"We are not to measure things from any truth they have in themselves, but from that aspect they have upon the government; for there may be every tittle of a libel true, and yet it may be a libel still; so that I put no great stress upon that objection, that the matter of it is not false; and for sedition, it is that which every libel carries in itself; and as every trespass implies vi and armis, so every libel against the government carries in it sedition, and all the other epithets that are in the information. This is my opinion as to law in general. I will not debate the prerogatives of the king, nor the privileges of the subject; but as this fact is, I think these venerable bishops did meddle with that which did not belong to them; they took upon them, in a petitionary, to contradict the actual exercise of the government, which I think no particular persons, or, singular body, may do."1

Listen, Gentlemen of the Jury, to the words of Attorney-General Powis :

"And I cannot omit here to take notice, that there is not any one thing that the law is more jealous of, or does more carefully provide for the prevention and punishment of, than all accusations and arraignments of the government. No man is allowed to accuse even the most inferior magistrate of any misbehavior in his office, unless it be in a legal course, though the fact is true. No man may say of a justice of the peace, to his face, that he is unjust in his office. No man may tell a judge, either by word or petition, you have given an unjust, or an ill judgment, and I will not obey it; it is against the rules and law of the kingdom, or the like. No man may say of the great men of the nation, much less of the great officers of the kingdom, that they do act unreasonably or unjustly, or the like; least of all may any man say any such thing of the king; for these matters tend to possess the people, that the government is ill administered; and the consequence of that is, to set them upon desiring a reformation; and what that tends to, and will end in, we have all had a sad and too dear bought experience."

Hearken to the law of Solicitor-General Williams:

"2

"If any person have slandered the government in writing, you are not to examine the truth of that fact in such writing, but the slander which it imports to the king or government; and be it never so true, yet if slanderous to the king or the government, it is a libel and to be punished; in that case, the right or wrong is not to be examined, or if what was done by the government be legal, or no; but whether the party have done such an act. If the king have a power (for still I keep to that), to issue forth proclamations to his subjects, and to make orders and constitutions in matters ecclesiastical, if he do issue forth his proclamation, and make an order upon the matters within his power and prerogative; and if any one would come and bring that power in question otherwise than in parliament, that the matter of that proclamation be not legal, I say that is sedition, and you are not to examine the legality or illegality of the order or proclamation, but the slander and reflection upon the government."

"If a person do a thing that is libellous, you shall not examine the fact, but the consequence of it; whether it tended to stir up sedition against the public, or to stir up strife between man and man, in the case of private persons; as if a man should say of a judge, he has taken a bribe, and I will prove it.

"They tell the king it is inconsistent with their honor, prudence, and conscience, to do what he would have them to do. And if these things be not reflective upon the king and government, I know not what is.

1 12 St. Tr. 427, 428, 429.

2 12 St. Tr. 281.

"I'll tell you what they should have done, Sir. If they were commanded to do any thing against their consciences, they should have acquiesced till the meeting of the parliament. [At which some people in the court hissed.]

66

If the king will impose upon a man what he cannot do, he must acquiesce; but shall he come and fly in the face of his prince? Shall he say it is illegal? and the prince acts against prudence, honor, or conscience, and throw dirt in the king's face? Sure that is not permitted; that is libelling with a witness."

1

Here, however, there was a JURY-the seven bishops were acquit ted amid the tumultuous huzzas of the people, who crowded all the open spaces in the neighborhood of Westminster Hall, and rent the air with their shouts, which even the soldiers repeated.

2

Two of the Judges - Sir John Powell and Sir Richard Holloway stood out for law and justice, declaring such a petition to the King was not a libel. They were presently thrust from their offices.

Gentlemen of the Jury, the Stuarts soon filled up the measure of their time as of their iniquity, and were hustled from the throne of England. But, alas, I shall presently remind you of some examples of this tyranny in New England itself. Now I shall cite a few similar cases of oppression which happened in the reign of the last King of New England.

I just now spoke of Edmund Thurlow, showing what his character was and by what means he gained his various offices, ministerial and judicial. I will next show you one instance more of the evil which comes from putting in office such men as are nothing but steps whereon despotism mounts up to its bad eminence.

