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impartiality, or decide with justice, has ever been held as the summit of all human virtue. The bill now in question puts your Lordships in this very predicament; and I doubt not but the wisdom of your decision will convince the world, that, where self-interest and justice are in opposite scales, the latter will ever preponderate with your Lordships.

This bill has been frequently proposed, and as frequently miscarried; but it was always lost in the Lower House. Little did I think, when it had passed the Commons, that it possibly could have met with such opposition here. Shall it be said, that you, my Lords,-the grand council of the nation, the highest judicial and legislative body in the realm,-endeavour to evade, by privilege, those very laws which you enforce on your fellow-subjects? Forbid it, Justice!-I am sure, were the noble Lords as well acquainted as I am with but half the difficulties and delays occasioned in the courts of justice, under pretence of privilege, they would not, nay, they could not, oppose this bill.

I come now to speak upon what indeed I would have gladly avoided, had I not been particularly pointed at for the part I have taken in this bill. It has been said, by a noble Lord on my left hand, that I likewise am running the race of popularity. If the noble Lord means, by popularity, that applause bestowed by after-ages on good and virtuous actions, I have long been struggling in that race; to what purpose, all-trying time can alone determine: but, if the noble Lord means that mushroom popularity which is raised without merit, and lost without crime, he is much mistaken in his opinion. I defy the noble Lord to point out a single action of my life, in which the popularity of the times ever had the smallest influence on my determinations. I have a more permanent and steady rule for my conduct,-the dictates of my own breast. Those that have foregone that pleasing adviser, and given up their minds to be the slave of every popular impulse, I sincerely pity; I pity them still more, if their vanity leads them to mistake the shouts of a mob for the trumpet of fame. Experience might inform them that many, who have been saluted with the huzzas of a crowd one day, have received its execrations the next; and many who, by the popularity of their times, have been held up as spotless patriots, have, nevertheless, appeared the historian's page,-when truth has triumphed over delusion, the assassins of liberty.

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True liberty, in my opinion, can only exist when justice is equally administered to all-to the king and to the beggar.

Where is the justice, then, or where is the law, that protects a member of parliament, more than any other man, from the punishment due to his crimes? The laws of this country allow of no place, and no employment, to be a sanctuary for crimes; and where I have the honour to sit as judge, neither royal favour nor popular applause shall ever protect the guilty.

IV.—MR. GRATTAN, ON THE GRIEVANCES OF IRELAND.

PARLIAMENT is not a bigot-you are no sectary, no polemic; it is your duty to unite all men, to manifest brotherly love and confidence to all men. The parental sentiment is the true principle of government. Men are ever finally disposed to be governed by the instrument of their happiness. The mystery of government, would you learn it? look on the Gospel, and make the source of your redemption the rule of your authority; and, like the hen in the Scripture, expand your wings, and take in all the people.

Let bigotry and schism, the zealot's fire, and the high priest's intolerance, through all their discordancy tremble; while an enlightened parliament, with arms of general protection, overarches the whole community. Laws of coercion (perhaps necessary, certainly severe) you have put forth already, but your great engine of power you have hitherto kept back; that engine, which the pride of the bigot, or the spite of the zealot, or the ambition of the high, or the arsenal of the conqueror. or the Inquisition, with its jaded rack and pale criminal, neve thought of; the engine, which, armed with physical and moral blessings, comes forth, and overlays mankind with servicesthe engine of redress! this is government, and this the only description of government worth your ambition. Were I to raise you to a great act, I should not recur to the history of other nations; I would recite your own acts, and set you in emulation with yourselves. Do you remember that night when you gave your country a free trade, and with your hands opened all her harbours? That night, when you gave her a free constitution, and broke the chains of a centurywhile England stood eclipsed by your glory, and your island rose, as it were, from its bed, and got nearer the sun? In the arts that polish life-the inventions that accommodate, the manufactures that adorn it,—you will be for many years inferior to some other parts of Europe; but, to nurse a growing people, to mature a struggling, though hardy community; to mould, to multiply, to consolidate, to inspire, and to exalt a young nation; be these your barbarous accomplishments!

V.-LORD ERSKINE, IN FAVOUR OF MR. HARDY.

