Mrs. Baillie scarcely even the slightest indisposition. Not a moment was allowed for preparation; but his whole life was a preparation for this awful change. I cannot go on,' she adds, 'without mentioning his virtues and his talents: his excellent understanding, his spotless integrity, his persevering industry, his warm affections, his peculiar readiness to sacrifice every selfish and personal indulgence, with his extreme liberality of every kind towards others.'

There is no exaggeration in this tribute of a daughter's affection: few men have ever lived who deserved and enjoyed a more widely-diffused reputation for virtue and ability than Dr. Thomas Denman.11

11 Dr. Denman's Treatise on Midwifery' is still of repute in the profession as a standard work: his lectures were very able, and several practitioners who subsequently rose to eminence were among his pupils. He had paid attention to that terrible malady, cancer, and was one of the most zealous promoters of the scheme (since carried out) for establishing a cancer hospital. He induced the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, whom he attended in her confinements, to nurse her own children, and for a time made that practice fashionable among the higher classes in England.

CHAPTER VI.

DEFENCE OF BRANDRETH AND OTHERS FOR HIGH TREASON.

A.D. 1816, 1817. ET. 37, 38.

Denman's practice on circuit and sessions very considerable in 1816, 1817-Defence of Luddite prisoners in 1816-Circuit Book entriesCondition of the operatives in Nottinghamshire and the Midland Counties during and after the close of the Great War - Byron's testimony to the condition of English operatives in the House of Lords, February 27, 1812-Distress of the people increased after the termination of the war-Heavy taxation-No reform, either social or political-Poor laws-Corn laws-Eldon, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh -Effect of the great French Revolution on the propertied classes and the proletariate in England-The year 1817-Famine price of bread— Stagnation of trade-General want of employment-Distress in Nottinghamshire and the neighbouring counties-Rising under Jeremiah Brandreth, the Nottingham Captain '-Brandreth's address to his followers, June 8, 1817-Plan of operations-Night march of the rioters, June 9, 1817-Brandreth shoots Mrs. Hepworth's servant - Terror inspired-Arms seized-The yeomanry assemble-Insurgents disperse at dawn-The leaders captured-Special Commission at Derby, October 14, to try the rioters on a charge of high treason-Denman retained for the defence of Brandreth, Turner, and Ludlam-Facts clearly proved-Only question whether they constituted the offence of high treason by 'levying war against the king'-Argument on this point in speech for Brandreth-Brandreth convicted of high treason— Denman, in speaking for Ludlam and Turner, dwells on the strange power of Brandreth over his fellow men: quotes Byron's description of Conrad in the 'Corsair'-Conviction and sentence of the three prisoners-Their execution, November 7, 1817-Graciousness of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent-Letter from Denman to Merivale of September 10, 1817-Miss Austen's 'Emma'-Bland and Hodgson -Ride from Leamington to Dunsbourne (Dr. Baillie's)-Studying the

law of high treason at Fontainebleau-More facts as to BrandrethIn prison before trial-'No more Derbyshire ribs'-Oliver, the government spy-What shall we do with our boys ?

THE time was now approaching when Denman was to emerge from the comparative obscurity of mere provincial reputation, and obtain a wider and more general recognition of his abilities.

In the summer assizes of 1816 he was extensively retained for the defence of various Luddite prisoners, charged with machine-breaking and rioting. The exertions thus imposed on him, in addition to his ordinary circuit work, which had now become considerable, were pretty severe. To his brother-in-law, the Rev. R. W. Vevers, he writes on September 4 of the circuit then recently concluded as the most fatiguing and harassing that has ever befallen me.' It was also the most profitable he had ever had, and he had about the same time been able to send to his wife, who was then with her children at Margate, the welcome intelligence that on balancing his banker's accounts, he found them favourable beyond all expectation.'

That he acquitted himself with great ability in defence of his unfortunate clients is sufficiently attested by the quaint records in the Circuit Book, which contains the following entries relating to the period now referred to:

Summer Assizes, 1816.-Mr. Denman congratulated on a puff from the judge: 'One comfort is, your defence cannot be in better hands.'-One guinea.

Mr. Reynolds congratulates Mr. Denman on a gross puff

from the judge at Warwick: The learned and eloquent counsel, who has defended his client most ably.'

Derby.The Attorney-General [i.e. of the circuit] presents Mr. Denman for the horrible and merited applause which he received in court at Nottingham.

Before proceeding to relate the facts of the case, which in the next year, 1817, had so much to do with raising the forensic reputation of Denman, a word or two is necessary as to the nature and causes of these Luddite outbreaks. The operatives of Nottinghamshire and the adjacent midland counties had for some years been in a state of chronic discontent-breaking out from time to time into spasmodic acts of violence. It may be remembered that Byron, in 1812, a few days before the publication of Childe Harold,'' had made his maiden speech in the House of Lords, on a Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill, by which, with the usual policy of those times, it was attempted to repress increasing discontent by increasing severity. The young peer produced considerable effect by his solemn declaration-the declaration of a man of genius who saw vividly into the real truth of things, and on this occasion spoke what he thought-'I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula, I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments have I beheld such squalid wretchedness as I have seen, since my return, in the heart of a Christian country.' The misery which Byron thus described in 1812, instead of diminishing, went on increasing. The Dra

1 On February 27, 1812.

conian laws, whose policy he denounced, had, as he prophesied would be the case, wholly failed in their object. Nothing was done to improve the social conditions in which these excesses of desperate and famishing men had their origin, and in a few years the discontent and the danger increased to a still more alarming point.

There probably never was a period of our history in which there was so much wretchedness and consequent disaffection among the English lower classes as in the four or five years that immediately followed the close of the Great War. The glory and the excitement of the conflict were over, and the country was left to sustain as it could the enormous burdens imposed by the gigantic struggle. Taxation had never been so oppressive. No Factory Laws had interposed their humane regulations between the avarice of Capital and the sufferings of Labour. The administration of the Poor Laws, giving a positive premium to improvident marriages and numerous families, and making of the poor serfs of the parish, if not of the glebe, was utterly destroying the independence, and materially interfering with the free labour, of the peasantry. The Corn Laws, aided in their malign operation by the occurrence of one or two deficient harvests, kept bread up almost to a famine price. The voice of complaint in the House of Commons could only make itself feebly heard; for the House of Commons, under the rotten-borough system, was itself under the paramount influence of the land-owning and capitalist classes. Under Lord Liverpool's administration, the grim triumvirate of