any charge of a criminal nature. And when you consider the anomaly that belongs to the avocation-that we are to be judged by a severer criterion than any other species of misdemeanor is subject to -that we are made answerable for the criminal acts of others—that it is a profession (if I may be allowed to call it by that term-I know that I have acted liberally in it) which requires daily and incessant toil-to be performed at an unseasonable hour of the night, after the fatigues and exhaustion of the day, sometimes after the indulgences which man in society may be occasionally permitted -a profession subject to the arts which are too frequently practised to ensnare us in an unwary moment, or to beguile our vigilance-to partialities that may mislead the honest judgment, and to temptations that human frailty may feel it difficult to resist-it will be allowed that honesty, that vigilance, that respect for morals must have been exemplary, which have so effectually secured us against the imputation of guilt. Sixteen years ago, Gentlemen of the Jury, we were charged in this Court with a libel on the King's Government, by the publication of an address from the town of Derby. It was conducted by the Noble and Learned Lord who is now the Lord Chancellor of England. He did not lay the information himself, but he found it in his office, and felt it to be his duty to bring it on. The disorder of the times had given a most serious alarm, not to Govern ment only, but had distracted and divided the greatest political parties in the realm. It is not only painful, Gentlemen, but disgusting to speak of ourselves, and nothing but the peril in which we stand here this day can justify my own feelings, to the breach of taste which I commit by a reference to the testimony borne by the two Noble and Learned Lords, Lord Eldon, who was the prosecutor, and Lord Erskine, who defended us, to our reputation at that time. Gentlemen, I will not trust my memory with the words, but will presume to read them froin the authentic document taken in short band at the time, and which was published in the form in which I now hold it in my hand. [Lord ELLENBOROUGH here begged Mr. Perry to stop; and, in a short address to the Jury, he said that he had his doubts whether, in a criminal prosecution of this kind, a Defendant could refer to the docu ments and evidences of the former part of his life, as proofs by which his mind and intention in any subsequent act could be deduced. He knew that in cases of libel, as well indeed as in other cases even more serious, this sort of reference to anterior testimony had been claimed and allowed; but he confessed he had his doubts as to the propriety of such allowance. On the trial of Mr. Horne Tooke, for instance, on a charge of treason, he had claimed this right, and it had been granted by the Judges who tried that indictment; but he was not prepared to say that he was of the same mind; though, of course, it was not necessary for him to say more than that if ever the case should come before him, it would become seriously his duty to consider whether such proof could be admitted. In the present case, Mr. Perry proposed only, he supposed, to read a passage or two from the report of the trial. If he meant to put it in as evidence, he thought it could not be admitted; but it was competent to Mr. Perry to allude to the declarations of those Noble and Learned Lords, and he would of course have all the benefit of the allusion.] Mr. PERRY thanked his Lordship.— Gentlemen, I meant only to state to you in their own words, what I shall now only mention to you in substance. Lord Eldon said, that considering every individual as under his peculiar protection, he felt it to be his duty to acknowledge, that in no one instance before that time had we been brought to the bar of any Court to answer for any offence, either against Government or a private individual. And from all he had ever heard of the Defendants, he believed us to be men incapable of wilfully publishing any slander on individuals, or of prostituting our paper to defamation or indecency. This was the declaration of Lord Eldon, the prosecutor. Gentlemen, on that day we had the great and distinguished advantage of being defended by that noble and illustrious Lawyer, who upon every occasion identified himself with his Client; who became as it were the brother of his blood, nay, the protecting parent to a child in danger, whose exertions in its rescue neither sword, nor fire, nor the waters could repel. The warmth and vi gour, and integrity of whose soul struck to the hearts of Jurors the conviction by which he was himself so visibly pene trated, and in whom the eloquence of the. advocate was rendered irresistible by the fervor of the friend. That Noble Lord | spoke of us upon that occasion, in terms, which it is impossible for me to repeat, but which have planted indelible gratitude in our hearts. What we were then we are now. We never stood upon the floor of this or any other Court of Justice to receive its judgment, either for a public libel or a private calumny. For myself I can say, that the impressions first made on my mind when a youth, and when I first entered the gallery of the House of Commons, by that great Orator of Reason (Mr. Fox) fixed my principles, and have given consistency to my life. I have never been treacherous to my first professions, nor indolent in carrying them into practice. I have never been violent in my language, but I am sure it will not be said of me that I have ever been equivocal. I never became the advocate of any cause but that which I thought honest, and never embarked in any cause for money. I have been ever found steady to the maintenance of freedom, to the cultivation of the human mind, to the preservation of morals, and to the true interests of my King and Country. Having espoused the doctrines, upon conviction, of that party, the ancestors