the crimes of powerful sovereigns, without any (3) Denuncia glish press of engaged in the first partition of Poland. language then employed. No complaints even appear to have been made from abroad, much less any insolent menaces against the free Constitution which protected the English press. The people of England were too long known throughout Europe for the proudest potentate to expect to silence our press by such means. the Pules I pass over the second partition of Poland in 1792. You all remember what passed contribution on that occasion, the universal abhor-er the see rence expressed by every man and ev- God partitus. ery writer of every party, the succors that were publicly preparing by large bodies of individuals of all parties for the oppressed Poles. Severe tone of the English press toward the authors memberment, final dis though allies of The first remarkable instance which I shall choose to state of the unpunished ten by the Eu- and protected boldness of the English those who were press, of the freedom with which they animadverted on the policy of powerful sovereigns, is the partition of Poland in 1772; an act not, perhaps, so horrible in I hasten to the final dismemberment of that its means, nor so deplorable in its immediate ef- unhappy kingdom, which seems to me fects, as some other atrocious invasions of na- the most striking example in our histional independence which have followed it; but tory of the habitual, principled, and the most abominable in its general tendency and deeply rooted forbearance of those ultimate consequences of any political crime re- who administer the law toward po. England. corded in history, because it was the first prac- litical writers. We were engaged in the most tical breach in the system of Europe, the first ex- extensive, bloody, and dangerous war that this ample of atrocious robbery perpetrated on unof- country ever knew; and the parties to the disfending countries which have been since so lib-memberment of Poland were our allies, and our erally followed, and which has broken down all the barriers of habit and principle which guarded defenseless states. The perpetrators of this atrocious crime were the most powerful sovereigns of the Continent, whose hostility it certainly was not the interest of Great Britain wantonly to incur. They were the most illustrious princes of their age, and some of them were, doubtless, entitled to the highest praise for their domestic administration, as well as for the brilliant qualities which distinguished their charac ters. But none of these circumstances, no dread of their resentment, no admiration of their talents, no consideration for their rank, silenced the animadversion of the English press. Some of you remember, all of you know, that a loud and unanimous cry of reprobation and execration broke out against them from every part of this kingdom. It was perfectly uninfluenced by any considerations of our own mere national interest, which might perhaps be supposed to be rather favorably affected by that partition. It was not, as in some other countries, the indignation of rival robbers, who were excluded from their share of the prey. It was the moral anger of disinterested spectators against atrocious crimes, the gravest and the most dignified moral principle which the God of justice has implanted in the human heart; that of which the dread is the only restraint on the actions of powerful criminals, and of which the promulgation is the only punishment that can be inflicted on them. It is a restraint which ought not to be weakened. It is a punishment which no good man can desire to mitigate. That great crime was spoken of as it deserved in England. Robbery was not described by any courtly circumlocutions. Rapine was not called policy; nor was the oppression of an innocent people termed a mediation in their domestic differences. No prosecutions, no criminal informations followed the liberty and the boldness of the Parliame only powerful and effective allies. We had ev- fling events; that if there be a decorum due to exalted rank and authority, there is also a much more sacred decorum due to virtue and to human nature, which would be outraged and trampled under foot by speaking of guilt in a lukewarm language, falsely called moderate. press when the liberties of Switzerland by France. and disinterested anger against their oppressors, are, if I may so speak, the masters which are appointed by Providence to teach us fortitude in the defense of our own rights; that selfishness is a dastardly principle, which betrays its charge and flies from its post; and that those only can defend themselves with valor who are animated by the moral approbation with which they can survey their sentiments toward others, who are ennobled in their own eyes by a consciousness that they are fighting for justice as well as interest; a consciousness which none can feel but those who have felt for the wrongs of their brethren. These are the sentiments which my learned friend would have felt. He would have told the hero: "Your confidence is not deceived; this is still that England, of which the history may, perhaps, have contributed to fill your heart with the heroism of liberty. Every other country of Europe is crouching under the bloody tyrants who destroyed your country. We are unchanged; we are still the same people which received with