Art. XII. Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, interspersed with origina Documents. By Alexander Stephens, Esq. of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Eve. 2 vols. pp. 1000. Price 11. 4s Johnson. 1813.

(Continued from page 304.)

THE power of an infamous character to defile and depreciate whatever is associated with it, was exemplified in the case of Horne himself, in the permanent injury which his moral and political reputation sustained from his temporary connexion and co-operation with Wilkes. Whether he was aware of it or not, the fact was, that the suspicious and undervaluing estimate, we may say in plain terms the bad opinion, entertained of him throughout the sequel of his political life, by the more moral and cautious part of society, was in no small degree owing to this association. His declarations were perhaps accompanied by evidence enough to entitle them to credit, that his co-operation had been exclusively for public interests, and not a step beyond what he thought those interests demanded. He rendered some unquestionable services to public justice and popular rights. He gave uncommon proofs of disinterestedness, at least of superiority to all the sordid kinds of self-interest. He was free from some of Wilkes's vices. But all this was unavailing. The stain was indelible. And the fatal mischief thus done to his character extended to his political doctrines: insomuch that they had the less chance of being listened to with candour and respect, and of convincing in proportion to the force of argument, as they came from him ;-and others taught them with less success because he taught them too.

There was, however, as we have already noticed, a short season of fermentation in the public mind, during which he suffered the most violent opprobrium, not for having co-operated with Wilkes, but for having renounced the connexion, clearly not with any desertion of principles or public objects, but for the very sake of those principles and objects. We do not 'wonder that we find him afterwards rating popular favour very low, and uniformly holding forth, that, if he had not stronger and better motives than any wish to obtain it, he should be a fool to undergo any more political toils, or expose himself to any more political dangers. To be sure one does think very meanly of whatever portion of the popular mind could be enthusiastic for Wilkes after Horne's plain statements of fact concerning him. But the most scandalous thing of all was, that Junius, whatever he might have a right to think of Horne's integrity, should make light of the facts proving the utter want of it in Wilkes. If that mysterious personage had been univer

sally accepted as the oracle of morality, we should, by this time, have been sunk even much deeper than we are, in that political corruption which raised so great a tempest of his indignation. He might perhaps have contrived to keep on some decent terms with morals, in attempting to maintain that the national politics were in such a crisis as to reduce the people to the alternative of supporting, to every length, a very bad man, or surrendering their own rights for ever, had he, withal, expressed the strongest reprobation of the man's profligacy, and deplored this wretched necessity of rallying round' so worthless a principal. But instead of such a proceeding, we behold this austere censor flinging away with scorn a grave indictment which proved the incurable depravity and worthlessness of the person in question, and railing at the equal folly and malice that could pretend to make the man's personal vices a disqualification for the office of champion of public justice.

The whole corspondence between Horne and Junius is inserted, though it is to be found in every copy of Junius, that is, in the hands of almost every reading person in the country. This is a glaring specimen of book- making assurance.

There is, we suppose, a general agreement of opinion with the biographer, that Horne had decidedly the advantage in the substantial matters in dispute, that is, the merits of himself and Wilkes; while as to Junius, there could not well be a stronger testimony to his powers, than to say that in the general force of writing he as decidedly appears the superior man. One or two of his retorts, particularly, are deadly and irresistible.

About the time of Horne's public quarrel with Wilkes, and in the interval between that and his combat with Junius, he was rendering considerable service in matters of national right and privilege; first in resisting what, if quietly suffered, might soon have grown to a most iniquitous and star-chamber practice, the attempt to compel a man arraigned as a culprit to answer interrogatories tending to make him criminate himself. This attempt was made by Lord Mansfield in the case of Bingley, a printer, who was prosecuted for a libel, and whom the evidence was not sufficient to convict. Horne at once continued to excite the national attention to this alarming innovation and its natural consequences, and confirmed, and procured to be ultimately rewarded, the courageous obstinacy of the printer in refusing to answer the interrogatories. The haughty judge had the mortification of discharging at last the man whom a considerable length of imprisonment had not in the smallest degree intimidated from defying him. Horne was extremely and very justly zealous and anxious that this man should, for the sake of example, receive the most marked tokens of public favour.

His next effort was to maintain the right of the nation to be made acquainted with the proceedings of the legislature. By many of those who can never hear his name without some reproach of his factious spirit, it would nevertheless be deemed a great violation of public rights, if the debates in parliament were to be suddenly forbidden, by authority, to be published. They are probably but little aware, how much the nation, in obtaining the practical concession of this as a right, is indebted to him. No such thing, except under some fictitious form, of little real use to the public, had been allowed before the period of his political activity. The House of Commons indignantly and pertinaciously resisted the attempts to assume it as a right: and, though the prohibition must have been taken off some time, it was owing very much to his management and energy that it was effectually broken through about forty years since. It appears to have been, in a considerable measure, in consequence and in execution of a plan laid by him, that several spirited printers dared, nearly at the same time, to bring the question to issue by boldly publishing some of the debates; and in consequence of his influence with the city magistrates that these delinquents were enabled to brave or elude the utmost exertions of the House to punish them. And ever since, that liberty has been held by the people so much in the form and spirit of an absolute right, that there has been no material effort to take it from them.

