If, therefore, Gentlemen of the Jury, I had thought myself justified in a cause in which the record charges the other Defendant and myself with an attempt to bring the sacred person of the King into disrepute, to apply to my Counsel in the particular situation in which he stands (Mr. Jekyll, Solicitor-General to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales) I am confident that the Learned Gentleman, and my other most able and esteemed Counsel (Mr. Raine) would have arduously, honestly, and much more successfully than, I fear, I shall be able to do for myself, have defended Mr. Lambert and me this day. But I felt that I could not with propriety make the application; and neither the rules of this Court, nor the rules of honour, that have always actuated my conduct, would permit me to overlook my engagement; and the respect which I bear for the honour, the talents, and the integrity of this bar, will ever prevent me from going to other Courts to look for assistance here.

does not belong; for after all, man is like a plant, which when transplanted into a soil foreign to its habits, will feel the change, will shrink into itself, will droop, will bend its head, until the mildness of the climate, and the chearing influence of the sun shall revivify and freshen whatever native vigour it may possess.

And, Gentlemen, even with all the simplicity of the cause, and with the simplicity which it is my resolution to observe in treating it, I should not have come here if it had been of any kind or quality but what it is. If it had been a pretended libel on an individual, of which I trust I am also incapable, but which in an hour of negligence, or by accident, (for it could happen by no other means), had gained admittance, we should have suffered judgment to go by default; for we shall be ever as ready to acknowledge a fault as we are careful to avoid one. If it had been an attack only on the King's Ministers, which I often assume the right to make, I should with confidence, and so But, Gentlemen, I should not have ven- would my inseparable co-adjutor and tured to present myself to your attention friend Mr. Lambert, have left our vindiif there had been any thing in the cause cation to the Learned Gentlemen who of an intricate or of a complicated nature would have done us the honour to exert -if there had been any inuendoes to be themselves in our protection; but when it disputed-any special pleading to be en- is charged on the record, that we had countered any question of law to be argu-" unlawfully, wickedly and maliciously ed-any witnesses to be cross-questioned "devised and intended to bring his Ma-or, indeed, any thing but a plain, naked, "jesty's sacred person into great and simple proposition, which it is only necessary for me to shew you, was innocently published. I am not come here with the impertinent design of attempting to make a speech, in which I should only succeed in displaying my presumption and my folly-in which I should only more surely incur, because I should more richly deserve, the ridicule to which the man who pleads his own cause is always subject and which, I assure you, I have myself suffered in no ordinary degree, even in the streets, from my friends, and from strangers, since my determination was known; and which in some instances would have affected my spirits, if any thing could have shaken the steady purpose of my mind, when supported by the conscious rectitude of my heart. But there is nothing, Gentlemen, that I mean to try so little as to captivate your understandings by the affectation of eloquence, that would, even if I had the gift or the practice of speaking, be out of place; since nothing can be more unseemly than for a person in my situation to usurp a province to which he

public hatred and contempt;" we feel that nothing can deliver us from the horror of such a charge but by exposing ourselves fairly to you, in the face of our country, that you may observe, examine and try us. with all the intelligence, all the acuteness, and all the authority that belong to you in this public tribunal.-Oh that you haď the power of God, as you have the power of the country, to look into our breasts, and to search our hearts, to see whether there lurks in any part of the bosom of either, any dark, malignant, traitorous feeling, that would dispose us to use, if we could with safety, the powerful instrument in our hands to bring even into disrepute the sacred name of the Sovereign, under whose beneficent reign I have myself lived during the whole period of my conscious existence! This divine power of truly searching the heart is not given to man; but it is something on our part to expose ourselves, nakedly and alone, without guile, without aid, without Counsel, to the critical observations and scrutiny, which twelve discerning men,

It charges Mr. Lambert the Printer, and myself the Proprietor of The Morning Chronicle, as being seditious, ma"licious, ill-disposed persons, greatly dis"affected to our present Sovereign Lord, Gentlemen, I subscribe to the definition George the Third, and to his Adminis- of his Majesty's Attorney General. I ac"tration of the Government of this King-cept of it as of all that I desire-In my "dom-And that we did, unlawfully, "wickedly, and maliciously devising, designing and intending as much as in "us lay, to bring our said Lord the King

and I should be in a most perilous situation indeed, if it were otherways, for instead of my being able to adduce the uniform tenor and practice of my life, to justify me from the imputation cast upon me for the last branch of the sentence, my whole life would be an almost uninter rupted series of transgressions under the first.

