lation in their faces. This brought so forcibly to their minds their former state of servitude and disgrace, that every honourable impulse at once forsook their bosoms, and they betook themselves to flight and to howling. We entertain no anxiety about the character of our countrymen in Portugal, when we contemplate their meeting the bayonets of Massena's troops; but we must own that we should tremble for the result, were the French general to despatch against them a few hundred drummers, each brandishing a cat-o'-nine-tails.”

The Middlesex jury in Westminster, where the first of these two trials took place, after retiring for two hours, acquitted the defendants, Messrs. Hunt, although Lord Ellenborough had given a very powerful charge to them, in favour of the prosecution, and declared his opinion without any doubt to be, that the publication was made with the intentions imputed to it in the Information, of exciting disaffection in the army, and deterring persons from entering it.

Sir Robert Wilson, who had been subpoenaed as a witness by the defendants, but was not examined, sat on the bench by Lord Ellenborough during the whole proceedings, in the course of which allusion was made to his Tract, not only by the counsel on both sides, but by the learned judge, who, entertaining no doubt at all of the perfect purity of his intentions, expressed, but respectfully expressed, a wish that he had used more guarded language; and indeed, his Lordship thought that all officers, instead of publishing on so delicate a subject, ought to have privately given their opinions to the government.

At Lincoln, where Mr. Brougham went on a special retainer, three weeks afterwards, to defend Mr. Drakard, the difference between a provincial jury and one in the metropolis was seen; for there a conviction took place, and the publisher was afterwards, by the Court of King's Bench, where he was brought up for judgment, sentenced to eighteen months' imprison

ment.

These trials were not without their influence upon

the great question to which they related. The speeches delivered, the discussion of the merits of the case in the public papers, the conversation to which, in the course of the next session, they gave rise in Parliament, brought, for the first time, this subject before the country, and also turned the attention of military men to it much more than it had heretofore been, among a class always prone to abide by existing usages, and hardly capable, indeed, of conceiving things to be other than as they have always found them. A subject which has since been discussed with the most unrestricted freedom of comment in all circles-in every kind of publication-in meetings of the people, as well as in the chambers of Parliament-before the troops themselves, as well as where only citizens were congregated,-and which has finally been made matter of investigation by a military board,—can at this time of day hardly be conceived to have excited, forty years ago, so much apprehension, that the broaching it at all, even in very measured terms, drew down censure from the bench upon general officers who had been so adventurous as to handle it; and the approaches to its consideration were carefully fenced by all the terrors with which the law of libel, vague and ill-defined, arms the executive government in this country. There seemed to prevail a general anxiety and alarm, lest, by the discussion, feelings of a dangerous kind should be excited in the soldiery. A mysterious awe hung over men's minds, and forbade them to break in upon the question. A fence was drawn around the ground, taboo'd as it were by military engines, and other symbols of mere force. A spell bound the public mind, like that invisible power which, on board of ship, keeps all men's limbs, with their minds, under the control of a single voice. The dissolving of this spell, and the dissipation for ever of all these apprehensions, must be traced to the trials of Drakard and the Hunts. The light is now let in upon this as upon all other questions,

whether of civil, or criminal, or military polity; and the reign of the lash is no more privileged from the control of public opinion, and the wholesome irritation of free discussion, than that of the hulks or the gibbet. Men may still form various opinions upon the subject. Enlightened statesmen and experienced captains may differ widely in the conclusions to which their observation and their reasoning have led them. It is still, perhaps, far from being demonstrated, that a punishment which such high authorities as the Duke of Wellington regarded as indispensable to a certain extent, can be all at once safely abandoned. But whatever may be the result of the inquiry, it is now an entirely open question. Its being thus thrown open, and placed on the same footing with every other chapter of our penal code, will assuredly lead to its being rightly settled in the end; and the trials to which we have adverted, mainly contributed to this salutary result.

CASE OF

JOHN HUNT AND JOHN LEIGH HUNT.

JANUARY 22, 1811.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIP, GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY, In rising to support the cause of these defendants, I feel abundantly sensible of the difficulties under which they labour. It is not that they have to contend, with such unequal force on my part, against the talents and learning of the Attorney-General, and the high influence of his office; nor is it merely that they stand in the situation of defendants prosecuted by the Crown, for in ordinary cases they would have the common presumption of innocence to work in their favour; but the hardship of their case originates in the nature of the charge on which they are brought before you, a charge of libel, at a time when the licentiousness of the press has reached to a height which it certainly never attained in any other country, nor even in this at any other time. That licentiousness, indeed, has of late years appeared to despise all the bounds which had once been prescribed to the attacks on private character, insomuch that there is not only no personage so important or exalted,for of that I do not complain, but no person so humble, harmless, and retired, as to escape the defamation which is daily and hourly poured forth by a venal tribe, to gratify the idle curiosity, or the less excusable malignity of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that propensity, individuals retiring

into the privacy of domestic life,-to hunt them down for the gratification of their enemies, and drag them forth as a laughing-stock to the vulgar, has become in our days, with some men, the road even to popularity; but with multitudes, the means of earning a base subsistence. Gentlemen, the nature and the causes of this evil it is unnecessary for me to point out. Indeed, I am far from saying that there is nothing to extenuate it; I am ready even to admit that this abuse of the press in defaming private characters, does derive no small apology from the insatiable love of publicity which preys upon a great part of the community; leading them scarcely to value existence itself, if it is not passed in the eyes of the world, and to care but little what they do, so they be only stared at, or talked of. It furnishes somewhat of excuse, too, that the public itself is insatiable in its thirst for slander; swallows it with a foul, indiscriminate, appetite; and, liberal at least in its patronage of this species of merit, largely rewards those whom it sends forth to pander for those depraved tastes. But, in whatever way arising, or however palliated, the fact of the abuse of the press is certain, and the consequences are fatal to the press itself; for the licentiousness of which I complain has been the means of alienating the affections of those who had ever stood forward as its fastest friends and its firmest defenders. It has led them to doubt the uses of that which they had seen so perverted and abused. It has made them, instead of blessing "the useful light" of that great source of improvement, see in it only an instrument of real mischief, or doubtful good; and when they find, that instead of being kept pure, for the instruction of the world; instead of being confined to questioning the conduct of men in high situations, canvassing public measures, and discussing great general questions of policy; when they find that, instead of such, its legitimate objects, this inestimable blessing has been made subservient to the purposes of