done before; but that he was then alone and unarmed in the midst of them; and if he had done any thing wrong, they were then sober, and had him completely in their power.

"

Gentlemen, this was most meritorious conduct. You all live at a distance from the metropolis, and were probably, therefore, fortunate enough neither to be within or near it in 1780, when, from beginnings smaller than those which exhibited themselves at Birmingham, or even at Manchester, the metropolis of the country, and with it the country itself, had nearly been undone: the beginning of these things is the season for exertion: I shall never indeed forget what I have heard the late mild and venerable magistrate Lord Mansfield say upon this subject, whose house was one of the first attacked in London; I have more than once heard him say, that perhaps some blame might have attached upon himself and others in authority, for their forbearance in not having directed force to have been at the first moment VOL. III.

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repelled by force, it being the highest humanity to check the infancy of tumults.

Gentlemen, Mr. Walker's conduct had the desired effect he watched again on the 13th of December, but the mob returned no more, and the next morning the arms were locked up in a bedchamber in his house, where they have remained ever since, and where, of course, they never could have 'been seen by the witness, whose whole evidence commences above a week subsequent to the 11th of December, when they were finally put aside. This is the genuine history of the business; and it must therefore not a little surprise you, that when the charge is wholly confined to the use of arms, Mr. Law should not even have hinted to you that Mr. Walker's house had been attacked, and that he was driven to stand upon his defence, as if such a thing had never had an existence;-indeed the armoury which must have been exhibited in such a statement, would have but ill suited the indictment or the evidence, and I must therefore undertake the description of it myself.

The arms having been locked up, as I told you, in the bedchamber, I was shown last week into this house of conspiracy,-treason, and death, and saw exposed to view the mighty armoury which was to level the beautiful fabric of our constitution, and to destroy the lives and properties of ten millions of people. It consisted, first, of six little swivels purchased two years ago at the sale of Livesey, Hargrave, and Co. (of whom we have all heard so much), by Mr. Jackson, a gentleman of Manchester, who is