besides being saddled with all the burthens of the state, and the expenditure necessary to the appearances of civil government, to consider how one-third of the British empire may at length be rescued from the most abject moral degradation, ignorance, disease, nakedness, and hunger, and the whole from that state of prudential helplessness that alternative between ruin and dishonour, which may, ere long, expose us to the scorn and derision of the world.

189

(1836.)

REFLECTIONS

ON

THE TRIAL OF THE LAST MINISTERS OF CHARLES THE TENTH, BEFORE THE CHAMBER OF PEERS OF FRANCE IN 1830; IN A LETTER ADDRESSED TO AN ADVOCATE OF THE COUR ROYALE AT PARIS.

Intelligant omnes in concionibus esse invidiæ locum, in judiciis veritati.Cicero pro Cluentio.

The grounds whereon I delivered my opinion to the House that the Earl of Strafford ought to be prosecuted for High Treason, are vanished, and for that reason beg leave to alter my opinion. I see the best lawyers in diametrical opposition as to the nature of the offence. God forbid I should give judgment of death on any man, and ruin his innocent posterity upon a law made a posteriori.-Speech of Lord Digby, one of the managers of the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford.

Plus la nation a droit à une éclatante réparation, plus il importe que le haut tribunal qui doit la lui donner soit indépendant. S'il cessait de l'être, s'il y'avait contre lui une apparence même légère d'oppression, sa décision ne serait plus un jugement; la France, l'Europe, la postérité en contesteraient le caractère. C'est dans votre haute position et votre constitution que le pays trouvera ses plus fortes garanties.-Béranger.

La France n'est pas seule attentive, tous les peuples de l'Europe, les yeux fixés sur notre révolution, attendent à leur tour pour nous juger de connaître l'usage que nous allons faire d'une liberté si heureusement recouvrée; ils s'affligeraient, car ils nous admirent si nous manquions de justice et de fermeté.

Justice et non vengeance.-Id.

Messieurs, il y a pour les nations des jours de colère; ces jours-là ne sont pas encore ceux de la justice; mais lorsque ces momens, qui ne sont pas sans héroisme et sans une haute noblesse, se sont écoulés, lorsque surtout la vérité est apparue, il est un courage que la nation Française fera connaître comme tous les autres, c'est de s'attacher à ce qui est vrai, c'est d'abdiquer des préventions qui ne se justifieraient plus dans l'ordre de la justice, ni dans l'intérêt publique.-Hennequin.

Dear Sir,

WHEN I last had the pleasure of seeing you in Paris, I ventured to inquire of you the prevailing opinion among the members of the French Bar, on the legality of the sentence pronounced upon the Prince de Polignac and his

colleagues, the last ministers of Charles X. You remember reminding me that the proceedings of that memorable prosecution were instituted by lawyers of the highest eminence in their profession, and by them conducted in all their stages to its close; that nothing was done but with due deliberation, and that, although the managers on the part of the Deputies and the members of the Committee of Accusation are most of them still alive, and are all men whose devotion to the principles of the Revolution is as unsuspected as their learning is indisputable, no disposition had yet been manifested to reconsider the decision of the Chamber of Peers.

*

I own I was disappointed at the time, that I did not receive a distinct answer to my enquiry. You directed my attention to an authentic Report of the debates, in both Chambers, on the trial, and recommended me to form an opinion for myself, assuring me that it was a question quite as much of constitutional principle as of French law, and that you and your friends would be disposed to receive with indulgence the frank expression of the judgment at which a member of the English Bar might on calm consideration arrive.

I trust you will forgive me for so far availing myself of your encouragement, to state to you with freedom, the impression produced upon my mind, by a studious perusal of that Report; I cannot help suspecting that my opinion does not very far differ from your own. Accept, at all events, my thanks for the high gratification I have derived. from the brilliant speeches, in support of, and in opposition to, the impeachment, of Sauzet, Hennequin, Béranger, Madier de Montjau, and, above all, of de Martignac, which, apart from other considerations, and as mere efforts of forensic eloquence, do honour to a language already rich in the treasures of oratory. If you should discover the trace of English maxims or English prejudices in the judgment which I have formed on legal and constitutional points, I rely on your candour to remember, the frequent reference made in the debates to English authorities, and how little light I have to guide me beyond that which is reflected from the history of our English Law and Constitution.

