they urged precedents against the liberty of England. Such things are the tyranny of one side, the weakness of the other, and the law of neither. We will not be bound by them; or rather, in the words of the Declaration of Right, no doing, judgment, or proceeding to the contrary shall be brought into precedent or example. Do not, then, tolerate a power, the power of the British government, over this land, which has no foundation in necessity, or utility, or empire, or the laws of England, or the laws of Ireland, or the laws of nature, or the laws of God. Do not suffer that power, which banished your manufactures, dishonored your peerage, and stopped the growth of your people. Do not, I say, be bribed by an export of woollen, or an import of sugar, and suffer that power, which has thus withered the land, to have existence in your pusillanimity. Do not send the people to their own resolves for liberty, passing by the tribunals of justice, and the high court of Parliament; neither imagine that, by any formation of apology, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, still less to your children, who will sting you in your grave for interposing between them and their Maker, and robbing them of an immense occasion, and losing an opportunity which you did not create and can never restore. Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe, that here the principal men among us were found wanting, were awed by a weak ministry, bribed by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and her temple opened its folding doors, fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold? I might, as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instruction of eighteen counties; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment-tell us the rule by which we shall go; assert the law of Ireland; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked, he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time at hand; the spirit is gone forth; the Declaration of Right is planted; and though great men should fall off, yet the cause shall live; and though he who utters this should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the humble organ who conveys it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive him. LORD THOMAS ERSKINE 1750-1823 The third son of a rather impecunious Scotch peer, Thomas Erskine was obliged to look to himself for a living; and after attending school at Edinburgh, and getting some further instruction at St. Andrews University, he was embarked at Leith as a midshipman in the navy. The year of his birth was 1750; and after this early departure from Scotland, he never saw it again until his life was drawing to its close. After serving four years in the navy, he quitted it for the army, in 1768. Two years later he married, and went with his regiment to Minorca for three years. Altogether, his army service lasted six years; but no opportunity for military distinction offered itself, and he was noted chiefly for a remarkable conversational talent; which seems to have led his friends, and chief among them his mother, a woman of talent and discernment-to urge upon him the career of the bar. He took the advice; entered Trinity College, Cambridge, for the degree to which his being the son of a nobleman entitled him; became a student at Lincoln's Inn and was called to the bar in 1778. By an accident, he was almost immediately called upon to plead against a motion of the Attorney-General in the case of Baillie against Lord Sunderland; and his spirit and eloquence were so marked in this maiden effort, that as he left the court he received no less than thirty retainers from attorneys who had heard him. Again, a few months later, he was called on to plead at the bar of the House of Commons in behalf of the publisher Carnan, against the university monopoly in almanacs; his argument was successful, and the reputation he thus gained assured his fortune; and he was engaged in every important case for the ensuing twenty-five years. In 1783 he was elected member of Parliament for Portsmouth, and retained his seat for that constituency till his elevation to the peerage in 1806. But his speeches in the House were not his chief title to fame as an orator; it was in his forensic efforts that he excelled. His defence of Stockdale from libel in 1789 was one of his most admired achievements; and in 1792 he defended Thomas Paine, when prosecuted for his "Rights of Man." This cost him his place at AttorneyGeneral. Another famous instance of his ability was in the trial of Tooke and others for high treason. In 1802 he was restored to the office of Attorney-General, and on the death of Pitt, he was made a peer and raised to the dignity of Lord High Chancellor. His latter years were somewhat embittered, owing to loss of fortune through unfortunate land investments. He performed a good deal of literary labor in his leisure times, but his ability in this direction was not of the first order. He died in 1823. THE LIMITATIONS OF FREE SPEECH Delivered in 1797 at the trial of Williams for the publication of Paine's "Age of Reason" ENTLEMEN OF THE JURY: The charge of blasphemy, which is put upon the record against the publisher of this publication, is not an accusation of the servants of the Crown, but comes before you sanctioned by the oaths of a grand jury of the country. It stood for trial upon a former day; but it happening, as it frequently does, without any imputation upon the gentlemen named in the panel, that a sufficient number did not appear to constitute a full special jury, I thought it my duty to withdraw the cause from trial, till I could have the opportunity of addressing myself to you who were originally appointed to try it. I pursued this course from no jealousy of the common juries appointed by the laws for the ordinary service of the court, since my whole life has been one continued experience of their virtues; but because I thought it of great importance that those who were to decide upon a cause so very momentous to the public, should have the highest possible qualifications for the decision; that they should not only be men capable from their educations of forming an enlightened judgment, but that their situations should be such as to bring them within the full view of their country, to which, in character and in estimation, they were in their own turns to be responsible. Not having the honor, gentlemen, to be sworn for the King as one of his counsel, it has fallen much oftener to my lot to defend indictments for libels than to assist in the prosecution of them; but I feel no embarrassment from that recollection. I shall not be bound to-day to express a sentiment or to utter an expression inconsistent with those invaluable principles for which I have uniformly contended in the defence of others. |