any Englishman an accomplice in so corrupting his countrymen, a public teacher of depravity and barbarity!

Mortifying and horrible as the idea is, I must remind you, Gentlemen, that even at that time, even under the reign of Robespierre, my learned friend, if he had then been Attorney General, might have been compelled by some most deplorable necessity, to have come into this Court to ask your verdict against the libellers of Barrere and Collot d'Herbois. Mr. Peltier then employed his talents against the enemies of the human race, as he has uniformly and bravely done. I do not believe that any peace, any political considerations, any fear of punishment, would have silenced him. He has shewn too much honour and constancy, and intrepidity, to be shaken by such circumstances as these.

My learned friend might then have been compelled to have filed a criminal information against Mr. Peltier, for "wickedly and mali

ciously intending to vilify and degrade Mari"milian Robespierre, Fresident of the Commit"tee of Public Safety of the French Republic!" He might have been reduced to the sad necessity of appearing before you to bely his own

better

better feelings; to prosecute Mr. Peltier for publishing those sentiments which my friend himself had a thousand times felt, and a thousand times expressed. He might have been obliged even to call for punishment upon Mr. Peltier, for language which he and all mankind would for ever despise Mr. Peltier if he were not to employ. Then indeed, Gentlemen, we should have seen the last humiliation fall on England; the tribunals, the spotless and venerable tribunals of this free country, reduced to be the ministers of the vengeance of Robespierre ! What could have rescued us from this last disgrace? The honesty and courage of a jury. They would have delivered the judges of their country from the dire necessity of inflicting punishment on a brave and virtuous man, because he spoke truth of a monster. They would have despised the threats of a foreign tyrant as their ancestors braved the power of oppressors at home.

''

In the Court where we are now met, Cromwell twice sent a satirist on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a libeller, and in this Court, almost in sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of his Sovereign, within hearing of the clash of his bayonets which drove out

Parliaments with contumely, two successive juries rescued the intrepid satirist from his fangs, and sent out with defeat and disgrace the Usurper's Attorney General from what he had the insolence to call his Court! Even then, Gentlemen, when all law and liberty were trampled under the feet of a military banditti; when those great crimes were perpetrated on a high place and with a high hand against those who were the objects of public veneration, which more than any thing else upon earth overwhelm the minds of men, break their spirits, and confound their moral sentiments, obliterate the distinctions between right and wrong in their understanding, and teach the multitude to feel no longer any reverence for that justice which they thus see triumphantly dragged at the chariot wheels of a tyrant;-Even then, when this unhappy country, triumphant indeed abroad but enslaved at home, had no prospect but that of a long succession of tyrants wading through slaughter to a throne-even then, I say, when all seemed lost, the unconquerable spirit of English liberty survived in the hearts of English. jurors. That spirit is, I trust in God, not extinct.

* Lilburne.

tinct and if any modern tyrant were, in the drunkenness of his insolence, to hope to over-. awe an English jury, I trust and I believe that they would tell him: "Our ancestors braved "the bayonets of Cromwell-we bid defiance "to yours. Contempsi Catilina gladios-non pertimescam tuos !"

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What could be such a tyrant's means of overawing a jury?-As long as their country exists, they are girt round with impenetrable armour. Till the destruction of their country, no danger can fall upon them for the performance of their duty, and I do trust that there is no Englishman so unworthy of life as to desire to outlive England. But if any of us are condemned to the cruel punishment of surviving our country-if in the inscrutable counsels of Providence, this favoured seat of Justice and Liberty, this noblest work of human wisdom and virtue, be destined to destruction, which I shall not be charged with national prejudice for saying would be the most dangerous wound ever inflicted on civilization; at least, let us carry with us into our sad exile the consolation. that we ourselves have not violated the rights of hospitality to exiles-that we have not torn from the altar the suppliant who claimed protection

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tection as the voluntary victim of loyalty and conscience!

Gentlemen, I now leave this, unfortunate Gentleman in your hands. His character and his situation might interest your humanity→ But, on his behalf, I only ask justice from you. I only ask a favourable construction of what cannot be said to be more than ambiguous language, and this you will soon be told from the highest authority is a part of justice.

REPLY,