attributes and prerogatives, as necessary for the support and maintenance of the civil liberties of the people: it ascribes to him sovereignty, imperial dignity, and perfection: and because the rule and government, as established in this kingdom, cannot exist for a moment without a person filling that office, and able to execute all the duties from time to time which I have now stated, it ascribes to him also that he never ceases to exist. In foreign affairs, the delegate and representative of his people, he makes war and peace, leagues and treaties: in domestic concerns, he has prerogatives, as a constituent part of the supreme legislature; the prerogative of raising fleets and armies: he is the fountain of justice, bound to administer it to his people, because it is due to them; the great conservator of public peace, bound to maintain and vindicate it; everywhere present, that these duties may nowhere fail of being discharged; the fountain of honour, office, and privilege the arbiter of domestic commerce, the head of the national church.

Gentlemen, I hope I shall not be thought to misspend your time in stating thus much, because it appears to me that the fact that such is the character, that such are the duties, that such are the attributes and prerogatives of the King in this country (all existing for the protection, security, and happiness of the people in an established form of government), accounts for the just anxiety, bordering upon jealousy, with which the law watches over his person-accounts for the fact that, in every indictment, the compassing or imagining his destruction or deposition seems to be considered as necessarily co-existing with an intention to subvert the rule and government established in the country: it is a purpose to destroy and to depose him in whom the supreme power, rule, and government, under constitutional checks and limitations, is vested, and by whom, with consent and advice in some cases, and with advice in all cases, the exercise of this constitutional power to be carried on.

is

Gentlemen, this language, the tenor and charge of every indictment, is most clearly expressed by Lord Hale when he says that high treason is an offence more immediately against the person and government of the King. I cannot state it more strongly to you, or from an authority the authenticity of which will be less questioned by those who are to defend the prisoner at the bar, than when I state to you the language of one of the counsel for Lord George. Gordon upon the last trial for high treason; indeed, it is no more than what follows the law of England, as delivered by all those great lawyers, whose authority, I am persuaded, will not be attempted to be shaken in the course of this trial, when it states this principle thus:-"To compass or imagine the death of the King, such imagination or purpose of the mind, visible only to its great Author, being manifested by some open act, an institution obviously directed not only to the security of his natural person,

but to the stability of the government, the life of the Prince being so interwoven with the constitution of the state that an attempt to destroy the one is justly held to be a rebellious conspiracy against the other."

Gentlemen, it will be my duty to state to you presently what is in law an attempt against the life of the King. It seems, therefore, that when the ancient law of England (and I would beg your attention to what I am now stating to you), that when the ancient law of England was changed, which, even in the case of a subject, held the intent to kill, homicide, as well as, in the case of the King, the intent to kill or depose, without the fact, where a measure was taken to effectuate the intent, treason, with a difference, however, as to the nature of the acts deemed sufficient, in the one case or in the other, to manifest the one or the other intent, that, to use the words of a great and venerable authority, I mean Mr Justice Foster, "it was with great propriety that the statute of treason retained the rigour of the law in its full extent in the case of the King. In the case of him," says he, "whose life must not be endangered, because it cannot be taken away by treasonable practices without involving a nation in blood and confusion: levelled at him, the stroke is levelled at the public tranquillity."

Gentlemen, that it may be fully understood what it is that I have to contend for in the course of this trial, I put you in mind again that I have before stated that, as it is absolutely necessary to the security of individuals, not less necessary to the security of individuals than it is necessary to the security of the nation which they compose, that the person and government of the King should be thus defended; on the other hand, for the security of the subject, it is equally necessary that the crime of high treason should not be indeterminate, that it should not be unascertained or undefined, either in the law itself, or in the construction to be made of that law.

Gentlemen, this necessity is not to be collected merely in this country from reasoning, though it may obviously enough be collected from reasoning. The experience of your ancestors has informed you, I admit it, and I beg to press it upon your attention, as much as any man in this Court can press it upon your attention, the experience of your ancestors has informed you, in the just and bitter complaints which are to be found in their annals, of the periods in which no man knew how he ought to behave himself, to do, speak, or say, for doubt of pains of treason;—in the anxiety with which the statute of Edward III. reserved the judgment of all treasons not there expressly specified-" that the justices should tarry, without going to judgment of the treason, till the cause be showed and declared before the King and his Parliament;"-in the expressive language which our ancestors have used when the provisions of the statute of Edward were first introduced into the

code of law under which we live, and of those statutes by which treasons were brought back to the provisions of that statute. The experience of your ancestors, thus handed down to you, has demonstrated this necessity. I admit too (and my treating the subject thus in the outset may ultimately save your time), that before the statute was made upon which the indictment proceeds, the security of the subject was not sufficiently provided for. I admit that security is not sufficiently provided for now, if construction can be allowed to give an exposition to the statute which the Legislature did not intend it should receive.

Gentlemen, upon each of these heads it was necessary for me to trouble you with some, and but with a few observations.

That the law of treason should be determinate and certain, though clearly necessary for the security of the subject, is not more necessary for their security than that there should be a law of treason, and that this law should be faithfully, duly, and firmly executed.

