MR. ERSKINE'S SPEECH,

ON THE TRIAL OF AN INFORMATION EXHIBITED EX OFFICIO, BY THE KING'S ATTORNEY GENERAL, AGAINST THOMAS PAINE, FOR A LIBEL UPON THE REVOLUTION AND SETTLEMENT OF THE CROWN AND REGAL GOVERNMENT, AS BY LAW ESTABLISHED; AND ALSO UPON THE BILLS OF RIGHTS, LEGISLATURE, GOVERNMENT, LAWS, AND PARLIAMENT OF THIS KINGDOM, AND UPON THE KING. TRIED BY A SPECIAL JURY IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH, GUILDHALL, ON THE 18TH OF DECEMBER, 1792, BEFORE THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD KENYON.

POSTERITY, who may study the history of our times, will learn with surprise, how strangely they were disfigured by a wild, turbulent, and wicked spi- rit of innovation which delighted to overturn whatever had been previously raised by the wisdom and dili gence of our predecessors, or consecrated by their experiences and prejudices.

This "evil spirit" was especially intent on the demolition of the old and well tried political establishments that had gradually grown up in Europe, and to substitute in their place schemes of new and fantastick polity, resting on views of the qualities and conditions of human nature, the most idle and delusive. France, its "tricks and devices" produced that desolating revolution which covered with the lava of its bad principles, in a greater or less degree, the other portions of the civilized world. Every country be

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came a prey to its disciples, who busied themselves in making converts and spreading proselytism. Not the least conspicuous of these " architects of ruin," to indicate his devotion to this "holy service," collected from every polluted source, materials of rancorous poison which, putting together, he prepared in a "cheap and portable form," a most potent "compound and digest of anarchy," and presented it as an offering to the publick, under the palatable and seductive title of the " Rights of Man." This "manual of mischief," being exactly adapted to the taste and capacity of the low, the ignorant, and seditious, it was read with the utmost avidity in these circles, through which it was gratuitously diffused by certain affiliated clubs that had assumed the province of inculcating the new code of political wisdom.

The author of the work, who had thus insulted the laws of his country, was prosecuted by the attorney general for a libel on the English government, and fortunately, even, at that sinister season, a jury of Englishmen were found sufficiently stanch, virtuous, and intrepid, to stigmatize this nefarious production by a verdict of conviction, and the culprit only escaped by flight the adequate penalty of " fine, imprisonment, and the pillory." The jury decided at once, without leaving their box, or permitting the attorney general to reply.

The speech of Mr. Erskine, in behalf of the defendant, which is here inserted, admirably illustrates with what plausibility a skilful and eloquent advocate will defend the worst of causes. As the speech contains those passages of the work which were selected by the prosecutor as libellous, it is thought unnecessary to prefix the indictment.

SPEECH, &c.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,

THE attorney general, in that part of his address which arose from a letter, supposed to have been written to him from France, exhibited signs of strong

sensibility and emotion.* I do not, I am sure, charge him with acting a part to seduce you; on the contrary, I am persuaded from my own feelings, and from my acquaintance with my friend, from our childhood upwards, that he expressed himself as he felt. But, gentlemen, if he felt those painful embarrassments, think what mine must be: he can only feel for the august character whom he represents in this place, as a subject for his sovereign, too far removed by custom, and by law, from the intercourses which generate affections, to produce any other sentiments than those that flow from a relation common to us all. But it will be remembered, that I stand in the same relation+ towards another great person, more deeply implicated by this supposed letter, who, not restrained from the cultivation of personal attachment by those qualifications which must always secure them, has exalted my duty of a subject to a prince, into a warm and honest affection between man and man. Thus circumstanced, I certainly should have been glad to have had an earlier opportunity of knowing correctly the contents of this letter, and whether, which I positively deny, it proceeded from the defendant. Coming thus suddenly upon us, I see but too plainly the impression it has made upon you who are to try the cause, and I feel its weight upon myself, who am to conduct it; but this shall neither detach me from my duty, nor, added to all the other difficulties that thicken around me, enervate me, if I can help it, in the discharge of it.

Gentlemen, if the attorney general is well founded in the commentaries he has made to you upon this book which he prosecutes, if he is warranted by the

*Mr. Erskine here alludes to a most insolent letter which Paine addressed, while a refugee in France from the justice of his country, to the attorney general, which contained the following passage ; “But though you may not choose to see it, the people are seeing it very fast, and the progress is beyond what you may choose to believe, or that reason can make any other man believe, that the capacity of such a man as Mr. Guelph, or any of his profligate sons, is necessary to the government of a nation."

† Mr. Erskine was, at the time, attorney general to the Prince of Wales.

law of England, in repressing its circulation through these realms, from the illegal and dangerous matters contained in it; if that suppression be, as he avows it, and as in common sense it must be, the sole object of the prosecution, the publick has great reason to lament that this letter should have been at all brought into the service of the cause. It is no part of the charge upon the record; it had no existence for months after the work was composed and published; it was not even written, if written at all, till after he had been at Dover, in a manner insultingly expelled from the country by the influence of government, and had become the subject of another country. It cannot, therefore, by any fair inference, even decypher the mind of the author when he composed his work; still less can it affect the construction of the language in which the work itself is written. The introduction of this letter at all is, therefore, not only a departure from the charge, but a sort of dereliction of the object of the prosecution, which is to condemn the book. For if the condemnation of the author is to be obtained, not by the work itself, but by collateral matter not even existing when it was written, nor known to its various publishers throughout the kingdom, how can a verdict upon such gounds condemn the work, or criminate other publishers, strangers to the collateral matter on which the conviction may be obtained? I maintain, therefore, that, upon every principle of sound policy, as it affects the interests of the crown, and upon every rule of justice, as it affects the author of the Rights of Man, the letter should be wholly dismissed from your consideration.

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Gentlemen, the attorney general has thought it necesto inform you, that a rumour had been spread, and had reached his ears, that he only carried on the prose. cution as a publick prosecutor, but without the concurrence of his own private judgment; and therefore to add the just weight of his own character to his publick duty, and to repel what he thinks a calumny, he tells you that he should have deserved to have

been driven from society, if he had not arraigned the work and the author before you.

Here too we stand in situations very different. I have no doubt of the existence of such a rumour, and of its having reached his ears, because he says so; but for the narrow circle in which any rumour, personally implicating my learned friend's character, has extended, I might appeal to the multitudes who surround us, and ask, which of all of them, except the few connected in office with the crown, ever heard of its existence. But with regard to myself, every man who hears me at this moment, nay, the whole people of England, have been witnesses to the calumnious clamour that, by every art, has been raised and kept up against me. In every place, where business or pleasure collect the publick together, day after day my name and character have been the topicks of injurious reflection. And for what? only for not having shrunk from the discharge of a duty which no personal advantage recommended, and which a thousand difficulties repelled. But, gentlemen, I have no complaint to make, either against the printers of these libels, or even against their authors. The greater part of them, hurried perhaps away by honest prejudices may have believed they were serving their country by rendering me the object of its suspicion and contempt; and if there have been amongst them others who have mixed in it from personal malice and unkindness, I thank God I can forgive them also. Little indeed did they know me who thought that such proceedings would influence my conduct : I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English bar; without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution can have no existence. For from the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practise, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end. If the advocate refuses to defend, from what he may think of