open arms the victims of the tyranny of Philip II. and Louis XIV. We shall not exercise a cowardly and clandestine humanity! Here we are not so dastardly as to rob you of your greatest consolation. Here, protected by a free, brave, and high-minded people, you may give vent to your indignation; you may proclaim the crimes of your tyrants, you may devote them to the execration of mankind; there is still one spot upon earth in which they are abhorred, without being dreaded !" the resentment of Reubell or Rapinat! that he must smother the sorrow and the anger with which his heart was loaded; that he must breathe his murmurs low, lest they might be overheard by the oppressor!" Would this have been the language of my learned friend? I know that it Soon after, gentlemen, there followed an act, would not. I know that by such a supposition 1 (7.) Indignant in comparison with which all the have done wrong to his honorable feelings, to his language of the deeds of rapine and blood perpetrated | honest English heart. I am sure that he knows as in the world are innocence itself well as I do, that a nation which should thus rewere destroyed the invasion and destruction of Switz-ceive the oppressed of other countries would be erland, that unparalleled scene of preparing its own neck for the yoke. He knows guilt and enormity; that unprovoked aggression the slavery which such a nation would deserve, against an innocent country, which had been the and must speedily incur. He knows that symsanctuary of peace and liberty for three centu-pathy with the unmerited sufferings of others, ries; respected as a sort of sacred territory by the fiercest ambition; raised, like its own mountains, beyond the region of the storms which raged around on every side; the only warlike people that never sent forth armies to disturb their neighbors; the only government that ever accumulated treasures without imposing taxes, an innocent treasure, unstained by the tears of the poor, the inviolate patrimony of the commonwealth, which attested the virtue of a long series of magistrates, but which at length caught the eye of the spoiler, and became the fatal occasion of their ruin! Gentlemen, the destruction of such a country, "its cause so innocent, and its fortune so lamentable!" made a deep impression on the people of England. I will ask my learned friend, if we had then been at peace with the French Republic, whether we must have been silent spectators of the foulest crimes that ever blotted the name of humanity! whether we must, like cowards and slaves, have repressed the compassion and indignation with which that horrible scene of tyranny had filled our hearts 228 Let me suppose, gentlemen, that ALOYS REDING, who has displayed in our times the simplicity, magnanimity, and piety of ancient heroes, had, after his glorious struggle, honored this kingdom by choosing it as his refuge; that after performing prodigies of valor at the head of his handful of heroic peasants on the field of Morgarten, where his ancestor, the Landmann Reding, had, five hundred years before, defeated the first oppressors of Switzerland, he had selected this country to be his residence, as the chosen abode of liber- I am aware, gentlemen, that I have already ty, as the ancient and inviolable asylum of the abused your indulgence, but I must If during the oppressed; would my learned friend have had the entreat you to bear with me for a French Revo boldness to have said to this hero," that he must short time longer, to allow me to sup- had been at hide his tears" (the tears shed by a hero over the pose a case which might have oc- France, what ruins of his country!) "lest they might provoke curred, in which you will see the hor- ought to have 28 In the spring of 1798, Aloys Reding, here spok-rible consequences of enforcing rig. of the English en of, met the French army on the field of Morgar- orously principles of law, which I can ten, as chief magistrate of the Canton of Schweitz, not counteract, against political writers. We and with a handful of men broke their ranks and put might have been at peace with France during them to flight. But he was at last overpowered by the whole of that terrible period which elapsed numbers, his country subjugated, and himself thrown between August, 1792 and 1794, which has at first into prison and afterward driven into exile. been usually called the reign of Robespierre ! He was born in 1755 and died in 1818, retaining to the last his hatred of French revolutionary princi- The only series of crimes, perhaps, in history. ples, and especially of Bonaparte. Zschokke, in his which, in spite of the common disposition to ex history of the fall of the democratic Cantons of aggerate extraordinary facts, has been beyond Switzerland has thrown a romantic interest around measure underrated in public opinion. I say this, the rame of Reding. gentlemen, after an investigation which, I think Intion England peace with been the course press? When that Convention resounded with ap plause at the news of several hundred aged priests being thrown into the Loire, and particu larly at the exclamation of Carrier, who com "What a revolutionmunicated the intelligence, ary torrent is the Loire"-when these sugges tions and narrations of murder, which have hith secret cabals, in the darkest caverns of banditti, were triumphantly uttered, patiently endured, and