Gentlemen, every state must have some form or regimen of government; in other words, it must determine by whom, and under what modifications, the sovereign power is to be exercised in the country; for no government can exist unless this power is placed somewhere: and the attempt to subvert that power is, in the nature of the thing, an attempt to subvert the established government. It is of necessity that an attempt of this sort should be guarded against by severer penalties than offences which, being breaches of particular laws, do not endanger the very existence of the state itself, which do not involve, in the destruction of the state, the destruction of all laws, but which leave the law, though violated in particular cases, sufficient, in general cases, for the protection of the personal security, the liberty, and happiness of the subject.

Gentlemen, this is also the reasoning of that great Judge whose name I before mentioned to you, my Lord Hale. "The greatness of the offence," he says, "and the severity of the punishment, is upon these reasons:-First, because the safety, peace, and tranquillity of the kingdom is highly concerned in the safety and preservation of the person, dignity, and government of the King, and therefore the laws of the kingdom have given all possible security to the King's person and government, and under the most severe penalties."

Gentlemen, to describe this great offence with precision and accuracy was what the Legislature in Edward's time proposed when they enacted the sacred statute upon which this indictment is founded. That statute was made for the more precise definition of this crime, which, by the common law, had not been sufficiently extended, and "the plain unextended letter of it,”—you will mark the words," the plain unextended letter of it was thought to be a

sufficient protection to the person and honour of the Sovereign;" but not only to the person and honour of the Sovereign, but "an adequate security to the laws committed to his execution."

Gentlemen, in addressing a jury in a court of law, sworn to make deliverance according to that law which constitutes the Court in which they sit, there are two propositions which appear to me to be alike clear. The first is, that I ought not, that I cannot, dare to call upon you to say that there has been committed under this statute any offence, if the facts of the case to be laid before you, by plain, manifest, authorised interpretation of the statute, do not constitute an offence under it. If the statute should seem to any man, or to you, not to be a sufficient and adequate security to the person and honour of the Sovereign, and the due execution of the laws, it is nevertheless all the security which the law has authorised you. to give them, and God forbid that you should think of giving more. On the other hand, you are bound by your oaths, if this law has been violated in fact, if the fact of violation is proved by evidence, convincing in its nature, and such in its form as the law requires (for the law in this case requires not only convincing but formal evidence), then you are bound to give to the person and honour of the Sovereign, and to the laws of your country, that protection which a verdict, asserting in substance that the statute has been violated, would give, and which the statute intended should be given.

Gentlemen, men of honour and of conscience, acting under the sanction of the oath they have taken, must come to the same conclusion, judging of the same facts, by the same law, whatever their principles of government may be, unless they differ upon the effect of facts laid before them. In the trial of a person whose name I shall have abundant reason to mention to you in the course of this proceeding,-I mean the author of the " Rights of Man,"charged with a libel against the monarchy of the country, it was judiciously, truly, justly, and strongly admitted in effect, that if the jury had been composed (if there are twelve such men in this country) of republicans, wishing to overturn the government of the country, yet administering the law of England, in a court of English law, if they were convinced that the crime had, alluding to that law, been committed, no man would have the audacity to say they could be capable of that crime against the public, to think for a moment of not coming to the conclusion which the facts called for, according to the law by which they were sworn to decide upon the matter before them.

Gentlemen, the statute upon which this indictment proceeds is to the following effect-it states (and it states most truly), “That divers opinions had been had before this time." that is, the 25th Edward III., " in what case treason should be said, and in what not; the King, at the request of the Lords and of the Commons,

hath made a declaration in the manner as hereafter followeth; that is to say, when a man doth compass or imagine the death of our Lord the King, or of our Lady his Queen, or of their eldest son and heir; or if a man do violate the King's companion, or the King's eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the King's eldest son and heir; or if a man do levy war against our Lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King's enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm or elsewhere, and thereof be provably attainted"-by which words I understand be attainted by evidence that clearly and forcibly satisfies the minds and consciences of those who are to try the fact-"attainted of open deed by people of their condition." Then there is this, to which you will be bound to give your attention for the sake of the prisoner, as well as for the sake of the public, the interests of both being blended in this great cause :-" and because that many other like cases of treason may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think nor declare at this present time, it is accorded that, if any other case, supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen before any justices, the justices shall tarry, without any going to judgment of the treason, till the cause be showed and declared before the King and his Parliament, whether it ought to be judged treason or other felony."

Gentlemen, I desire to point out here, in the most marked way in which I can state it, the anxiety with which the Parliament wished to preserve to itself the judgments of treasons, not being the specified treasons in the statute, but being like treasons, those which, by a parity of reasoning, might be said to be treason. They would not trust the subjects of the country in the hand of any court of justice upon that point. I mark the circumstance, because it appears to me to give a degree of authority to the law of England upon the subject of treason, and to the constructions which have been made upon it, and to the distinctions which have been made between like treasons, and overt acts of the same treason, that perhaps does not belong to constructions and distinctions adopted in the course of judicial proceedings upon any other law in the

statute-book.

Gentlemen, having read the statute to you, it is not unimportant, as it seems to me, to observe that Lord Hale and Mr Justice Foster, who have stated the judicial and other expositions of this statute, have stated them, and have expounded the statute, under the weighty caution, which they most powerfully express, under the solemn protests which they most strongly state, against extending this statute by a parity of reason. This circumstance alone appears to me to give infinite authenticity to the expositions which they state of it as sound, and as being such as, according to the interpretation which the' Legislature in Edward the Third's time. meant, should be put upon this statute.