tial to the decision of cases in chancery; and "the doctrines which prevail in the courts of equity," as Sir Samuel Romilly remarked, "were to him almost like the laws of a foreign country." He had always thrown contempt upon proceedings in these courts; and was sometimes taunted with his pathetic appeal to Lord Kenyon, when recommending that his client should apply to chancery for redress: "Would your Lordship send a dog you loved there?" Still, he endeavored to gain what information he could on the subject at his period of life, and said humorously to Romilly, who excelled in this knowledge of these proceedings, "You must make me a chancellor now, that I may afterward make you one." Though he added no honor to the office, he did not disgrace it. None of his decisions except one were ever called in question, and that was affirmed by the House of Lords. He presided with dignity, and when he retired from office, as he did at the end of thirteen months, Sir Arthur Pigot addressed him in the name of the bar, expressing "their grateful sense of the kindness shown them while he presided." The remainder of Erskine's life was saddened by poverty, and unworthy of his early fame. The usages of the profession forbade his returning to the bar; the pension on which he retired was small; the property he had gained was wasted in speculations; and his early sense of character was unhappily lost, to some extent, in the general wreck of his fortunes. He died on a visit to Scotland, at Almondell, the residence of his sister-in-law, on the 17th of November, 1823, in the seventy-third year of his age. The oratory of Erskine owed much of its impressiveness to his admirable delivery. He was of the medium height, with a slender but finely-turned figure, animated and graceful in gesture, with a voice somewhat shrill but beautifully modulated, a countenance beaming with emotion, and an eye of piercing keenness and power. "Juries," in the words of Lord Brougham, "have declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him, when he had riveted, and, as it were, fascinated them by his first glance; and it used to be a common remark of men who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse; as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed, as free from all gross superfluity or encumbrance." His style was chaste, forcible, and harmonious, a model of graceful variety, without the slightest mannerism or straining after effect. His rhythmus was beautiful; that of the passage containing his Indian Chief is surpassed by nothing of the kind in our language. His sentences were sometimes too long-a fault which arose from the closeness and continuity of his thought. The exordium with which Erskine introduced a speech was always natural, ingenious, and highly appropriate; none of our orators have equaled him in this respect. The arrangement of the matter which followed was highly felicitous; and he had this peculiarity, which gave great unity and force to his arguments, that "he proposed," in the words of another, a great leading principle, to which all his efforts were referable and subsidiary—which ran through the whole of his address, governing and elucidating every part. As the principle was a true one, whatever might be its application to that particular case, it gave to his whole speech an air of honesty and sincerity which it was difficult to resist." 2 The Rev. Dr. Emmons, one of the acutest reasoners among the divines of New England, was accustomed (as the writer is directly informed) to read the Massachusetts Reports as they came out, for the pleasure and benefit they afforded him as specimens of powerful reasoning. Would not our young divines find similar benefit from the study of great legal arguments like these of Erskine? SPEECH OF MR. ERSKINE IN BEHALF of Lord GEORGE GORDON WHEN INDICTED FOR HIGH TREASON, DELIVERED BEFORE THE COURT OF THE KING'S BENCH, FEBRUARY 5, 1781. INTRODUCTION. LORD GEORGE GORDON, a member of the House of Commons, was a young Scottish nobleman of weak intellect and enthusiastic feelings. He had been chosen president of the Protestant Association, whose object was to procure the repeal of Sir George Saville's bill in favor of the Catholics. In this capacity, he directed the association to meet him in St. George's Fields, and proceed thence to the Parliament House with a petition for the repeal of the bill. Accordingly, about forty thousand persons of the middling classes assembled on Friday, the 2d of June, 1780, and, after forming a procession, moved forward till they blocked up all the avenues to the House of Commons. They had no arms of any kind, and were most of them orderly in their conduct, though individuals among them insulted some members of both Houses who were passing into the building, requiring them to put blue cockades on their hats, and to cry "No Popery!" Lord George presented the petition, but the House refused to consider it at that time, by a vote of 192 to 6. The multitude now became disorderly, and after the House adjourned, bodies of men proceeded to demolish the Catholic chapels at the residences of the foreign ministers. From this moment the whole affair changed its character. Desperate men, many of them thieves and robbers, took the lead. Not only were Catholic chapels set on fire, but