Saxe-Teschen was sent express to offer the joyeuse entrée so long petitioned for in vain. But the season of concession was past; the storm blew from every quarter, and the throne of Brabant departed for ever from the House of Burgundy. Gentlemen, I venture to affirm, that, with other councils, this fatal prelude to the last revolution in that country might have been averted: if the Emperor had been advised to make the concessions of justice and affection to his people, they would have risen in a mass to maintain their prince's authority, interwoven with their own liberties; and the French, the giants of modern times, would, like the giants of antiquity, have been trampled in the mire of their own ambition. In the same manner a far more splendid and important crown passed away from his Majesty's illustrious brows: THE IMPERIAL CROWN OF AMERICA. The people of that country too, for a long season, contended as subjects, and often with irregularity and turbulence, for what they felt to be their rights: and Oh, gentlemen! that the inspiring and immortal eloquence of that man, whose name I have so often mentioned, had then been heard with effect! What was his language to this country when she sought to lay burdens on America,-not to support the dignity of the Crown, or for the increase of national revenue, but to raise a fund for the purpose of corruption; a fund for maintaining those tribes of hireling skipjacks, which Mr Tooke so well contrasted with the hereditary nobility of England! Though America would not bear this imposition, she would have borne any useful or constitutional burden to support the parent state. "For that service, for all service," said Mr Burke, "whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your Governments, they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your Government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, whereever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you be

come lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? Do you imagine then, that it is the land-tax which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their Government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber."

Gentlemen, to conclude, my fervent wish is, that we may not conjure up a spirit to destroy ourselves, nor set the example here of what, in another country, we deplore. Let us cherish the old and venerable laws of our forefathers. Let our judicial administration be strict and pure; and let the jury of the land preserve the life of a fellow-subject who only asks it from them upon the same terms under which they hold their own lives and all that is dear to them and their posterity for ever. Let me repeat the wish with which I began my address to you, and which proceeds from the very bottom of my heart: May it please God, who is the Author of all mercies to mankind, whose providence, I am persuaded, guides and superintends the transactions of the world, and whose guardian spirit has for ever hovered over this prosperous island, to direct and fortify your judgments. I am aware I have not acquitted myself to the unfortunate man who has put his trust in me in the manner I could have wished; yet I am unable to proceed any further: exhausted in spirit and in strength, but confident in the expectation of justice. There is one thing more, however, that (if I can) I must state to you—namely, that I will show, by as many witnesses as it may be found necessary or convenient for you to hear upon the subject, that the views of the societies were what I have alleged them to be; that whatever irregularities or indiscretions they might have committed, their purposes were honest; and that Mr Hardy's, above all other men, can be established to have been so. I have indeed an honourable gentleman (Mr Francis *) in my eye at this moment, to be called hereafter as a witness, who, being desirous in his place, as a member of Parliament, to promote an inquiry into the seditious practices complained of, Mr Hardy offered himself voluntarily to come forward, proffered a sight of all the papers which were afterwards seized in his custody, and tendered every possible assistance to give satisfaction to the laws *Now Sir Philip Francis, K.B.

of his country if found to be offended. I will show, likewise, his character to be religious, temperate, humane, and moderate, and his uniform conduct all that can belong to a good subject and an honest man. When you have heard this evidence, it will, beyond all doubt, confirm you in coming to the conclusion, which, at such great length (for which I entreat your pardon), I have been endeavouring to support.

So strongly prepossessed were the multitude in favour of the innocence of the prisoner, that when Mr Erskine had finished his speech, an irresistible acclamation pervaded the court and to an immense distance around. The streets were seemingly filled with the whole of the inhabitants of London, and the passages were so thronged that it was impossible for the Judges to get to their carriages. Mr Erskine went out and addressed the multitude, desiring them to confide in the justice of the country; reminding them that the only security of Englishmen was under the inestimable laws of England, and that any attempt to overawe or bias. them, would not only be an affront to public justice, but would endanger the lives of the accused. He then besought them to retire, and in a few minutes there was scarcely a person to be seen near the court. No spectacle could be more interesting and affecting. We cannot help being of opinion that it is the wisest policy upon all occasions to cultivate and encourage this enthusiasm of Englishmen for the protection of the law: it binds them to the state and Government of their country, and is a greater security against revolution than any restraints that the wisdom of man can impose.