It is now five years since Europe read with astonishment

*Procès des Ex-Ministres. Rélation exacte et détaillée contenant tous les débats et plaidoyers recueillis par les meilleurs sténographes, les interrogatoires des accusés, les dépositions des témoins. Edition seconde, Paris, 1830, à la Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Rue Hautefeuille.

and admiration the wondrous history of the Revolution of July. The successful struggle which the people of France then made in defence of the great principles of public freedom,-among us in England, to whom experience had taught the value of that inestimable blessing, excited an enthusiasm of approbation which no language can adequately describe. We welcomed with acclamations, the authoritative testimony which that great event afforded to the theory of our own Constitution, and the encouragement which it gave, to hope for a firm and lasting friendship, based on a community of feelings, enmities, and interests, between the two nations, which,-in arts, in letters, and in arms, had for ages maintained a noble contest for the supremacy of the world. So lately as 1822, Mr. Canning, in communicating to the Government of the Restoration the refusal of England to countenance its crusade against the liberties of Spain, proclaimed the title of the King of England to his crown, to be the will of the people; in 1830, the people of France rose in their majesty and their might, and resolved that their crown should be held by no other tenure. We felt, we could not fail to feel, that the foundation of your liberties must thenceforth be the same as the foundation of our own. No generous nature could

refuse to grieve for the fall and exile of the elder branch of the House of Bourbon; but, when the first pang of pity was over, we hailed with undissembled joy the establishment, by the will of the people, of the new hereditary monarchy of France, and all true friends of freedom prayed with unaffected fervour, that the Government born amidst the triumphs of July, might continue true to its origin, great, generous, and just, to refute the dishonest fears of the enemies of popular institutions, and vindicate, by the scrupulous honour and integrity of its course, the character and the cause of all constitutional power.

Whether or not those hopes have been realised, is a question which my limited information does not enable me to determine, and which my inclination does not prompt me to discuss. Not placed by the accident of station in a condition which might compel me to accept, and having attained no such distinction in the honourable profession to which I belong, as, according to our habits, would justify me in assuming, a part in the public affairs even of my own country, I cannot presume to form, much less to hazard an opinion, on the conflicting evidence which it would be necessary to weigh, before any safe judgment could be formed on the failure or completion of the pro

mises of July. It is as yet much too soon to say that any just expectations have been frustrated. Five years-a large deduction from the life of man-are but as a day in the life of nations. Until the men of the Revolution have passed it on to their posterity, the Revolution can scarcely be considered accomplished. It is only on such detached portions of it as are settled and concluded, which may still be reviewed and repaired, but which cannot be modified or undone, that a final judgment can be formed. It is to such a portion of the history of your Revolution, which I have been led to examine by no political views or predilections, but by its natural connexion with legal and constitutional studies, that I now request your attention.

Your Revolution was in one respect, as compared to ours, unfortunate. It was not until the impeachment of Sacheverell, in the reign of Queen Anne, when personal heats and animosities had had time to cool, that the Whigs, then represented by the Lechmeres, the Stanhopes, the Walpoles, and the Jekylls, sought, or, as Mr. Burke* says, made, an opportunity † of recording a clear and authentic vindication, in a Court of Justice, of the political tenets and conduct of their party in the Revolution of 1688. The ministers of James II. had been permitted to escape, because William of Orange, and the great men who were his advisers, were too wise and too politic to throw down the principles of the Bill of Rights, to be tried by legal technicalities, and criticised and contested in the heat and scuffle of a party prosecution. They thought the Revolution a question not for lawyers but for statesmen. I have understood that

many persons of weight and authority in France, whose attachment to the cause of the new dynasty and the new order of things is above suspicion, have lamented that indiscreet-let us hope it was honest, zeal, should have forced the leaders of your liberal party into a different course. Surely it is a subject of regret, that while the Charter of 1814 was still red with the blood of the citizens of Paris, and the ink not yet dry on the Charter of 1830, when the bitterest resentments were yet unsoftened by time, and injuries too deep and too recent to be forgiven, the Government of July should have been forced to combine the justification of the events to which it owed its origin, with the legal prosecution of a criminal charge. The administration of justice, or the principles of the Revolution, one or other, could not fail to suffer by this confusion. A legal sentence, the result of an indictment preferred before a judicial tribunal against a fallen political party by its * Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

† Appendix I.