of whom placed the illustrious family of Brunswick upon the Throne of these Kingdoms, I have acted upon their maxims, without having any other interest in their success than that which must spring to me in common with that of my fellow citizens, by perpetuating the blessings we enjoy. And by acting in the middle path, which the Whigs of England have ever pursued, it has been my lot to be equally assailed and vilified by the extremes of both sides. The obloquy to which the humble but not unuseful profession of a journalist has been of late so unadvisedly subjected, was a powerful inducement to my mind to appear before you in person this day; that I might bear my testimony, if it can be of any weight, to the injustice of the censure. Indiscriminate censure must always be unjust-it is unworthy of enlightened men to throw out, and in this instance it would be very unwise in Englishmen to cherish. I am sure that its influence will not penetrate these walls this day. I feel conscious that the imputation does not attach to my faithful friend nor to me; and I am sure that both the Learned Lord and yourselves are too noble and too upright in your minds to suffer it to approach you. Gentlemen, the cause of the Liberty of the Press in England, under the direc tion of the Noble and Learned Judge, is in your hands this day. The Morning Chronicle stands now, as it did in 1793, in the front of the battle, not only for itself but for the liberty of the press of England. The point at issue is—whether it shall continue to assert the principles upon which the Whigs have ever acted; and by which their only object is to perpetuate to his Majesty and his heirs, the Throne to which they persuaded the people of England to call his ancestors, by securing it upon that basis, which forms not only its strength, but its lustre, and which I find truly described in a recent column of my own paper. Nothing on earth ever "equalled the magnificent and richly" ornamented power and greatness of the kingly office in the Constitution of England, when exerted in due harmony with "the influence and authority of the two "Houses of Parliament in unison with the "public voice. The boasted unity and vigour of despotism is impotence compared with the concentrated energy of such a Government."-May it be perpetual! For my faithful friend, Mr. Lambert, I can with equal sincerity say, that in his more sedentary department of my concern he is equally above reproach. I defy" all mankind to say of him that he could ever be diverted or seduced from the faithful discharge of his duty to the public and to me, or that any temptation could ever make him wilfully to insert an article in The Morning Chronicle that ought to be left out, or omit an article that ought to be made known. The ATTORNEY GENERAL, in reply, said, the Gentleman who had now addressed the Jury in his own defence, had stated, that many years ago, when a Noble Friend of his filled with so much credit the situation it was now his honour to hold, that Noble Lord had passed an eulogy on the Defendant, and his paper. He had no knowledge of what passed on that occasion, but he gave the Defendant full credit for the correctness of what he had stated. The Defendant seemed, from his gesture, to be sensible of the acknowledgment he had made him, but he assured him that was very far short of the credit in other respects, which he would willingly give to the Defendant. In whatever situation he should stand placed, he should be happy to give to every one that credit which was due to them; and however much it might surpass the expectations of the Defendant, he should not find him (the Attorney General) less desirous of doing him justice than the Noble Lord had done. Persons who defended themselves were often brought into circumstances of great peril; but that was not the case in the present instance. The Defendant had lamented the absence of a Learned Lord, a friend of theirs, of whose assistance be had formerly availed himself in that Court. He should also regret the removal of that Learned Lord, had he not been called to fill a higher station. With the eulogium passed on that Learned Person by the Defend ant, he (the Attorney General), and all who had witnessed his conduct in that Court must agree. But the Defendant certainly had not suffered by the absence of that Learned Lord, or of any advocate whatever. He had done himself ample justice, and had proved himself fully equal to the task he had assumed. Though a Defendant who pleaded his own cause was subject to inconveniences, there were also advantages which arose from the same circumstance, and there were irregularities which might be committed by persons in that situation, which it would not be worthy in counsel who opposed them to endeavour to correct The Defendant had admitted that he (the Attorney-General) had conceded to him as much of the Liberty of the Press as he wished to contend for. He surely did concede to the Defendant the full and free discussion of public measures. But, he thought, that when the Defendant had indulged in such liberal abuse of all those who filled high situations in the State, he had exceeded the bounds which would have been allowed to a Counsel. LORD ELLENBOROUGH could not say that the Defendant had been indulged in any observations which would not have been permitted to an Advocate.