even loudly applauded by an assembly of seven hundred men, acting in the sight of all Europe, would my learned friend have wished that there had been found in England a single writer so base as to deliberate upon the most safe, decorous, and polite manner of relating all these things to his countrymen? entitles ine to affirm it with confidence. Men's | judge the conduct of so illustrious an assembly minds were oppressed by atrocity and the mul- as the National Convention, or the suggestions titude of crimes; their humanity and their indo- of so enlightened a statesman as M. Marat? lence took refuge in skepticism from such an overwhelming mass of guilt; and the consequence was, that all these unparalleled enormities, though proved not only with the fullest historical, but with the strictest judicial evidence, were at the time only half believed, and are now scarcely half remembered. When these atrocities were daily perpetrating, of which the great-erto been only hinted and whispered in the most est part are as little known to the public in general as the campaigns of Genghis Khan, but are still protected from the scrutiny of men by the immensity of those voluminous records of guilt in which they are related, and under the mass of which they will be buried till some historian be found with patience and courage enough to drag them forth into light, for the shame, indeed, but for the instruction of mankind-when these crimes were perpetrating, which had the peculiar malignity, from the pretexts with which they were covered, of making the noblest objects of human pursuit seem odious and detestable; which has almost made the names of liberty, reformation, and humanity synonymous with anarchy, robbery, and murder; which thus threatened not to extinguish every principle of improvement, to arrest the progress of civilized society, and to disinherit future generations of that rich succession, which they were entitled to expect from the knowledge and wisdom of the present, but to destroy the civilization of Europe, which never gave such a proof of its vigor and robustness as in being able to resist their destructive power-when all these horrors were acting in the greatest empire of the Continent, I will ask my learned friend, if we had then been at peace with France, how English writers were to relate them so as to escape the charge of libeling a friendly government ?29 When Robespierre, in the debates in the National Convention on the mode of murdering their blameless Sovereign, objected to the formal and tedious mode of murder called a trial, and proposed to put him immediately to death, on the principles of insurrection," because, to doubt the guilt of the King would be to doubt of the innocence of the Convention; and if the King were not a traitor, the Convention must be rebels; would my learned friend have had an English writer state all this with "decorum and moderation?" Would he have had an English writer state that though this reasoning was not perfect. ly agreeable to our national laws, or perhaps to our national prejudices, yet it was not for him to make any observations on the judicial proceedings of foreign states? 66 When Marat, in the same Convention, called for two hundred and seventy thousand heads, must our English writers have said that the remedy did, indeed, seem to their weak judgment rather severe; but that it was not for them to "We see in this passage a tendency which Mackintosh had, in common with Burke, to overload a sen tence with too many particulars. He condemned it himself in after life. when remarking on this speech. When Carrier ordered five hundred children. under fourteen years of age to be shot, the greater part of whom escaped the fire from their size, when the poor victims ran for protection to the soldiers, and were bayoneted clinging round their knees! would my friend-but I can not pursue the strain of interrogation. It is too much. It would be a violence which I can not practice on my own feelings. It would be an outrage to my friend. It would be an insult to humanity No! Better, ten thousand times better, would it be that every press in the world were burned; that the very use of letters were abolished; that we were returned to the honest ignorance of the rudest times, than that the results of civilization should be made subservient to the purposes of barbarism, than that literature should be em ployed to teach a toleration for cruelty, to weak. en moral hatred for guilt, to deprave and brutalize the human mind. I know that I speak my friend's feelings as well as my own when I say God forbid that the dread of any punishment should ever make 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 libelers of Barrère Mr. Peltier then emand Collot d'Herbois. ployed 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 con siderations, any fear of punishment would have He has shown too much honor, silenced him. and constancy, and intrepidity, to be shaken by such circumstances as these. My learned friend might then have been com pelled to have filed a criminal information against Mr. Peltier, for "wickedly and maliciously intending to vilify and degrade Maximilian Robes pierre, President of the Committee of Public Safety of the French Republic!" He might Their duty ent crisis. have been reduced to the sad necessity of ap- | What could be such a tyrant's means of