ranks and diftinctions are confounded.

The ho nour of a nobleman is no more confidered than the reputation of a peafant, for, with different liveries, they are equally flaves.

Even in matters of private property, we see the same biass and inclination to depart from the decisions of your predeceffors, which you certainly ought to receive as evidence of the common law. Inftead of those certain, pofitive rules, by which the judgment of a court of law fhould invariably be determined, you have fondly introduced your own unsettled notions of equity and fubstantial justice. Decifions given upon fuch principles do not alarm the public fo much as they ought, because the confequence and tendency of each particular inftance is not obferved or regarded. In the mean time the practice gains ground; the court of King's Bench becomes a court of equity, and the judge, instead of consulting strictly the law of the land, refers only to the wisdom of the court, and to the purity of his own confcience. The name of Mr. Juftice Yates will naturally revive in your mind fome of those emotions of fear and deteftation, with which you always beheld him. That great lawyer, that honeft man, faw your whole conduct in the light that I do. After years of ineffectual refiftance to the pernicious principles introduced

by

་

by your lordship, and uniformly fupported by your bumble friends upon the bench, he determined to quit a court, whofe proceedings and decifions he could neither affent to with honour, nor oppofe with fuccefs.

The injuftice done to an individual is fometimes of fervice to the public. Facts are apt to alarm us more than the most dangerous principles. The fufferings and firmnefs of a printer have roufed the public attention. You knew and felt that your conduct would not bear a parliamentary inquiry, and you hoped to efcape it by the meanest, the bafeft facrifice of dignity and confiftency, that ever was made by a great magiftrate. Where was your firmnefs, where was that vindictive fpirit, of which we have feen fo many examples, when a man fo inconfiderable as Bingley, could force you to confefs, in the face of this country, that, for two years together, you had illegally deprived an Englifh fubject of his liberty, and that he had triumphed over you at laft? Yet I own, my Lord, that your's is not an uncommon character. Women, and men like women, are timid, vindictive, and irrefolute. Their paffions counteract, each other, and make the fame creature at one moment hateful, at another contemptible. I fancy, my Lord, fome time will elapfe before you venture to

commit another Englishman for refufing to anfwer

interrogatories.

The doctrine you have conftantly delivered, in cafes of libel, is another powerful evidence of a fettled plan to contract the legal power of juries, and to draw questions, infeparable from fact, within the arbitrium of the court. Here, my Lord, you

have fortune of

your fide.

When you invade the

province of the jury, in matter of libel, you, in effect, attack the liberty of the prefs, and, with a fingle stroke, wound two of your greatest enemies at once.In fome instances you have fucceeded, because jurymen are too often ignorant of their own rights, and too apt to be awed by the authority of a chief juftice. In other criminal profecutions, the malice of the defign is confeffedly as * much the subject of confideration to a jury, as the certainty of the fact. If a different doctrine prevails in the cafe of libels, why fhould it not extend to all criminal cafes? Why not to capital offences? I fee no reafon (and I dare fay you will agree with me that there is no good one) why the life of the fubject fhould be better protected against you than his liberty or property. Why should you enjoy the full power of pillory, fine, and imprisonment, and not be indulged with hanging or transportation? With your lordship's

fertile

fertile genius and merciful difpofition, I can conceive fuch an exercife of the power you have, as could hardly be aggravated by that which you have not.

But, my Lord, fince you have laboured (and not unsuccessfully) to deftroy the fubftance of the trial, why fhould you fuffer the form of the verdict to remain? Why force twelve honeft men, in palpable violation of their oaths, to pronounce their fellow fubject a guilty man, when, almoft at the fame moment, you forbid their inquiring into the only circumstance, which, in the eye of law and reason, conftitutes guilt-the malignity or innocence of his intentions ?-But I underftand your Lordship. If you could fucceed in making the trial by jury ufelefs and ridiculous, you might then with greater safety introduce a bill into parliament for enlarging the jurifdiction of the court, and extending your favourite trial by interrogatories to every queftion, in which the life or liberty of an Englishman is concerned.

Your charge to the jury, in the profecution against Almon and Woodfall, contradicts the higheft legal authorities, as well as the plaineft dictates of reafon. In Miller's caufe, and ftill more exprefsly in that of Baldwin, you have proceeded a ftep farther, and grofsly contradicted yourfelf.--

You

You may know, perhaps, though I do not mean to infult you by an appeal to your experience, that the language of truth is uniform and confiftent. To depart from it fafely, requires memory and difcretion. In the two laft trials, your charge to the jury began, as ufual, with affuring them that they had nothing to do with the law,—that they were to find the bare fact, and not concern themfelves about the legal inferences drawn from it, or the degree of the defendant's guilt. Thus far you were confiftent with your former practice. But how will you account for the conclufion? You told the jury that, "if, after all, they would take themselves to determine the law, they might "do it, but they must be very fure that they de"termined according to law, for it touched their "confciences, and they acted at their peril."-If I understand your first propofition, you meant to affirm, that the jury were not competent judges of the law in the criminal case of a libel ;-that it did not fall within their jurifdiction; and that, with refpect to them, the malice or innocence of the defendant's intentions would be a queftion coṛam non judice.—But the fecond propofition clears away your own difficulties, and reftores the jury to all their judicial capacities. You make the competence of the Court to depend upon the legality

"upon

of