-If the Attorney-General had called the attention of the Court to any thing irrelevant which the Defendant was advancing, a check would ⚫have been put to it. But in the heat of argument, in such cases as the present, matter might have fallen even from a Counsel, not strictly applicable to the case, but which the Court might not feel itself called on to check. Interruptions of the kind tended to derange the ideas of the speaker, and this must be still more applicable to a person not accustomed to address a Jury. The ATTORNEY-GENERAL said, if his Lordship had only heard him two sentences farther, he would not have interrupted him. He never meant that it was the duty of his Lordship to have interrupted the Defendant. All he meant to say was, that the Defendant possessed advantages from the circumstance of pleading his own cause; that he had taken a degree of licence not justifiable; and that, because he was, as to them, a layman, if he might be allowed the expression, he (the Attorney-General) had not interposed. He saw what it would lead to that he must hear the abuse the Defendant bestowed with so great liberty; but that it would be unworthy in him to enter into the contest. It might have been the duty of the Attorney-General to defend those persons whom the Defendant had so liberally attacked; but considering the situation in which the Defendant stood, he (the AttorneyGeneral) determined not to go out of his way; and as the Defendant was not accustomed to proceedings of this kind, to allow him to go as far as he chose. He thought the Defendant at one time was feeling his way, to ascertain how far he might proceed. He was stating what had appeared in another paper of which he (the Attorney-General) knew nothing. In doing so the Defendant threw out a doubt if he was not exceeding the line of propriety. He found that he was, but not till he had named the paper, having previously spoken of it in terms of more than reprobation, and scandalous as to the author of the article to which he alluded. In the most adroit and skilful manner the Defendant did refer, wishing to know if he was going too far. The Attorney General did think that in naming the paper, the Defendant did go farther than any advocate would have been permitted, and he did accordingly suggest that there were limits to the licence he was taking. The Defendant, however, had gained his point; and he had shewn greater skill in managing it than any man he had ever met with. The mode in which the Defendant had introduced himself to the Jury was well calculated to interest them in his favour. A well-affected simplicity, want of knowledge in the forms of pro ceeding, inability to do justice to his on obscurity, which simply reading of it could not do. How, then, was it to be defended? Not by itself, for that was. desperate. It was impossible to read it, and not to say that it bore that a change of circumstances would bring blessings, but that the æra for their attainment was the accession of another Sovereign, and that he would be nobly popular in the country. Could any man say, that the paragraph would bear any other inter sings were to be expected, was the commencement of the reign of the next Sovereign; the public were to look forward to that period, without hope or expectation of any of the promised blessings visiting them during the reign of his present Majesty. Then, how was this paragraph to be explained away by any other parts of the same paper? It was said by the Defendant, that the paragraph in question was not in the large type, and that this which was displayed conspicuously, was all which the publishers of such papers held out as their own. This was the first time the Attorney General had ever heard of such a doctrine, and his Lordship would tell the Jury, that it was impossible such a defence could be admitted. The Defendant had also said, that there were other defence, joined to colourable reasons for not placing it in the hands of others, were well selected by the Defendant for this purpose; and having in this manner interested the Jury in his favour, he had been seen to bring to his aid talents which did not fall to the common lot of man. These were the advantages which the Defendant had gained by himself pleading his cause to day (and more consummate address he never witnessed) but, yet, they would not avail him. As far as the senti-pretation? The time at which these blesments of the Defendant in his speech this day, or as they appeared in other parts of his paper, could go to an alleviation of his offence in publishing the libel in question, so far let his guilt be alleviated. He was happy to find that the same man in the year 1810, was not so unlike the person Lord Eldon had found him to be in the year 1793, as from the paragraph in question he must have conceived him to be. The Defendant wished that the Jury could look into his mind, and see what passed there. If the Court who were to pass sentence on the Defendants could do so, it would be fit that they should be governed by what they saw passing there: But what the Jury were here to try was, if a paragraph, stating that certain blessings were to be attained by the people of this country, but that the period of their attain-passages in the same paper which proved ment was not within the life of the reigning Sovereign, but on the accession of his Successor, and consequently that the period of the reign of the present Sove-titled to put a paragraph of the tendency reign must be interposed before they could be attained, was or was not a libel. If such was the meaning of the paragraph, was there any man so besotted as to deny that the tendency of it could only be to alienate the affections of the people from the reigning Sovereign, and to teach them to look forward to the æra of his dissolution as the period at which those blessings were to be enjoyed. This, he must contend, was the fair inference to be drawn from the publication in question, notwith-only this one meaning, that the blessings standing the eloquence which had been displayed by the Defendant in giving it a different interpretation. Though he had attended, to the utmost of his power, to the address the Defendant had made, he could not comprehend any part of it as going to the real question. What was the meaning which the paragraph carried along with it in sound sense and reason? He had been short in his opening of the case, because he felt it to be so plain that he was afraid reasoning