overpearing before you to belie his own better feel-awing a jury? As long as their counings, to prosecute Mr. Peltier for publishing those try exists, they are girt round with im- at the pres sentiments which my friend himself had a thou- penetrable armor. Till the destruction sand times felt, and a thousand times expressed. | of their country, no danger can fall upon them He might have been obliged even to call for for the performance of their duty, and I do trust punishment upon Mr. Peltier for language which that there is no Englishman so unworthy of life he and all mankind would forever despise Mr. as to desire to outlive England. But if any of Peltier if he were not to employ. Then, indeed, us are condemned to the cruel punishment of suigentlemen, we should have seen the last humili- viving our country-if, in the inscrutable counation fall on England; the tribunals, the spotless sels of Providence, this favored seat of justice and and venerable tribunals of this free country re- liberty, this noblest work of human wisdom and duced to be the ministers of the vengeance of virtue, be destined to destruction, which I shall Robespierre! What could have rescued us from not be charged with national prejudice for saythis last disgrace? The honesty and courage of ing would be the most dangerous wound ever ina jury. They would have delivered the judges flicted on civilization; at least let us carry with of this country from the dire necessity of inflict- us into our sad exile the consolation that we ouring punishment on a brave and virtuous man, be- selves have not violated the rights of hospitality cause he spoke truth of a monster. They would to exiles-that we have not torn from the altar have despised the threats of a foreign tyrant, as the suppliant who claimed protection as the voltheir ancestors braved the power of oppression untary victim of loyalty and conscience! at home. Peroration: Conduct of an English jury in the times of Cromwell. 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 favorable construction of what can not be said to be more than ambiguous language, and this you will soon be told, from the highest authority, is a part of justice. Lord Ellenborough charged the jury that any publication which tends to degrade, revile, and defame persons in considerable situations of pow. er and dignity in foreign countries, may be taken to be and treated as a libel, and particularly where it has a tendency to interrupt the pacific relations between the two countries. If the publication contains a plain and manifest incitement and persuasion addressed to others to assassinate and destroy the persons of such magistrates, as the tendency of such a publication is to inter rupt the harmony subsisting between two coun tries, the libel assumes a still more criminal complexion. In the court where we are now met, Cromwell twice sent a satirist on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a libeler, 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 Parliament with contumely, two successive juries rescued the intrepid satirist [Lilburne] 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, 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 pros-ically, as suggested by Mr. Mackintosh. Th pect 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; and if any modern tyrant were, in the drunkenness of his insolence, to hope to overawo 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 Catiline gladios - non pertimescam tuos !1130 His Lordship also showed it to be his decided opinion that the words could not be taken iron jury, therefore, found the defendant GUILTY, without leaving their seats; but as war broke out almost immediately, Mr. Peltier was not brought up for sentence, but was at once discharged. The whole of this peroration of Cicero is worthy of the reader's attentive perusal. The pointed reference to Bonaparte in this and a preceding sentence was called forth, no doubt, by the conduct of the French officers already men. tioned. Being functionaries of the Consular government, their appearing at this time in court, their seating themselves alongside of the jury, and in a This was the exclamation of Cicero to Anthony place directly suited to an inspection of the coun at the close of his second oration against him. "De- sel, as if they meant to hold the Attorney General fendi rempublicam adolescens; non deseram senex: to his duty, and to face down the advocate of the contempsi Catilinæ gladios; non pertimescam taos." prisoner-these things had all the appearance of a I defended the republic in my youth, I will not de- design to overrule the decision; and it is rather sursert her in my age; I have despised the daggers ofprising that such conduct did not stir the spirit of an Cetiline, and I shall not fear yours Нин English jury. CHARACTER OF CHARLES J. FOX. and downrightness, and the thorough good na. ture which distinguished Mr. Fox, seem to rer. der him no very unfit representative of that old English national character, which if it ever changed, we should be sanguine, indeed, to expect to see succeeded by a better. The sim. plicity of his character inspired confidence, the ardor of his eloquence roused enthusiasm, and the gentleness of his manners invited friendship. "I admired," says Mr. Gibbon, "the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in his attract ive