usurper with the fame of a captain; leave to such desperate hands, and such fit tools, so horrid a work! But you, an English jury, parent of the press, yet supported by it, and doomed to perish the instant its health and strength are gone-lift not you against it an unnatural hand. Prove to us that our rights are safe in your keeping; but maintain, above all things, the stability of our institutions, by well-guarding their corner-stone. Defend the Church from her worst enemies, who, to hide their own misdeeds, would veil her solid foundations in darkness; and proclaim to them by your verdict of acquittal, that henceforward, as heretofore, all the recesses of the sanctuary must be visited by the continual light of day, and by that light all its abuses be explored! [After the learned Judge had summed up to the Jury, they retired, and remained inclosed for above five hours. They then returned the following special verdict, viz. :-" Guilty of so much of the matter in the first count as charges a libel upon the Clergy residing in and near the City of Durham, and the suburbs thereof, and as to the rest of the first count, and the other counts of the Information, Not Guilty."] INTRODUCTION. THE subject of the Army Estimates used at all periods of the war to bring on one of the most important, if not the most important, debates of the Session. It was in fact like a State of the Nation, and some of the most interesting, if not the greatest, speeches that have ever been delivered in Parliament, were made upon those occasions. The conduct of the war formed of course the main topic of such debates, although whatever else in the state of public affairs bore upon the existing hostilities, naturally came into the discussion. In 1816 the war was at an end; but the Army Estimates continued to afford a subject of much animated debate, because they raised the whole question of the Peace Establishment, and were in fact a State of the Nation. The following speech delivered on that occasion, was most imperfectly reported, as in those days generally happened to speeches made in Committees of the Whole House. It has been revised from notes made at the time; but the passage respecting the punishment of Jacobinism is given from memory, and is believed to be much less full than the original was. The speech had a greater success than any other made by Mr. Brougham in Parliament; of which a memorial is preserved in some accounts of the Parliamentary Debates. These mention that it was "loudly cheered from all sides of the House" at its conclusion-a thing of very ordinary occurrence, indeed of daily occurrence now-a-days, but which hardly ever happened in former times. SPEECH ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES. HOUSE OF COMMONS-MARCH 11, 1816. MR. BROGDEN,-Although I on a former occasion delivered my opinion generally upon these Estimates, yet I am anxious now to state my sentiments in more detail upon a subject of such great importance, and the rather because of the defiances flung out from the other side to all of us, to go into the examination of it. I stand forward to take up the gauntlet which has thus been thrown down; and I affirm that the more minutely you scrutinize the several items of this bill brought in against the country, the more objectionable you will find them. I object, in the first place, altogether to the large force of Guards which it is intended to keep up; and I even protest, though that is a trifle in comparison, but I do protest against the new-fangled French name of Household Troops, under which they are designated, a name borrowed from countries where this portion of the national force is allotted exclusively to protect the Prince against a people in whom he cannot trust is the appointed means given him to maintain his arbitrary power-is the very weapon put into his hands to arm him against the liberties of his country. However appropriate the appellation may be there, it cannot be endured in this nation, where the Sovereign ought never to have any reason for distrusting his subjects, and never can be entrusted with any force except that which the defence of his people re |