10. On the 8th of June, 1775,-it will be eighty years on the first anniversary of Judge Curtis's charge to the grand-jury, - John Horne, better known by his subsequent name John Horne Tooke, formerly a clergyman but then a scholarly man devoting himself to letters and politics — published the following notice in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, as well as other newspapers :

"King's-Arms Tavern, Cornhill, June 7, 1775. At a special meeting this day of several members of the Constitutional Society, during an adjournment, a gentleman proposed that a subscription should be immediately entered into by such of the members present who might approve the purpose, for raising the sum of £100, to be applied to the relief of the widows, orphans, and aged parents of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who, faithful to the character of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were for that reason only inhumanly murdered by the king's troops at or near Lexington and Concord, in the province of Massachusetts, on the 19th of last April; which sum being immediately collected, it was thereupon resolved that Mr. Horne do pay to-morrow into the hands of Mess. Brownes and Collinson, on account of Dr. Franklin, the said sum of 100%. and that Dr. Franklin be requested to apply the same to the above-mentioned purpose."

1 12 St. Tr. 415, 416, 417.

2 See 2 Campbell's Justices, 95.

At that time Thurlow, whom I introduced to you a little while ago, was Attorney-General, looking for further promotion from the Tory Government of Lord North. Mansfield was Chief Justice, a man of great ability, who has done so much to reform the English law, but whose hostility to America was only surpassed by the hatred which he bore to all freedom of speech and the rights of the Jury. The Government was eager to crush the liberty of the American Colonies. But this was a difficult matter, for in England itself there was a powerful party friendly to America, who took our side in the struggle for liberty. The city of London, however, was hostile to us, wishing to destroy our merchants and manufacturers, who disturbed the monopoly of that commercial metropolis. The government thought it necessary to punish any man who ventured to oppose their tyranny and sympathize with America. Accordingly it was determined that Mr. Horne should be brought to trial. But as public opinion, stimulated by Erskine, Camden and others, favored the rights. of the Jury, it seems to have been thought dangerous to trust the case to a Grand-Jury. Perhaps the Judge had no brother-in-law to put on it, or the Attorney-General — though famous also for his profanity, -doubted that any swearing of his would insure a bill; nay, perhaps he did not venture to "bet ten dollars that I will get an indictment against him." Be that as it may, the Attorney-General dispensed with the services of the Grand-Jury and filed an information ex officio against Mr. Horne, therein styling him a "wicked, malicious, seditious, and ill-disposed person;" charging him, by that advertisement, with "wickedly, maliciously, and seditiously intending, designing, and venturing to stir up and excite discontents and sedition;" "to cause it to be believed that divers of his Majesty's innocent and deserving subjects had been inhumanly murdered by . . . his Majesty's troops; and unlawfully and wickedly to encourage his Majesty's subjects in the said Province of Massachusetts to resist and oppose his Majesty's Government." He said the advertisement was "a false, wicked, malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel;" "full of ribaldry, Billingsgate, scurrility, balderdash, and impudence;" "wicked is a term too high for this advertisement;" "its impudence disarmed its wickedness." In short, Mr. Horne was accused of "resisting an officer," obstructing the execution of the "process" whereby the American Provinces were to be made the slave colonies of a metropolitan despotism. The usual charge of doing all this by "force and arms," was of course thrown in. The publication of the advertisement was declared a "crime of such heinousness and of such a size as fairly called for the highest resentment which any court of justice has thought proper to use with respect to crimes of this denomination;""a libel such that it is impossible by any artifice to aggra

vate it:" "It will be totally impossible for the imagination of any man, however shrewd, to state a libel more scandalous and base in the fact imputed, more malignant and hostile to the country in which the libeller is born, more dangerous in the example if it were suffered to pass unpunished, than this:" "It is in language addressed to the lowest and most miserable mortals, it is addressed to the lowest of the mob, and the bulk of the people, who it is fit should be otherwise taught, who it is fit should be otherwise governed in this country."

Mr. Horne was brought to trial on the 4th of July, 1777. He defended himself, but though a vigorous writer, he was not a good speaker, and was in a strange place, while "Thurlow fought on his own dunghill," says Lord Campbell, "and throughout the whole day had the advantage over him." There was a special jury packed for the purpose by the hireling sheriff,— a " London jury" famous for corruption, a tyrannical and powerful judge, ready to turn every weapon of the court against the defendant and to construct law against the liberty of speech. Of course Mr. Horne was convicted.

But how should he be punished? Thurlow determined.