The result of this memorable trial is well known. After hearing the evidence for the prisoner, which was summed up in a most able and eloquent speech by Sir Vicary Gibbs; and after a reply of great force and ability by the present Lord Redesdale, then Solicitor-General, and the charge of Lord Chief-Justice Eyre, who presided in this special commission, the jury returned a verdict of

NOT GUILTY.

SPEECH for the Hon. RICHARD BINGHAM, after
Earl of Lucan.

THE following speech was delivered by Mr Erskine in the Court of King's Bench, on Monday, February 24, 1794, as counsel for the Hon. Richard Bingham, afterwards Lord Lucan, in an action brought against him by Bernard Edward Howard, Esq., presumptive heir of the Duke of Norfolk, for adultery with his wife. The circumstances under which the damages were sought to be mitigated, in opposition to the severe principle regarding them insisted upon in the speech for Mr Markham, appear fully in the speech itself.

The jury found only £500 damages.

THE SPEECH.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY, My learned friend, as counsel for the plaintiff, has bespoke an address from me, as counsel for the defendant, which you must not, I assure you, expect to hear. He has thought it right (partly in courtesy to me, as I am willing to believe, and in part for the purposes of his cause) that you should suppose you are to be addressed with eloquence which I never possessed, and which, if I did, I should be incapable at this moment of exerting, because the most eloquent man, in order to exert his eloquence, must have his mind free from embarrassment on the occasion on which he is to speak. I am not in that condition. My learned friend has expressed himself as the friend of the plaintiff's family. He does not regard that family more than I do; and I stand in the same predicament towards my own honourable client and his relations: I know him and them, and because I know them, I regard them also. My embarrassment, however, only arises at being obliged to discuss this question in a public court of justice, because, could it have been the subject of private reference, I should have felt none at all in being called upon to settle it.

Gentlemen, my embarrassment is abundantly increased, when I see present a noble person, high, very high in rank in this kingdom, but not higher in rank than he is in my estimation. I speak of the noble Duke of Norfolk, who most undoubtedly must feel not a little at being obliged to come here as a witness for the defendant, in the cause of a plaintiff so nearly allied to himself. I am persuaded no man can have so little sensibility as not to feel that a person in my situation must be greatly embarrassed in discussing a question of this nature before such an audience, and between such parties as I have described.

VOL. II.

P

Gentlemen, my learned friend desired you would take care not to suffer argument, or observation, or eloquence, to be called into the field, to detach your attention from the evidence in the cause, upon which alone you ought to decide. I wish my learned friend, at the moment he gave you that caution, had not himself given testimony of a fact to which he stood the solitary witness. I wish he had not introduced his own evidence, without the ordinary ceremony of being sworn. I will not follow his example. I will not tell you what I know from the conversation of my client, nor give evidence of what I know myself. My learned friend tells you that nothing can exceed the agony of mind his client has suffered, and that no words can describe his adoration of the lady he has lost. These most material points of the cause rest, however, altogether on the single, unsupported, unsworn evidence of the COUNSEL for the plaintiff. NO RELATION has been called upon to confirm them, though we are told that the whole house of Fauconberg, Bellasyse, and Norfolk are in the avenues of the court, ready, it seems, to be called at my discretion. And yet my learned friend is himself the only witness, though the facts (and most material facts, indeed, they would have been) might have been proved by so many illustrious persons.

Now, to show you how little disposed I am to work upon you by anything but by proof-to convince you how little desirous I am to practise the arts of speech as my only artillery in this cause, I will begin with a few plain dates, and, as you have pens in your hands, I will thank you to write them down.

I shall begin with stating to you what my cause is, and shall then prove it, not by myself, but by witnesses.

The parties were married on the 24th of April 1789. The child that has been spoken of, and in terms which gave me great satisfaction, as the admitted son of the plaintiff, blessed with the affection of his parent, and whom the noble person to whom he may become heir can look upon without any unpleasant reflection-that child was born on the 12th of August 1791. Take that date, and my learned friend's admission that this child must have been the child of Mr Howard; an admission which could not have been rationally or consistently made, but upon the implied admission that no illicit connexion had existed previously, by which its existence might have been referred to the defendant. On this subject, therefore, the plaintiff must be silent, he cannot say the parental mind has been wrung, he cannot say hereafter, "No SON OF MINE SUCCEEDING," he can say none of these things. This child was born on the 12th of August 1791, and as Mr Howard is admitted to be the author of its existence (which he must have been, if at all, in 1790), I have a right to say, that, during all that interval, this gentleman could not have had the least reasonable cause of complaint against Mr Bingham; his jealousy must, of course, have begun after that period; for, had there been grounds