For, Gentlemen of the Jury, I do differ with the Honourable and Learned Gentleman as to the character of the Adminis

then hear no more of a people sitting su pine while their Government is attacked of ancient Monarchies being overthrown, or of new tyrannies being triumphant! The Learned Gentleman handsomely and properly follows up this definition by an acknowledgement which saves me this day some trouble, and saves the Court and you some time, for he at once admits that the first branch of the text which forms a part of the record, is within the scope of the liberty which he thinks legitimate. I thank him for the fair and 'candid conces-tration, and as often and as long, as I have sion. It is worthy of the high and distinguished situation which he holds: and becoming an honourable and constitutional lawyer. He fairly admits that to saya crowd of blessings might flow "from a total change of system" is fair, because, though it is not his opinion, it may be honestly mine. And if upon an examination and review of the measures of the King's Ministers, or of any department of his Administration, a writer shall see cause for animadversion and censure, he thinks it within the fair and just precincts of freedom that he should publish his thoughts. He, therefore, does not as cribe to this branch of the sentence the epithets that are upon the record. He does not certainly think of his Majesty's Ministers as it appears that I think of them, but he gives me credit for a fair difference of opinion, and for honestly think ing what I have openly said. How the Learned Gentleman, with the conviction on his mind, of the innocence of this branch of the sentence, could yet put it on the record, and apply to it all the severe epithets of charge that stand against us, it is for him to explain. It is not possible for me to divine the cause, unless the Learned Gentleman should think this branch of the sentence, necessary to introduce the second, as tending to its expla

nation.

But, Gentlemen, I thank him for exempting me from the necessity of shewing you what I meant by a change of system. It would have become me to have shewn you, who are loyal subjects of your Sovereign, that by a change of system I did not mean a change in the frame of our Constitution or of our Government-God forbid-and even the most suspected part of the sentence would protect me from that charge, because it speaks of the regular descent of the Monarchy to a legitimate successor; but I am relieved at once and for ever from all anxiety, and from all doubt upon this point;

seen the Administration of his Majesty's affairs in such hands, and so conducted, I have felt it my duty to say, that a total change of system would bestow a crowd of blessings on his Majesty and on his People. It has been my creed—it has been my invariable object, to state and to instil it into the minds of my fellow-subjects; and happy would it have been for us all, if I had been as successful as I have been industrious! For, Gentlemen, I have done it daily-three hundred and thirteen times a year-for three and thirty years of my life have I proclaimed, that a total change of system would bestow a crowd of blessings on the country. It was clearly and perfectly known what I meant by a change of system-that I meant a change of measures, together, undoubtedly, with a change of men, as a security to the country for a change of measures-and that the phrase meant no more, than to impress upon the public mind this great, undeniable Whig doctrine, that the true magnificence, solidity and power of the British Throne required that the free choice of the King in the appointment of his Government should be strengthened by the opinion and confidence of his people. Now, in the whole of the eventful period of my political life (into which there have been crowded more vicissitudes of human fortune-more awful admonitions to Princes-and more important lessons to mankind, than ever were known in any other portion of time), there never was one when the truth of the above maxim could be proclaimed with a more seasonable, a more lively, or a more urgent interest, than on Monday, the 2d day of October last, the day laid in the record for the offence.

But the Learned Gentleman says, most generously, that he does not quarrel with me as to my opinion of his Majesty's present Ministers, and as to my wish for a change of system-nor as to my idea of the blessings that would flow from it. It

by which they might have been avoided. It was when the cabals and distractions of the King's Cabinet had broken out, after private treachery, into the scandal of public duelling-It was on the total disorganization of the King's Government,

may be my opinion, though it is not his but that which he complains of is the time that I hold out to the country as the only period when they may hope to enjoy the blessings that would flow from such a change and he says that I mean to insinuate that no such hope can be enter-when, humbled and mortified into a just tained during the life of his present Ma- but temporary sense of their own incapajesty-but that I proceed to state it may city, they had made a proposition to two be expected from the Successor of George great and illustrious Statesmen to support the Third. Having conjured up this their tottering fabric. Gentlemen, this phantom of an insinuation, he very pro- paragraph made its appearance on the perly dresses it in the garb of terror to very day when the first faithful narrative affright your loyalty, and to impress upon of that overture to a negociation was comyour minds the most horrible images of municated to the public through the mecivil discord-of the links of love that dium of the Morning Chronicle. bind the Sovereign to the people and the people to the Sovereign being brokenand that the country is to be condemned to anarchy, because the King's life is set up between them and their hopes of hapiness! All this is dreadful-but where does the Learned Gentleman find all this? Not in the record, for there is not an inu endo to that effect. It is really hard upon Mr. Lambert and myself that the Attorney General should acquit us of what he finds upon his own record, and then charge us with an insinuation that is not to be found there. Whence does he draw the inference that he now puts upon the phrase? Not from the simple words, for they contain no such meaning-and not from the context, as I shall have the honour to shew you when I call your attention to the passages in the same paper, which the Noble and Learned Lord permits me to call for and put in as part of my De-eye. fence.

