and fair argument; and never descended to indecent attack, or scurrilous abuse. My Learned Friend cannot produce a single instance in the course of seventeen years (the term of my acquaintance with them), in which they have been charged in any court with public libel, or with private defamation: and I challenge the world to exhibit a single instance in which they have made their journals the vehicles of slander, or where from interest, or malice, or any other base motive, they have published a single paragraph to disturb the happiness of private life, to wound the sensibility of innocence, or to outrage the decencies of well-regulated society.-I defy the world to produce a single instance.-Men who have so conducted themselves, are entitled to protection from any government, but certainly they are particularly entitled to it, where a free press is part of the system. In the fair and liberal management of their paper, fifteen shillings out of every guinea which they receive flow directly into the public Exchequer; and besides the incessant toil, and the unwearied watching, all the expenses by which this great gain to Government is produced, are borne exclusively by them.-They essentially contribute therefore by their labours to the support of Government, and they are as honestly and fervently attached to the true principles of the British constitution, to the Crown, and to the mixed system of our government, as any subject of His Majesty ; but at the same time they are ready to acknowledge, that they ever have been advocates for a temperate and seasonable reform of the abuses which have crept into our system. Their minds are to be taken from the whole view of their conduct.-It is a curious, and I will venture to say in times so convulsed, an unexampled thing, that in all the productions of my friends, that in all the variety of their daily miscellany, the Crown officers have been able to pick out but one solitary advertisement from all that they have published, on which to bring a charge of sedition; and of this advertisement, if they thought fit to go into the detail, they would show even by internal evidence, that it was inserted at a very busy moment, without revision or correction, and about the very time that this advertisement appeared, seven hundred declarations, in support of the King's government, appeared in the same paper, which they revised and corrected for publication.-You are not therefore to take one advertisement, inserted in their paper, as a criterion of their principles, but to take likewise the other advertisements which appeared along with it. Would the readers then of this paper, while they read in this advertisement a recital of the abuses of the constitution, not be in possession of a sufficient antidote from the enumeration of its blessings? While the admirers of the constitution came forward with an unqualified panegyric of its excellencies, were not the friends of reform justified in following them with a fair statement of grievances? If it is alleged, that the pecuniary interest which the proprietors have in a newspaper, ought to subject them to a severe responsibility for its contents, let it be recollected, that they have only an interest in common with the public. I again call upon Mr. Attorney General to state, whether the fact appears to him clearly established, that the writers of this paper were influenced by seditious motives. I put it to you, Gentlemen of the Jury, as honest men, as candid judges of the conduct, as fair interpreters of the sentiments of others, whether you do not in your hearts and consciences believe, that these men felt as they wrote that they complained of grievances which they actually experienced, and expressed sentiments, with the truth of which they were deeply impressed. If you grant this-if you give them the credit of honest feelings and upright intentions, on my part, any farther defence is unnecessary; we are already in possession of your verdict; you have already pronounced them not guilty; for you will not condemn the conduct when you have acquitted the heart. You will rather desire that British justice should resemble that attribute of Heaven which looks not to the outward act, but to the principle from which it proceeds -to the intention by which it is directed. In summing up for the Crown, I would never wish to carry the principles of liberty farther than Mr. Attorney General has done, when he asserted the right of political discussion, and desired you only to look to the temper and spirit with which such discussion was made; when he asserted, that it was right to expose abuses, to complain of grievances, provided always that it were done with an honest and fair intention. Upon this principle, I appeal to you, whether this advertisement might not be written with a bona fide intention, and inserted among a thousand others, without any seditious purpose, or desire to disturb the public peace. - Undoubtedly our first duty is the love of our country; but this love of our country does not consist in a servile attachment and blind adulation to authority. It was not so that our ancestors loved their country; because they loved it, they sought to discover the defects of its government; because they loved it, they endeavoured to apply the remedy. They regarded the constitution not as slaves with a constrained and involuntary homage, but they loved it with the generous and enlightened ardour of free men. Their attachment was founded upon a conviction of its excellence, and they secured its permanence by freeing it from blemish.-Such was the love of our ancestors for the constitution, and their posterity surely do not become criminal by emulating their example. I appeal to you, whether the abuses stated in this paper do not exist in the constitution, and whether their existence has not been admitted by all parties, both by the friends and enemies of reform. Both, I have no doubt, are honest in their opinions, and God forbid that honest opinion in either party, should ever become a crime. In their opinion of the necessity of a reform, as the best and perhaps only remedy of the abuses of the constitution, the writers of this paper coincide with the most eminent and enlightened men. On this ground I leave the question, secure that your verdict will be agreeable to the dictates of your consciences, and be directed by a sound and unbiassed judgment. Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL.-There are some propositions which my Learned Friend (Mr. Erskine) has brought forward for the Defendants, which not only I do not mean to dispute, as an officer of the Crown, carrying on this prosecution, but which I will also admit to their full extent. Every individual is certainly in a considerable degree interested in this prosecution; at the same time I must observe, that I should have, in my own opinion, betrayed my duty to the Crown, if I had not brought this subject for the consideration of a Jury. Considering, however, every individual as under my protection, I think it a duty which I owe to the Defendants, to acknowledge, that in no one instance before this time were they brought to the bar of any Court, to answer for any offence either against Government or a private individual. This is the only solitary instance in which they have given occasion for such charge to be brought against them. In every thing, therefore, that I know of the Defendants, you are to take them as men standing perfectly free from any imputation but the present; and I will also say, from all I have |