"My Lords, the punishments to be inflicted upon misdemeanors of this sort, have usually been of three different kinds; fine, corporal punishment by imprisonment, and infamy by the judgment of the pillory. With regard to the fine, it is impossible for justice to make this sort of punishment, however the infamy will always fall upon the offender; because it is well known, that men who have more wealth, who have better. and more respectful situations and reputations to be watchful over, employ men in desperate situations both of circumstances and characters, in order to do that which serves their party purposes; and when the punishment comes to be inflicted, this court must have regard to the apparent situation and circumstances of the man employed, that is, of the man convicted, with regard to the punishment.

"With regard to imprisonment, that is a species of punishment not to be considered alike in all cases, but . ...9 that it would be proper for the judgment of the court to state circumstances which will make the imprisonment fall lighter or heavier, that would be proper, if I had not been spared all trouble upon that account, by hearing it solemnly avowed by the defendant himself, that imprisonment was no kind of inconvenience to him; for that certain employments,

would occasion his con

finement in so close a way, that it was mere matter of circumstance whether it happened in one place or another; and that the longest imprisonment which this court could inflict for punishment, was not beyond the reach of accommodation which those occasions rendered necessary to him. In this respect, therefore, imprisonment is not. only, . . . not an adequate punishment to the offence, but the public are told, . . . that it will be no punishment.

"I stated in the third place to your Lordships, the pillory to have been the usual punishment for this species of offence. I apprehend it to have been so, in this case, for above two hundred years before the time when prosecutions grew rank in the Star-Chamber. . . . the punishment of the pillory was inflicted, not only during the time that such prosecutions were rank in the Star-Chamber, but it also continued to be inflicted upon this sort of crime, and that by the best authority, after the time of the abolishing the Star-Chamber, after the time of the Revolution, and while my Lord Chief Justice Holt sat in this court.

"I would desire no better, no more pointed, nor any more applicable argument than what that great chief justice used, when it was contended before him that an abuse upon government, upon the administration of several parts of government, amounted to nothing, because there was no abuse upon any particular man. That great chief justice said, they amounted to much more; they are an abuse upon all men. Government cannot exist, if the law cannot restrain that sort of abuse. Government cannot exist, unless the full punishment is inflicted which the most approved times have given to offences of much less denomination than these, of much less. I am sure it cannot be shown, that in any one of the cases that were punished in that manner, the aggravations of any one of those offences were any degree adequate to those which are presented to your Lordship now. If offences were so punished then, which are not so punished now, they lose that expiation which the wisdom of those ages thought proper to hold out to the public, as a restraint from such offences being committed again.

"I am to judge of crimes in order to the prosecution; your lordship is to judge of them ultimately for punishment. I should have been extremely sorry, if I had been induced by any consideration whatever, to have brought a crime of the magnitude which this was (of the magnitude which this was when I first stated it) into a court of justice, if I had not had it in my contemplation also that it would meet with an adequate restraint, which I never thought would be done without affixing to it the judgment of the pillory; I should have been very sorry to have brought this man here, after all the aggravations that he has superinduced upon the offence itself, if I had not been persuaded that those aggravations would have induced the judgment of the pillory.” 1

1

But Mansfield thought otherwise, and punished him with a fine of £200 and imprisonment for twelve months.2

"Thus," says Lord Brougham, "a bold and just denunciation of the attacks made upon our American Brethren, which nowadays would rank among the very mildest and tamest effusions of the periodical press, condemned him to prison for twelve months." 3

Thurlow was a man of low intellect, of a fierce countenance, a saucy, swaggering, insolent manner, debauched in his morals beyond the grossness of that indecent age, ostentatiously living in public concubinage, a notorious swearer in public and private. But he knew no law above the will of the hand that fed and could advance him, no justice which might check the insolence of power. And in less than a month after Mr. Horne was sent to jail, Thurlow was made Lord Chancellor of England, and sat on the woolsack in the House of Lords. His chief panegyrist can only say, "in worse times there have been worse chancellors." "But an age of comparative freedom and refinement has rarely exhibited one who so ill understood, or at least so ill discharged, the functions of a statesman and legislator."

I will enrich this part of my argument with an example of the opinions of this Judge, which would endear him to the present ad

120 St. Tr. 780-783.

3 Statesmen, 2 Series, 109.

220 St. Tr. 651; 5 Campbell, 415.