But first, Gentlemen, give me leave to call back your recollection to the period of time, and to the very curious and interesting circumstances at the time of this publication. Gentlemen, it was immediately after the failure of our most notable and most calamitous Expedition to Walcheren, when almost every family in this kingdom were covered with sorrow at the woeful certainty of the loss of a husband, a son, a brother, or a friend, or with the still more agonizing apprehensions of the loss which they dreaded every post would bring them-Not losses from the fate of battle, where death even to those that are nearest in blood to the sufferer, brings with it the consolation of the glory that shines over the grave, but losses from the most cruel neglect of the means

It fortunately happens to my friend and me, that there will be found in the columns of the same identical paper, ample proof of the mind and intention with which the paragraph on the record was insertedfor, you will please to observe, that we are not charged with the writing of it. That is no part of the imputation, for, in point of fact, it was a paragraph copied from another journal, which is the uniform practice of all Editors, when they see any thing that coincides with, or serves to corroborate their own sentiments, or that puts an idea in a new light. We are not striving to shelter ourselves from our direct responsibility for every part of the paper, written or copied, by this statement, but to account to you for a distinction which you may observe in the manner in which the passages that I shall refer you to, and this paragraph, are presented to the public

It is no more than a distinction which belongs to the mechanic part of the composition of a newspaper. That which is our own, or that which is newthat which is important, or that which is peculiar to ourselves, we display in space, or in a different character from that which is borrowed, and that which may be in every other paper as well as our own. With this distinction, Gentlemen, you will view the whole paper-and you will see whether the passages, to which I shall point your attention, which precede this in point of place, though separated from it -are not bona fide connected with it in sense, though disjoined in situation; and whether they will not lead your judgment to form a true estimate of the mind and intention with which we admitted this tailpiece to the narrative.

(To be continued.)

LONDON :-Printed by T. C. HANSARD, Peterborough - Court, Fleet - Street Published by R. BAGSHAW, Brydges-Street, Covent Garden :-Sold also by J. BUDD, Pall-Mall.

COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER.

VOL. XVII. No. 10.]

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 1810.

[Price 18.

There is a sinecure place, which is, at present, held by the EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (late Lord Hobart), which place is worth £.11,094, or, in words, eleven thousand and ninety-four pounds, a year. The reversion of this enormous salary, that is to say, the possession of it after the present possessor's death, has been obtained and secured by LORD HARDWICKE, not only for himself during his life, but, beyond that, for the lives of his two sons; and, this Lord Hardwicke is, as the reader will recollect, a brother of MR. CHARLES YORKE.

MR. CHARLES YORKE, of whom the public has, within the last twelve months, heard so much; that Mr. Charles Yorke, who, upou Mr. Wardle's opening of the Charges against our late Chieftain, solemnly declared his belief that there was a Jacobinical Conspiracy on foot against the illustrious House of Brunswick; that Mr. Charles Yorke, who, from the moment the Walcheren Inquiry began, moved the Standing Order for shutting the Debate Reporters out of the Gallery; that Mr. Charles Yorke, who, when a motion was made for Inquiry, which motion was opposed by the minister, declared that he thought it his duty to stand by the minister, because the minister had resolved to stand by the king; aye, that very Mr. Charles Yorke, has, within this week, received through the hands of that same ninister, a grant, for life, of a sinecure place, (or place where nothing is to be done) called a Tellership of the Exchequer, worth £. 2,700 a year; that is to say, he has thus secured, for his whole lifetime, two thousand seven hundred pounds a year to be paid to him out of the taxes, raised upon the people of England.

Mr. Charles Yorke's having obtained a grant of a SINECURE PLACE has put it in your power to do more good, or more harm, to the cause of public liberty, than" it has, for many years past, been in the power of any part of this kingdom to do, or to leave undone; and, as your conduct, upon this interesting occasion, must affect, in a greater or less degree, the whole of your countrymen, you will not, I hope, think it an act of presumption in me to state to you a few of those reasons, which, in my opinion, ought to prevent you from re-electing your late Member.

Gentlemen, it is not necessary for me to remind the far greater part of you, that his Majesty's family came not to the throne of this country in virtue of lineal descent; but, that they were raised to that throne by Act of Parliament, which set aside the direct descendants, and put his Majesty's family in their place. This the people of England did because their rights had been trampled on by the kings of the House of STUART, and because they thought, that those rights would be preserved under the House of Brunswick. But, when they made this change, they did not make it without conditions. An Act was passed, which is commonly called the ACT OF SETTLEMENT; but which is en

-[354 titled "An Act for further limiting the Crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the people." This Act is neither more nor less than a Statement, or rather, Declaration of the Conditions, upon which the House of Brunswick shall enjoy the throne of these realms; and, amongst these conditions there is this: "That no person, who has an office or place of profit "under the king, or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving as a "member of the House of Commons." Now, this provision having been introduced into such an Act of Parliament, an act the most important, perhaps, that ever was passed, clearly shows, how anxious our forefathers were to prevent members of parliament from being under the influence. of the Crown. This provision was, however, done away by a subsequent Act of Parliament, passed at a time when the people were less alive to their interests and their honour; and, accordingly, we now see a very great abundance of pensioners as well as placemen seated in the Commons' House of Parliament; but, still, those who passed the act, by which this wholesome provision was repealed, were afraid or ashamed, to go the full length of at once opening the door to placemen and pensioners, without check or controul, and, therefore, while they permitted placemen and pensioners to be chosen inembers and sit in the House, they had the decency to provide, that when any man after his election, became a placeman or a pensioner, he should quit his seat, and should not, of course, re-enter the

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