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GENTLEMEN,-If precedents in bad times are to be followed, why should the Lords and Commons have investigated these charges, and the Crown have put them into this course of judicial trial? since, without such a trial, and even after an acquittal upon one, they might have attainted all the prisoners by act of parliament: they did so in the case of Lord Strafford. There are precedents, therefore, for all such things; but such precedents as could not, for a moment, survive the times of madness and distraction which gave them birth; but which, as soon as the spurs of the occasion were blunted, were repealed and execrated even by parliaments, which, little as I think of the present, ought not to be compared with it; parliaments sitting in the darkness of former times-in the night of freedom-before the principles of government were developed, and before the constitution became fixed. The last of these precedents, and all the proceedings upon it, were ordered to be taken off the file and burned, to the intent that the same might no longer be visible in after-ages: an order dictated, no doubt, by a pious tenderness for national honour, and meant as a charitable covering for the crimes of our fathers. But it was a sin against posterity, it was a treason against society; for, instead of commanding them to be burned, they should rather have directed them to be blazoned, in large letters, upon the walls of our courts of justice; that-like the characters deciphered by the prophet to the Eastern tyrant-they might enlarge and blacken in your sights, to terrify you from acts of injustice.

In times, when the whole habitable earth is in a state of change and fluctuation; when deserts are starting up into civilized empires around you; and when men-no longer slaves to the prejudices of particular countries, much less to the abuses of particular governments-enlist themselves, like the citizens of an enlightened world, into whatever communities their civil liberties may be best protected; it never can be for the advantage of this country to prove that the strict, unextended letter of her laws, is no security to her inhabitants. On the contrary, when so dangerous a hire is everywhere holding out to emigration, it will be found to be the wisest policy of Great Britain to set up her happy constitution-the strict letter of her guardian laws, and the proud condition of equal freedom, which her highest and her lowest subjects ought alike to enjoy: it will be her wisest policy

to set up these first of human blessings, against those charms of change and novelty, which the varying condition of the world is hourly displaying, and which may deeply affect the population and prosperity of our country. In times when the subordination to authority is said to be everywhere too little felt, it will be found to be the wisest policy of Great Britain to instil into the governed an almost superstitious reverence for the strict security of the laws; which, from their equality of principle, beget no jealousies or discontents; which, from their equal administration, can seldom work injustice; and which, from the reverence growing out of their mildness and antiquity, acquire a stability in the habits and affections of men, far beyond the force of civil obligations: whereas, severe penalties, and arbitrary constructions of laws intended for security, lay the foundations of alienation from every human government; and have been the cause of all the calamities that have come, and are coming, upon the earth.

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To conclude, my fervent wish is, that we may not conjure up a spirit to destroy ourselves. Let us cherish the old and venerable laws of our forefathers; let our judicial administration be strict and pure; and let the jury of the land preserve the life of a fellow-subject, who only asks it from them upon the same terms under which they hold their own lives, and all that is dear to them and their posterity for ever. repeat the wish, with which I began my address to you, which proceeds from the very bottom of my heart;—may it please Him, who is the Author of all mercies to mankindwhose providence, I am persuaded, guides and superintends the transactions of the world, and whose guardian spirit has ever hovered over this prosperous island-to direct and fortify your judgments!

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VI. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, ON THE LIBERTY OF THE BRITISH PRESS.

UNFORTUNATELY for the repose of mankind, great states are compelled to consider the military spirit and martial habits of their people, as one of the main objects of their policy. Frequent hostilities seem almost the necessary condition of greatness; and, without being great, they cannot remain safe. Smaller states, exempted from this necessity, devoted themselves to the arts of peace, to the cultivation of literature, and the improvement of reason. They became places of refuge for free and fearless discussion; they were the impartial

spectators and judges of the various contests of ambition, which, from time to time, disturbed the quiet of the world. If wars of aggrandizement were undertaken, their authors were arraigned in the sight of Europe. If acts of internal tyranny were perpetrated, they resounded, from a thousand presses, throughout all civilized countries.

Princes, on whose will there were no legal checks, thus found a moral restraint which the most powerful of them could not brave with absolute impunity. No elevation of power, no depravity however consummate, no innocence however spotless, can render man wholly independent of the praise or blame of his fellows. These feeble states, these monuments of the justice of Europe, the asylum of peace, of industry, and of literature, the organs of public reason, the refuge of oppressed innocence and persecuted truth,-have perished, with those ancient principles which were their sole guardians and protectors. They have been swallowed up by that fearful convulsion, which has shaken the uttermost corners of the earth. They are destroyed, and gone for ever!

One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate.-There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society; where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The Press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free Constitution of our forefathers; it is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen; and I trust may venture to say, that, if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire. It is an awful consideration, gentlemen!-every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric, which has been gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers, still stands;-it stands, thanks be to heaven! solid and entirebut-it stands alone, and it stands amid ruins!

VII.-MR. BURKE, ON CONCILIATING THE COLONIES.

THE proposition is peace. Not peace, through the medium of war; not peace, to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace, to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking of the shadowy boundaries of a complex government: it is simple peace; sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is

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