Mr. Stephens informs us that at length, at the age of thirtyseven, Horne 'resigned his gown;' which we can well believe he had for a good while worn with sensations but little more enviable than those inflicted on Hercules by the Centaur's shirt, In throwing it off he assured and congratulated himself that he was escaping into an unlimited freedom, the first luxury of which would be to adopt, without any further interference, a profession congenial to his taste and ambition, and in which he had apparently very good reason to flatter himself he should attain the highest distinction and emolument. The latter of these, indeed, was very far from being an object of eagerness in any part of his life; but so many expences incurred in prosecuting public objects, and in resisting or sustaining the effects of political and legal revenge, often gave him cause to feel the narrowness of his pecuniary resources.

We have a somewhat entertaining account of his frugal domestic economy, while preparing himself for the bar, after the resignation of his vicarage of New Brentford-the highest ground in official rank, strictly so denominated, which was destined to be attained by one of the strongest and most ambitious spirits of the age, whose juvenile and inferior associates were seen scaling,

and taking a firm position on the heights of ecclesiastical and legal dignities and wealth. In this state of seclusion and severe study he was, nevertheless, always ready at a moment's warning to spring, like a royal tyger from his thicket, on the agents and and abettors of any public delinquency. Mr. Tooke, a moderately wealthy political friend, whose name he was afterwards authorized to assume, sought his advice in a case that appeared desperate. In consequence of purchasing an estate called Purley, (from which Horne's great philological work took its title) he had been involved in a vexatious litigation about manorial rights with a neighbouring gentleman of great influence, who had betaken himself at last to the decisive expedient of an Act of Parliament .The bill which was in progress was highly unjust; but through some such fatality, as would never have happened before or since in such a place, it was going forward with the most perfect success, in contempt of every effort made to place the matter in its true light; and appeared certain of the final sanction of the House of Commons.on the third reading-appointed for the very next day to that in which the case was despondingly stated to Horne. His answer was, If the facts be as you represent them, the House shall not pass that bill.' He immediately suggested an expedient which would perhaps have occurred to no other man in England, and took on himself the execution at a hazard which very few would have been willing, for the sake of either friendship or public justice to share. He immediately wrote, in language the most pointedly offensive, an attack on the Speaker of the House of Commons, the noted Sir Fletcher Norton, with reference to the bill in question; and obtained its insertion in the newspaper, rendered so popular by the letters of Junius, on the condition, of course, that the printer, when summoned to account, should produce the author. The object of this proceeding was, to compel the House to a much more full and formal attention to the subject of the bill, than it had previously been induced to give; and at the same time, as an equally necessary thing, to give its virtue the benefit of having the censorial attention of the public strongly fixed on its conduct. He was confident that by doing this he should frustrate the parliamentary measure, and then, for the consequences to himself, he had courage enough to take his chance. The next day a great sensation was manifest in what might be called the political public; and, · as he had foreseen, the attention of a full house was called, in precedence to all other business, to the flagrant outrage on its dignity-a dignity so vulnerable by a plain charge of miscon duct, though it had not been injured in the least by the misconduct itself. After a fine display of generous indignation a

summons was sent for the instant appearance of the printer. He obeyed, and, as he had been directed, immediately gave up the name of the criminal in chief, who had taken care to be already in the house, prepared to confront, probably with very little trepidation, the whole anger of the august assembly. À momentary silence of surprize and confusion followed the announcement of his name, which was come to be almost synonimous with that expression of recognizance, the enemy.' On being called forth, he disavowed all disrespect to the Speaker whom he had libelled, calmly explained the motives of the proceeding, and then made such a luminous statement of the case of his friend, that the schemers and advocates of the injustice were baffled, the obnoxious parts of the bill were immediately thrown out, and several resolutions were moved and carried 'to prevent all such precipitate proceedings for the future.' There is no punishing conquerors, however offensive may have been their conduct. After a very slight formality of detention incustody, he was set at liberty, on some pretended inconclusiveness of proof against him.

The next thing that brought him out again conspicuously before the public, was an advertisement in the newspapers, signed with his name, proposing a subscription for the families of the Americans who were slain at Lexington, a fact which he pronounced, in the most explicit language possible, (and which he repeated in a second publication,) a murder committed by the king's troops. He wished and hoped by some such act of daring and notoriety, to rouse the attention of the nation to the infatuated proceedings of the government with respect to the American colonies. For a good while no vindictive notice was taken of this wicked libel, as it was found to be when the minister was become stronger in the parliament. In the second year after its publication, the writer suddenly and unexpectedly found himself within the iron grasp of the Attorney-general, Thurlow, with his information ex-officio, and had another opportunity of evincing his courage and resources in a trial before Lord Mansfield, and a personal contest with him. The speeches in defence are given, and characters of the judge and attorney-general. It may not be amiss to transcribe two or three of the defendant's sentences respecting a mode of prosecution, which we have lived to see adopted with so much greater frequency than could have been ventured in those times, and with such a very remarkable success.

Ex officio, gentlemen, means, a power to dispense with all the forms and proceedings of the courts of justice, with all those wise provisions which our laws have taken to prevent the innocent from being oppressed by exorbitant and unjust power.