asked for him; and, without the aid of this imputed eloquence, what damages might I not have expected?

I would have brought before you a noble youth, who had fixed his affections upon one of the most beautiful of her sex, and who enjoyed hers in return.-I would have shown you their suitable condition;-I would have painted the expectation of an honorable union, and would have concluded by showing her to you in the arms of another, by the legal prostitution of parental choice in the teeth of affection: with child by a rival, and only reclaimed at last, after so cruel and so afflicting a divorce, with her freshest charms despoiled, and her very morals in a manner impeached, by asserting the purity and virtue of her original and spotless choice.-Good God! imagine my client to be PLAINTIFF, and what damages are you not prepared to give him? and yet he is here as DEFENDANT, and damages are demanded against HIM.-Oh, monstrous conclusion!

Gentlemen, considering my client as perfectly safe, under these circumstances, I may spare a moment to render this cause beneficial to the public.

It involves in it an awful lesson; and more instructive lessons are taught in courts of justice than the church is able to inculcate.-Morals come in the cold abstract from pulpits; but men smart under them practically when we lawyers are the preachers.

Let the aristocracy of England, which trembles so much for itself, take heed to its own security: let the nobles of England, if they mean to preserve that pre-eminence which, in some shape.or other, must exist in every social community, take care to support it by aiming at that which is creative, and alone creative, of real superiority. Instead of matching themselves to supply wealth, to be again idly squandered in debauching excesses, or to round the quarters of a family shield; instead of continuing their names and honors in cold and alienated embraces, amidst the enervating rounds of shallow dissipation, let them live as their fathers of old lived before them ;-let them marry as affection and prudence lead the way, and in the ardors of mutual love, and in the simplicities of rural life, let them lay the foundation of a vigorous race of men, firm in their bodies, and moral from early habits; and instead of wasting their fortunes and their strength in the tasteless circles of debauchery, let them light up their magnificent and hospitable halls to the gentry and peasantry of the country, extending the consolations of wealth and influence to the poor.-Let them but do this, and instead of those dangerous and distracted divisions between the different ranks of life, and those jealousies of the multitude so often blindly painted as big with destruc

tion; we should see our country as one large and harmonious family, which can never be accomplished amidst vice and cor ruption, by wars or treaties, by informations ex officio for libels. or by any of the tricks and artifices of the state:-would to God this system had been followed in the instance before us! Surely the noble house of Fauconberg needed no farther illustration; nor the still nobler house of Howard, with blood enough to have inoculated half the kingdom.--I desire to be understood to make these observations as general moral reflections, and not personally to the families in question; least of all to the noble house of Norfolk, the head of which is now present; since no man, in my opinion, has more at heart the liberty of the subject, and the honor of our country.

Having shown the feeble expectation of happiness from this marriage, the next point to be considered is this:-Did Mr. Bingham take advantage of that circumstance to increase the disunion?—I answer, No.-I will prove to you that he conducted himself with a moderation and restraint, and with a command over his passions, which I confess I did not expect to find, and which in young men is not to be expected :—I shall prove to you, by Mr. Greville, that on this marriage taking place with the betrothed object of his affections, he went away a desponding man; his health declined; he retired into the country to restore it; and it will appear, that for months afterwards he never saw this lady until by mere accident he met her; and then, so far was he from endeavoring to renew his connexion with her, that she came home in tears, and said, he frowned at her as he passed: this I shall prove to you by the evidence in the cause.

Gentlemen, that is not all;-it will appear that, when he returned to town, he took no manner of notice of her; and that her unhappiness was beyond all power of expression.-How, indeed, could it be otherwise, after the account I have given you of the marriage?-I shall prove besides, by a gentleman who married one of the daughters of a person to whom this country is deeply indebted for his eminent and meritorious service (Marquis Cornwallis,) that from her utter reluctance to her husband, although in every respect honorable and correct in his manners and behavior, he was not allowed even the privi leges of a husband, for months after the marriage.-This I mentioned to you before, and only now repeat it in the statement of the proofs. Nothing better, indeed, could be expected :—who can control the will of a mis-matched, disappointed woman?Who can restrain or direct her passions?-I beg leave to assure Mr. Howard (and I hope he will believe me when I say it,) that I think his conduct towards this lady was just such as