on it might bring that he did not hold the sentiments here imputed to him. To take up that matter drily, could it be said that a man was en he had described, into an insulated part of his paper, and then to argue-It is true, you here find this paragraph, but if you look three columns back you will find one of a different tendency, and the one will correct the other. No such argument could be sufficient to avail any man. But it was said, the paragraph did not go so far, and that what he had stated was not the meaning of it. He could only take the paragraph by itself, and to his mind it had he figured were only to be attained in the reign of his Majesty's Successor. When this idea was in the mind of the writer of the article-when the person of the King must have been before him, how came he not to state, that his present Majesty might have an opportunity of becoming nobly popular by a total change of system, but to reserve that claim to popularity for his Successor? To proclaim to his readers, that his present Majesty will not entitle himself to claim an attachment on the part of his subjects, but that it is the Successor of his Majesty only who will do it? It was impossible, he contended, for any man to wrest the paragraph to any other signification. But what was it which the Defendant relied on to shew, not only that he had not, but that he could not have any such sentiments in his contemplation? Not the sentiments of the Editor himself, but what he related of another as being his sentiments. "You must not," says he, "impute disloyalty to me, because in another part of the paper I truly impute loyalty to Lord Grenville, and state the expressions of loyalty used by him." It did not appear to him, that there was any thing like rational argument in this. But the Defendant said, there was still another part of the Paper which proved the loyalty of the Defendant, and this was a paragraph in commendation of the Prince of Wales, and of his veneration for the virtues of his father. It was impossible, either for the Defendant, or for the Learned Lord who had formerly been his Counsel, to hold the character of his Royal Highness in higher respect than he (the Attorney General) did; but he was at a loss to see what connection there was between this paragraph in commendation of his Royal Highness, and this tail-piece, as the Defendant described it, tacked not to it but to another article. The sentiments ascribed by the Defendant to the Prince of Wales were most truly so ascribed with the view of magnifying his character; but what argument could be built on this to shew the Jury that they were not from the other paragraph, to collect, that the accession of his Majesty's Successor to the throne was not the æra at which the blessings alluded to were to be attained? So far the reverse of this it furnished an additional argument for the interpretation he (the Attorney General) contended the paragraph could alone receive. He should not have thought the two paragraphs at all connected together; but supposing them to have followed each other, or to have formed part of the same article, what would they together have amounted to? A commendation of the Prince of Wales a declaration that a total change of system would produce an infinity of blessings-followed by an observation that the Soccessor to his present Majesty would have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular. In other words, "Nothing but change of system can produce the blessings alluded to, and his Majesty's Successor that Prince I have before commended, will have an opportunity of becoming nobly popular, by acting directly contrary to that system his father is now pursuing." Could any man give a different interpretation to the whole, supposing the paragraphs to stand together? The Defendant said this was like a postscript or corollary to the article in the former part of the paper. He (the Attorney General) said, if they were connected his argument would gain additional strength from the circumstance. But, if connected, how happened it that they were so disjoined ? The Defendant said, the article charged as a Libel was to be taken as a part of the former long article. What part? The article immediately preceding it, began, "Three sail of the homeward-bound Jamaica fleet," &c. Then, if this argument. of the Defendant was correct, it followed, that there was not a paragraph which could possibly find its way into a newspaper, however poisonous it might be in itself, which, when coupled with another paragraph in some other part of the same paper, might not become perfectly innocent. For a person of so acute an understanding as the Defendant possessed to hold out such an argument to the Jury, was to deceive them. It was unworthy the understanding which he had so ably, and, though he disclaimed it, so eloquently exhibited to-day, to contend that the articles had any connection. If they had, however, it only made the matter worse. He should do the Defendant the justice to say, that he did not believe the Defendant intended they should. If he had first perused the one, and then adopted the other as having reference to it, his intention would be the more strongly manifested; and therefore, if the paragraphs were to be connected together, the observations that he had before made would be greatly enhanced.-If there was nothing in this paper, which he was certain there was not, that could give a different sense to the paragraph complained of, it must be judged of, as it stood, by itself. The effect of it no man who read it could doubt. He had no doubt his Lordship would tell them that the paragraph could have no meaning but that which he had assigned to it; of course, it would be their duty to convict the Defendants. Lord ELLENBOROUGH then addressed the Jury. The Defendants were charged by the present information with publishing a libel, of an unlawful, wicked and malicious |