character, with all the softness and simplicity of a child; no human being was ever more free from any taint of malignity, vanity, or falsehood." From these qualities of his public and private character, it probably arose that no En MR. Fox united in a most remarkable degree | quiet dignity of a mind roused only by great ob the seemingly repugnant characters of the mild-jects, the absence of petty bustle, the contempt of est of men and the most vehement of orators. show, the abhorrence of intrigue, the plainness In private life he was gentle, modest, placable, kind; of simple manners, and so averse from parade and dogmatism, as to be not only unostentatious, but even somewha; inactive in conversation. His superiority was never felt but in the instruction which he imparted, or in the attention which his generous preference usually directed to | the more obscure members of the company. The simplicity of his manners was far from excluding that perfect urbanity and amenity which flowed still more from the mildness of his nature than from familiar intercourse with the most polished society of Europe. His conversation, when it was not repressed by modesty or indolence, was delightful. The pleasantry, perhaps, of no man of wit had so unlabored an appearance. It seemed rather to escape from his mind than to be pro-glish statesman ever preserved during so long a duced by it. He had lived on the most intimate terms with all his cotemporaries, distinguished by wit, politeness, philosophy, learning, or the talents of public life. In the course of thirty years, he had known almost every man in Europe whose intercourse could strengthen, or enrich, or polish the mind. His own literature was various and elegant. In classical erudition, which, by the custom of England, is more pecuHarly called learning, he was inferior to few professed scholars. Like all men of genius, he delighted to take refuge in poetry from the vulgarity and irritation of business. The character of his mind was displayed in his extraordinary partiality for the poetry of the two most poetical nations or, at least, languages of the west-those of the Greeks and of the Italians. He disliked political conversation, and never willingly took any part in it. To speak of him justly as an orator would require a long essay. Every where natural, he carried into public something of that simple and negligent exterior which belonged to him in private. When he began to speak, a common observer might have thought him awkward; and even a consummate judge could only have been struck with the exquisite justness of his ideas, and the transparent simplicity of his manners. But no sooner had he spoken for some time, than he was changed into another being. He forgot himself and every thing around him. He thought only of his subject. His genius warmed, and kindled as he went on. He darted fire into his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible eloquence swept along their feelings and convic tion. He certainly possessed above all moderns that union of reason, simplicity, and vehemence which formed the prince of orators. He was the most Demosthenean speaker since Demosthenes. "I knew him," says Mr. Burke, in a pamphlet written after their unhappy difference, "when he was nineteen; since which time he has risen, by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater that the world ever saw." The period of adverse fortunes, so many affectionate friends and so many zealous adherents. The union of ardor in public sentiment, with mildness in social manner, was in Mr. Fox an hereditary quality. The same fascinating power over the attachment of all who came within his sphere is said to have belonged to his father; and those who know the survivors of another generation will feel that this delightful quality is not yet extinct in the race. Perhaps nothing can more strongly prove the deep impression made by this part of Mr. Fox's character than the words of Mr. Burke, who in January, 1797, six years after all intercourse between them had ceased, speaking to a person honored with some degree of Mr. Fox's friendship, said, "To be sure, he is a man made to be loved!" and these emphatical words were uttered with a fervor of manner which left no doubt of their heartfelt sincerity. These few hasty and honest sentences are sketched in a temper too sober and serious for intentional exaggeration, and with too pions an affection for the memory of Mr. Fox, to profane it by intermixture with the factious brawls and wrangles of the day. His political conduct belongs to history. The measures which he sup ported or opposed may divide the opinion of pos terity, as they have divided those of the present age. But he will most certainly command the unanimous reverence of future generations, by his pure sentiments toward the commonwealth, by his zeal for the civil and religious rights of all men, by his liberal principles favorable to mild government, to the unfettered exercise of the human faculties, and the progressive civiliza. tion of mankind, by his ardent love for a coun try, of which the well-being and greatness were, indeed, inseparable from his own glory, and by his profound reverence for that free Constitution, which he was universally admitted to understa better than any other man of his age, both in at exactly legal and a comprehensively philosoph ical sense |