through Westminster Hall, where several thousand people were assembled, who had been drawn thither by the curiosity and the interest which had been excited by a Trial of so extraordinary a nature, by the celebrity and power of the real prosecutor, the weakness of the accused, and the well-known talents of my defenders. I reflected with poignant concern on the contrasts which this day presented the punishment of regicides, and the Trial of an old and faithful Royalist, who was accused of having attacked the character of men still reeking with the blood of their Sovereign! Such a result of fourteen years uninterrupted labour, in a cause the most sacred and the most just; the remembrance of so many perils of every kind, from which Providence had miraculously preserved me; the total ruin of my fortune and of my hopes *, which was on * In the course of the week in which I was tried, I lost in France my father, brother and sister, and consequently all that I might, at a future day, have saved of my patrimony. de peine à traverser la grande salle de Westminster, où plusieurs milliers de personnes avaient été attirées par la curiosité et l'intérêt qu'excitaient à la fois une pareille procédure, la célébrité et la puissance du véritable poursuivant, la faiblesse de l'accusé, et les talents connus de mes défenseurs. Je réfléchissais avec douleur sur le contraste qu'offraient le même jour la punition d'un régicide, et le jugement d'un ancien et fidele royaliste, accusé d'avoir attaqué des hommes tout couverts du sang de leur Souverain. Ce résultat, après quatorze années de travaux non-interrompus pour la plus juste, pour la plus sacrée des causes; le souvenir de tant de périls de toute espece auxquels la Providence m'avait fait échapper par miracle; la ruine totale de ma fortune et de mes espérances,* que je voyais au moment * Dans la semaine où j'ai été jugé, j'ai perdu en France pere, frere et sœur, et tout ce que j'avais à attendre de patrimoine. B on the point of being followed by the loss of my liberty; the weight of an accusation proceeding from the Crown, and supported by all the influence of a terrible and inexorable power at which Europe trembled; and the thought that it was absolutely out of my power to employ the whole of my means of defence; all these reflections had borne me down for three months, and I should probably have let judgment go by default, if the accusation had been confined to the charge of having excited hatred and contempt against the most contemptible and hateful of human beings, that is to say, the First Consul and his associates in the French Government. But I was accused of having provoked the French to an act of assassination. It was impossible for me to submit tacitly to an imputation of this nature, which would have fixed an indelible stain on my character. I took the resolution, therefore, to repel both these charges with all the means in my power, and which the circumstances of the moment would allow me. Such moment d'être suivie de la perte de ma liberté ; le poids d'une accusation procédant de la Couronne, et appuyée de toute l'influence d'un pouvoir terrible, inexorable, qui faisait trembler l'Europe; la pensée que j'étais dans l'impossibilité morale de faire usage de tous mes moyens de défense; toutes ces réflexions m'accablaient depuis deux mois, et je me serois peut-être déterminé à me laisser condamner par défaut, si l'accusation s'était bornée à me charger d'avoir voulu exciter la haîne et le mépris contre les plus méprisables et les plus haïssables des hommes, je veux dire, le Premier Consul et son gouvernement: mais j'étais accusé d'avoir provoqué le peuple Français à l'assassinat ; il ne m'était pas permis de souscrire tacitement à une imputation de ce genre, qui aurait jeté une espece de tache sur mon caractere. Je pris donc la résolution de repousser l'une et l'autre charge, autant qu'il serait en mon pouvoir de le faire, dans les circonstances où nous nous trouvions alors. Such was the difficulty of these circum stances, that I was under the necessity of de clining the privilege which my quality as a foreigner gave me, to claim that one half of the jury should be composed of my coun trymen. In fact, it is scarcely possible to find Frenchmen in London, who are not related to France, by family connexions or interests; and who, consequently, are not liable to be called, one time or another, to the territory of the Republic. My acquittal by a jury, the half of which would have consisted of Frenchmen, would have been for them, either a sentence of death, if they had set their foot in France or in three-fourths of Europe, or at least a decree of perpetual exile in the dominions of His Majesty. Indeed, I had before my eyes the recent im prisonment in the Temple, by order of Buonaparté, of all the judges who composed the tribunal of Brest, for having acquitted Monsieur de Rivoire, an officer of the navy, who was accused of being attached to the King's cause; the suspension of the judges of the tribunal of Tours for having acquitted two |