the London prisons were broken open and destroyed; thirty-six fires were blazing at one time during the night; the town was for some days completely in the power of the multitude; Lord Mansfield's house was destroyed; the breweries and distilleries were broken open, and the mob became infuriated with liquor; and for a period there was reason to apprehend that the whole of the metropolis might be made one general scene of conflagration. The military were at last called in from the country, and, after a severe conflict, the mob was put down; but not until nearly five hundred persons had been killed or wounded, exclusive of those who perished from the effects of intoxication. The government had been taken by surprise: no adequate provision was made to guard against violence; and, as the riots went on, all authority for a time seemed to be paralyzed or extinct. When order was at last restored, the magistrates, as is common with those who have neglected their duty, endeavored to throw the blame on others-they resolved to make Lord George Gordon their scapegoat. He was accordingly arraigned for high treason; and such was the excitement of the public mind, such the eagerness to have some one punished, that he was in imminent danger of being made the victim of public resentment. It was happy for him that, in addition to Mr. (afterward Lord) Kenyon, his senior counsel, a man of sound mind, but wholly destitute of eloquence, he had chosen Mr. Erskine, as a Scotchman, to aid in his defense. It was the means probably of saving his life. The Attorney General opened the case in behalf of the Crown, contending (1.) That the prisoner, in assembling the multitude round the two Houses of Parliament, was guilty of high treason, if he did so with a view to overawe and intimidate the Legislature, and enforce his purposes by numbers and violence (a doctrine fully confirmed by the court); and (2.), That the overt acts proved might be fairly construed into such a design, and were the only evidence by which a traitorous intention, in such a case, could be shown. When the evidence for the Crown was received, Mr. Kenyon addressed the jury in behalf of Lord George Gordou, but in a manner so inefficient that, when he sat down, "the friends of Lord George were in an agony of apprehension." According to the usual practice, Mr. Erskine should now have followed, before the examination of his client's witnesses. But he adroitly changed the order, claiming as a privilege of the prisoner (for which he adduced a precedent) to have the evidence in his favor received at once. His object was, by meeting the evidence of the Crown with that of Lord George's witnesses as early as possible, to open a way for being heard with more favor by the jury, and of commenting upon the evidence on both sides as compared together. The Rev. Mr. Middleton, a member of the Protestant Association, swore that he had watched the prisoner's conduct, and that he appeared to be always actuated by the greatest loyalty to the King and attachment to the Constitution-that his speeches at the meetings of the association, at Coachmakers' Hall, never contained an expression tending directly or indirectly to a repeal of the bill by force-that he desired the people not even to carry sticks in the procession, and begged that riotous persons might be delivered to the constables. Mr. Evans, an eminent surgeon, declared that he saw Lord George Gordon in the center of one of the divisions in St. George's Fields, and that it appeared from his conduct and expressions that he wished and endeavored to prevent all disorder. The reader has already seen Mr. Burke's admirable exposition of the reasons for Sir George Saville's bill, in his speech at Bristol, pages 299-310. This was confirmed by others; and it was proved by decisive evidence that the bulk of the people round the Parliament House and in the lobby were not members of the Association, but idlers, vagabonds, and pickpockets, who had thrust themselves in; so that the persons who insulted the members were of a totally different class from those who formed the original procession. The Earl of Lonsdale swore that he took the prisoner home from the House in his carriage; that great multitudes surrounded Lord George, inquiring the fate of the petition; that he answered it was uncertain, and earnestly entreated them to retire to their homes and be quiet. The evidence was not closed until after midnight, when Mr. Erskine addressed the jury in the following speech. Lord Campbell says of it, "Regularly trained to the profession of the law-having practiced thirty years at the bar-having been Attorney General above seven years-having been present at many trials for high treason, and having conducted several myself-I again peruse, with increased astonishment and delight, the speech delivered on this occasion by him, who had recently thrown aside the scarlet uniform of a subaltern in the army, which he had substituted for the blue jacket of a midshipman, thrust upon him while he was a school-boy. Here I find not only great acuteness, powerful reasoning, enthusiastic zeal, and burning eloquence, but the most masterly view ever given of the English law of high trea son, the foundation of all our liberties."-Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vi., page 408. Amount of evi SPEECH, &c. GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,-Mr. Kenyon havExordium: ing informed the court that we prodence in favor pose to call no other witnesses, it is of the prisoner. now my duty to address myself to you as counsel for the noble prisoner at the bar, the whole evidence being closed. I use the word | closed, because it certainly is not finished, since I have been obliged to leave the seat in which I sat, to disentangle myself from the volumes of men's names, which lay there under my feet, whose testimony, had it been necessary for the defense, would have confirmed all the facts that are already in evidence before you.1 Gentlemen, I feel myself entitled to expect, Indulgence due both from you and from the court, the to the speaker. greatest indulgence and attention. I am, indeed, a greater object of your compassion than even my noble friend whom I am defending. He rests secure in conscious innocence, and in the well-placed assurance that it can suffer no stain in your hands. Not so with ME. I stand before you a troubled, I am afraid a guilty man, in having presumed to accept of the awful task which I am now called upon to perform-a task which my learned friend who spoke before me, though he has justly risen, by extraordinary capacity and 1 Mr. Erskine shows great dexterity in turning a slight circumstance at the opening of his speech, into a means of impressing the jury from the first with a sense of his client's innocence. He had sat thus far in the front row, with large files of papers at his feet, but he now stepped back to obtain greater freedom of movement; and this he represents as done to escape from "the volumes of men's names" who stood ready to confirm the evidence in favor of Lord Gordon! So the next paragraph, though in form a plea for indulgence to himself as a young speaker, is in fact the strongest possible assumption of the prisoner's innocence, since the guilt referred to con sisted in his venturing to endanger, by his inexperience, the cause of one who stood secure himself "in conscious innocence." There is hardly any thing for which Mr. Erskine deserves more to be studied, than his thus making every circumstance conspire to produce the desired impression. All is so easy and natural, that men never think of it as the result of design or premeditation, and here lies his consummate skill as an advocate. experience, to the highest rank in his profession, Transition: Reasons for dis of treason. the crime. One observation he has, however, made on the subject, in the truth of which I heart- Greatness of ily concur, viz., that the crime of which the very highest and most atrocious that a memthe noble person at your bar stands accused, is ber of civil life can possibly commit; because it is not, like all other crimes, merely an injury to society from the breach of some of its reciprocal relations, but is an attempt utterly to dissolve and destroy society altogether. In nothing, therefore, is the wisdom and justice our laws so strongly and eminently Hence it is most manifested as in the rigid, accurate, of exactly defined. 2 The reader can not fail to remark how admirably one thought grows out of another in the transi tion, all of them important and all preparing the mind to be deeply interested in the discussion of the subject to which it leads, the nature of high treason. The same characteristic runs throughout the whole speech. (1.) To compass or imagine the death of the King: such imagination or purpose of the mind (visible only to its great Author) being manifested by some open act; an institution obviously directed, not only to the security of his natural person, but to the stability of the government; since the life of the Prince is so interwoven with the Constitution of the state, that an attempt to destroy the one is justly held to be rebellious conspiracy against the other. cautious, explicit, unequivocal definition of what shall constitute this high offense. For, high treason consisting in the breach and dissolution of that allegiance which binds society together, if it were left ambiguous, uncertain, or undefined, all the other laws established for the personal security of the subject would be utterly useless; since this offense, which, from its nature, is so capable of being created and judged of by the rules of political expediency on the spur of the occasion, would be a rod at will to bruise the most virtuous members of the community, when-ment) To levy war against him in his realm: a ever virtue might become troublesome or obnoxious to a bad government. A potent engine (2.) (which is the crime charged in the indict term that one would think could require no explanation, nor admit of any ambiguous construcInjuries to the persons and properties of our tion, among men who are willing to read laws neighbors, considered as individuals, according to the plain signification of the lanof tyranny if which are the subjects of all other guage in which they are written; but which has, overstrained. criminal prosecutions, are not only nevertheless, been an abundant source of that capable of greater precision, but the powers of constructive cavil which this sacred and valuathe state can be but rarely interested in strain- ble act was made expressly to prevent. The ing