might have been expected from a husband who saw himself to be the object of disgust to the woman he had chosen for his wife and it is with this view only that I shall call a gentleman to say how Mr. Howard spoke of this supposed, but, in my mind, impossible object of his adoration. How, indeed, is it possible to adore a woman when you know her affections are riveted to another?-It is unnatural!--A man may have that appetite which is common to the brutes, and too indelicate to be described; but he can never retain an affection which is returned with detestation. Lady Elizabeth, I understand, was, at one time, going in a phaeton:-"There she goes," said Mr. Howard; "God damn her--I wish she may break her neck— I should take care how I got another." This may seem unfeeling behaviour; but in Mr. Howard's situation, Gentlemen, it was the most natural thing in the world, for they cordially hated one another.--At last, however, the period arrived when this scene of discord became insupportable, and nothing could exceed the generosity and manly feeling of the noble person (the Duke of Norfolk) whose name I have been obliged to use in the course of this cause, in his interference to effect that separation which is falsely imputed to Mr. Bingham:-he felt so much commiseration for this unhappy lady, that he wrote to her in the most affecting style :-I believe I have got a letter from his Grace to Lady Elizabeth, dated Sunderland, July the 27th, that is, three days after their separation; but before he knew it had actually taken place: it was written in consequence of one received from Mr. Howard upon the subject:-among other things he says, "I sincerely feel for you." Now, if the Duke had not known at that time that Mr. Bingham had her earliest and legitimate affections, she could not have been an object of that pity which she received: she was, indeed, an object of the sincerest pity, and the sum and substance of this mighty seduction will turn out to be no more than this; that she was affectionately received by Mr. Bingham after the final period of voluntary separation: at four o'clock this miserable couple had parted by consent, and the chaise was not ordered till she might be considered as a single woman by the abandonment of her husband. Had the separation been legal and formal, I should have applied to his lordship, upon the most un questionable authorities, to nonsuit the plaintiff; for this action being founded upon the loss of the wife's society, it must necessarily fall to the ground if it appears that the society, though not the marriage union, was interrupted by a previous act of his own in that hour of separation I am persuaded he never considered Mr. Bingham as an object of resentment or re

proach; he was the author of his own misfortunes, and I can conceive him to have exclaimed in the language of the poet, as they parted,

66

-Elizabeth never lov'd me.

Let no man, after me, a woman wed

Whose heart he knows he has not; though she brings

A mine of gold, a kingdom for her dowry.

For let her seem, like the night's shadowy queen,

Cold and contemplative-he cannot trust her:

She may, she will, bring shame and sorrow on him;
The worst of sorrows, and the worst of shames!"

You have therefore, before you, Gentlemen, two young men of fashion, both of noble families, and in the flower of youth; the proceedings, though not collusive, cannot possibly be vindictive; they are indispensably preliminary to the dissolution of an inauspicious marriage, which never should have existed; Mr. Howard may then profit by an useful, though an unpleasant experience, and be happier with a woman whose mind he may find disengaged; whilst the parents of the rising generation, taking warning from the lesson which the business of the day so forcibly teaches, may avert from their families, and the public, that bitterness of disunion, which, while human nature continues to be itself, will ever be produced to the end of time, from similar conjunctures.

Gentlemen, I have endeavored so to conduct this cause as to offend no man:-I have guarded against every expression which could inflict unnecessary pain; and, in doing so, I know that I have not only served my client's interests, but truly represented his honorable and manly disposition. As the case before you cannot be considered by any reasonable man as an occasion for damages, I might here properly conclude; yet, that I may omit nothing which might apply to any possible view of the subject, I will conclude with reminding you, that my client is a member of a numerous family; that, though Lord Lucan's fortune is considerable, his rank calls for a corresponding equipage and expense: he has other children-one already married to an illustrious nobleman, and another yet to be married to some man who must be happy indeed if he shall know her value: Mr. Bingham, therefore, is a man of no fortune; but the heir only of, I trust, a very distant expectation. Under all these circumstances, it is but fair to believe, that Mr. Howard comes here for the reasons I have assigned, and not to take money out of the pocket of Mr. Bingham to put into his own. You will, therefore, consider, Gentlemen, whether it would be creditable for you to offer, what it would be disgraceful for Mr. Howard to receive.

MR. ERSKINE'S SPEECH,

IN DEFENCE OF THOMAS HARDY, INDICTED FOR HIGH TREASON

IN COMPASSING THE DEATH OF THE KING.

We have been induced to insert this celebrated speech entire, because it contains a most learned, eloquent, and successful vindication of the rights of the subject, against the principles of a political prosecution of novel and portentous import. The force and erudition which characterize the technical portions of the argument would justify their introduction, even had it been possible to omit them without material injury to the remainder.-PUB.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,

BEFORE I proceed to the performance of the momentous duty which is at length cast upon me, I desire in the first place to return my thanks to the Judges, for the indulgence I have received in the opportunity of addressing you at this later period of the day, than the ordinary sitting of the Court; when I have had the refreshment which nature but too much required, and a few hours' retirement to arrange a little in my mind that immense matter, the result of which I must now endeavor to lay before you. I have to thank you also, Gentlemen, for the very condescending and obliging manner in which you so readily consented to this accommodation; the Court could only speak for itself, referring me to you, whose rests and comforts had been so long interrupted. I shall always remember your kindness.

Before I advance to the regular consideration of this great cause, either as it regards the evidence or the law, I wish first to put aside all that I find in the speech of my learned friend, the Attorney General, which is either collateral to the merits, or in which I can agree with him.-First then, IN THE NAME OF THE PRISONER, and speaking his sentiments, which are well known to be my own also, I concur in the eulogium which you have heard upon the Constitution of our wise forefathers.-But before this eulogium can have any just or useful application, we ought to reflect upon what it is which entitles the Constitution to the praise so justly bestowed upon it. To say nothing at present of its most essential excellence, or rather the very soul of it, viz. the share the people ought to have in their government, by a pure representation, for the assertion of which the prisoner stands arraigned as a traitor before you,—what is