them beyond their legal interpretation. But real meaning of this branch of it, as it is botif treason, where the government is directly of- tomed in policy, reason, and justice; as it is orfended, were left to the judgment of its ministers, dained in plain unambiguous words; as it is conwithout any boundaries-nay, without the most firmed by the precedents of justice, and illustrated broad, distinct, and inviolable boundaries marked by the writings of the great lights of the law in out by the law-there could be no public free- different ages of our history, I shall, before I sit dom. The condition of an Englishman would be down, impress upon your minds as a safe, unerno better than a slave's at the foot of a Sultan; ring standard by which to measure the evidence since there is little difference whether a man dies you have heard. At present I shall only say, that by the stroke of a saber, without the forms of a far and wide as judicial decisions have strained trial, or by the most pompous ceremonies of jus- the construction of levying war beyond the wartice, if the crime could be made at pleasure by rant of the statute, to the discontent of some of the state to fit the fact that was to be tried. the greatest ornaments of the profession, they Would to God, gentlemen of the jury, that this hurt not me. As a citizen I may disapprove of were an observation of theory alone, and that the them, but as advocate for the noble person at page of our history was not blotted with so many your bar, I need not impeach their authority. For melancholy, disgraceful proofs of its truth! But none of them have said more than this, "that war these proofs, melancholy and disgraceful as they may be levied against the King in his realm, not are, have become glorious monuments of the only by an insurrection to change or to destroy wisdom of our fathers, and ought to be a theme the fundamental Constitution of the government of rejoicing and emulation to us. For, from the itself by rebellious war; but, by the same war, to mischiefs constantly arising to the state from ev-endeavor to suppress the execution of the laws it ery extension of the ancient law of treason, the ancient law of treason has been always restored, and the Constitution at different periods washed clean; though, unhappily, with the blood of oppressed and innocent men. I. When I speak of the ancient law of treason, High treason I mean the venerable statute of King defined. Edward the Third, on which the indictment you are now trying is framed a statute made, as its preamble sets forth, for the more precise definition of this crime, which has not, by the common law, been sufficiently explained; and consisting of different and distinct members, the plain unextended letter of which was thought to be a sufficient protection to the person and honor of the Sovereign, and an adequate security to the laws committed to his execution. I shall mention only two of the number, the others not being in the remotest degree applicable to the present accusation.3 3 In this statement of the law of treason, perfectly fair and accurate as it is, there is one thing which marks the consummate skill of Mr. Erskine. He shapes it throughout with a distinct reference to the has enacted, or to violate and overbear the protection they afford, not to individuals (which is a private wrong), but to any general class or description of the community, by premeditated open acts of violence, hostility, and force." Gentlemen, I repeat these words, and call solemnly on the judges to attend to what criterion of I say, and to contradict me if I mis- high treason. take the law," By premeditated open acts of violence, hostility, and force," nothing equivocal, nothing ambiguous, no intimidations or overawings, which signify nothing precise or certain (because what frightens one man or set of men may have no effect upon another), but that which compels and coerces-open violence and force. Gentlemen, this is not only the whole text; but I submit it to the learned judges, under whose correction I am happy to speak, an accurate exfacts of the case, as they were afterward to come out in evidence. The points made most prominent are the points he had occasion afterward to use. Thus the jury were prepared, without knowing it, to look at the evidence under aspects favorable to the prisoner. planation of the statute of treason, as far as it re- | less he has levied war against the King in his lates to the present subject, taken in its utmost extent of judicial construction; and which you can not but see, not only in its letter, but in its most strained signification, is confined to acts which immediately, openly, and unambiguously strike at the very root and being of government, and not to any other offenses, however injurious to its peace. realm, contrary to the plain letter, spirit, and intention of the act of the twenty-fifth of Edward the Third-to be extended by no new or occasional construction, to be strained by no fancied analogies, to be measured by no rules of political expediency, to be judged of by no theory, to be determined by the wisdom of no individual, however wise, but to be expounded by the simple, genuine letter of the law. the assemblage. day of last June. In addressing myself to a humane and sensible jury of Englishmen, sitting in judgment on the life of a fellow-citizen, more especially under the direction of a court so filled as this is, I trust I need not remind you that the purposes of that multitude, as originally assembled on that day, and the purposes and acts of him who assembled them, are the sole objects of investigation. All the dismal consequences which followed, and which naturally link them Such were the boundaries of high treason All attempts to marked out in the reign of Edward Gentlemen, the only overt act charged in the widen the crime the Third; and as often as the vices indictment, is the assembling the mulhave been wiseThe prisoner ly repressed. of bad princes, assisted by weak sub- titude, which we all of us remember responsible only for the orig. missive Parliaments, extended state offenses be- went up with the petition of the As- inal object of yond the strict letter of that act, so often the vir-sociated Protestants, on the second tue of better princes and wiser Parliaments brought them back again. A long list of new treasons, accumulated in the wretched reign of Richard the Second, from which (to use the language of the act that repealed them) no man knew what to do or say for doubt of the pains of death," were swept away in the first year of Henry the Fourth, his successor; and many more, which had again sprung up in the following distracted arbitrary reigns, putting tumults and riots on a footing with armed rebellion, were again lev-selves with this subject in the firmest minds, eled in the first year of Queen Mary, and the statute of Edward made once more the standard of treasons. The acts, indeed, for securing his present Majesty's illustrious House from the machinations of those very Papists, who are now so highly in favor, have, since that time, been added to the list. But these not being applicable to the present case, the ancient statute is still our only guide; which is so plain and simple in its object, so explicit and correct in its terms, as to leave no room for intrinsic error; and the wisdom of its authors has shut the door against all extension of its plain letter; declaring, in the very body of the act itself, that nothing out of that plain letter should be brought within the pale of treason by inference or construction, but that, if any such cases happened, they should be referred to the Parliament. by the highest This wise restriction has been the subject of These restric much just eulogium by all the most tions approved celebrated writers on the criminal authority. law of England. Lord Coke says the Parliament that made it was on that account called Benedictum, or Blessed; and the learned and virtuous Judge Hale, a bitter enemy and opposer of constructive treason, speaks of this sacred institution with that enthusiasm which it can not but inspire in the breast of every lover of the just privileges of mankind. Gentlemen, in these mild days, when juries Definition applied to the must be altogether cut off, and abstracted from your attention, further than the evidence warrants their admission. If the evidence had been co-extensive with these consequences; if it bad been proved that the same multitude, under the direction of Lord George Gordon, had afterward attacked the Bank, broke open the prisons, and set London in a conflagration, I should not now be addressing you. Do me the justice to believe that I am neither so foolish as to imagine I could have defended him, nor so profligate to wish it if I could. But when it has appeared, not only by the evidence in the cause, but by the evidence of the thing itself-by the issues of life, which may be called the evidence of Heaven - that these dreadful events were either entirely unconnected with the assembling of that multitude to attend the petition of the Protestants, or, at the very worst, the unforeseen, undesigned. unabetted, and deeply regretted consequences of it, I confess the seriousness and solemnity of this trial sink and dwindle away. Only abstract from your minds all that misfortune, accident, and the wickedness of others have brought upon the scene, and the cause requires no advocate. When I say that it requires no advocate, I mean that it requires no argument to screen it from the guilt of treason. For though I am perfectly convinced of the purity of my noble friend's intentions, yet I am not bound to defend his prudence, nor to set it up as a pattern for imitation; since you are not trying him for imprudence, for indiscreet zeal, or for want of foresight and precaution, but for a deliberate and malicious predetermination to overpower the laws and government of his country, by hostile, rebellious force. are so free and judges so independent, perhaps all these observations might present case. have been spared as unnecessary. But they can do no harm; and this history of treason, so honorable to England, can not (even imperfectly as I have given it) be unpleasant to Englishmen. At all events, it can not be thought The indictment, therefore, first charges that an inapplicable introduction to saying that Lord the multitude assembled on the 2d The indictment George Gordon, who stands before you indicted of June were armed and arrayed they were for that crime, is not, can not be guilty of it, un- in a warlike manner;" which, indeed, armed. charges that |