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people is the King's majesty, and the hereditary privileges of the Peers; the balance of the State is the control for the people upon both, in the existence of the House of Commons. But how can that control exist for the people, unless they have the actual election of the House of Commons, which, it is most notorious, they have not? I hold in my hand a state of the representation which, if the thing were not otherwise notorious, I would prove to have been lately offered in proof to the House of Commons, by an honorable friend of mine now present, 35 whose motion I had the honor to second, where it appeared that twelve thousand people return near a majority of the House of Commons, and those, again, under the control of about two hundred. But though these facts were admitted, all redress, and even discussion, was refused. What ought to be said of a House of Commons that so conducts itself, it is not for me to pronounce. I will appeal, therefore, to Mr. Burke, who says, "that a House of Commons, which in all disputes between the people and administration presumes against the people, which punishes their disorders, but refuses even to inquire into their provocations, is an unnatural, monstrous state of things in the Constitution."

Still stronger

Mr. Burke.

much more strength and far less odium, under the name of influence. This influence, which operated without noise and violence; which converted the very antagonist into the instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a prerogative which, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had molded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution."

What is this but saying that the House of Commons is a settled and scandalous abuse fastened upon the people, instead of being an antagonist power for their protection; an odious instrument of power in the hands of the Crown. instead of a popular balance against it? Did Mr. Burke mean that the prerogative of the Crown, properly understood and exercised, was an antiquated prejudice? Certainly not, because his attachment to a properly balanced monarchy is notorious. Why, then, is it to be fastened upon the prisoners, that they stigmatize monarchy, when they also exclaim only against its corrup tions? In the same manner, when he speaks of the abuses of Parliament, would it be fair to Mr. Burke to argue, from the strict legal meaning of the expression, that he included, in the censure on Parliament, the King's person, or majesty, which is part of the Parliament ? In examining the work of an author you must collect the sense of his expressions from the subject he is discuss

But this is nothing. Mr. Burke goes on afterward to give a more full description language of of Parliament, and in stronger language (let the Solicitor General36 take it down for his reply) than any that has been employed by those who are to be tried at present as conspirators against its existence. I read the pas-ing; and if he is writing of the House of Comsage, to warn you against considering hard words against the House of Commons as decisive evidence of treason against the King. The passage is in a well-known work, called "Thoughts on the Causes of the present Discontents;" and such discontents will always be present while their causes continue. The word present will apply just as well now, and much better than to the time [1770] when the honorable gentleman wrote his book; for we are now in the heart and bowels of another war, and groaning under its additional burdens. I shall, therefore, leave it to the learned gentleman who is to reply, to show us what has happened since our author wrote, which renders the Parliament less liable to the same observations now.

“It must be always the wish of an unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons, who are entirely dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely dependent upon their pleasure. For it was soon discovered that the forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary government, were things not altogether incompatible.

"The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as prerogative, has grown up anew, with

35 Mr. (afterward Lord) Grey, who brought forward a motion for reform, in the session of 1792, in consequence of the resolution of the Society of Friends of the People, of which he and Mr. Erskine

were members.

26 Sir John Mitford, afterward Lord Redesdale.

Add to

mons as it affects the structure and efficacy of
the government, you ought to understand the
word Parliament so as to meet the sense and ob-
vious meaning of the writer. Why, then, is this
common justice refused to others? Why is the
word Parliament to be taken in its strictest and
least obvious sense against a poor shoemaker
[Hardy], or any plain tradesman at a Sheffield
club, while it is interpreted in its popular, though
less correct acceptation, in the works of the
most distinguished scholar of the age?
this, that the cases are not at all similar. Mr.
Burke uses the word Parliament throughout,
when he is speaking of the House of Commons,
without any concomitant words which convey an
explanation, but the sense of his subject; where-
as Parliament is fastened upon the prisoner as
meaning something beyond the House of Com-
mons, when it can have no possible meaning be-
yond it; since from the beginning to the end it
is joined with the words "representation of the
people"-" the representation of the people in
Parliament." Does not this most palpably mean
the House of Commons, when we know that the
people have no representation in either of the
other branches of the government.

A letter has been read in evidence from Mr.

Evidence that Grey, and other did not cononeras aiming

Mr. Fos, Lord

Hardy to Mr. Fox, where he says
their object was universal represent-
ation. Did Mr. Fox suppose, when
he received this letter, that it was
from a nest of republicans, clamoring goverament

sider the pris

to subvert the

publicly for a universal representative Constitution like that of France? If he had, would he have sent the answer he did, and agreed to present their petition? They wrote also to the Society of the Friends of the People, and invited them to send delegates to the convention.37 The Attorney General, who has made honorable and candid mention of that body, will not suppose that it would have contented itself with refusing the invitation in terms of cordiality and regard, if, with all the knowledge they had of their transactions, they had conceived themselves to have been invited to the formation of a body which was to overrule and extinguish all the authorities of the state. Yet, upon the perversion of these two terms, Parliament and Convention, against their natural interpretation, against a similar use of them by others, and against the solemn explanation of them by the Crown's own witness, this whole fabric of terror and accusation stands for its support. Letters, it seems, written to other people, are to be better understood by the gentlemen round this table, who never saw them till months after they were written, than by those to whom they were addressed and sent; and no right interpretation, forsooth, is to be expected from writings when pursued in their regular series, but they are to be made distinct by binding them up in a large volume, alongside of others totally unconnected with them, and the very existence of whose authors was unknown to one another.

I will now, gentlemen, resume the reading of Other language another part of Mr. Burke, and a pretof Mr. Burke. ty account it is of this same Parliament: "They who will not conform their conduct to the public good, and can not support it by the prerogative of the Crown, have adopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the strong-hold of Parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which there is no ordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into Parliament. There the whole is executed from the beginning to the end; and the power of obtaining their object absolute, and the safety in the proceeding perfect; no rules to confine, nor after-reckonings to terrify. For Parliament can not, with any great propriety, punish others for things in which they themselves have been accomplices. Thus its control upon the executory power is lost."

This is a proposition universal. It is not that the popular control was lost under this or that administration, but generally that the people have no control in the House of Commons. Let any man stand up and say that he disbelieves this to be the case; I believe he would find nobody to believe him. Mr. Burke pursues the subject thus: "The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and redress in the last century-in this, the distempers of Parlia

37 This society was composed of some of the first nobility and gentry of the kingdom-such as Lord Grey, Lord John Russell, &c.

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ment." Here the word Parliament and the abuses belonging to it are put in express opposition to the monarchy, and can not, therefore, comprehend it; the distempers of Parliament, then, are objects of serious apprehension and redress. What distempers? Not of this or that year, but the habitual distempers of Parliament. And then follows the nature of the remedy, which shows that the prisoners are not singular in thinking that it is by THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE ONLY that Parliament can be corrected. "It is not in Parliament alone," says Mr. Burke, that the remedy for parliamentary disorders can be completed; and hardly, indeed, can it begin there. Until a confidence in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their representatives. Standards for judging more systematically upon their conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and corporations, and frequent and correct lists of the voters in all important questions ought to be procured. By such means something may be done." It was the same sense of the impossibility of a reform in Parliament, without a general expression of the wishes of the people, that dictated the Duke of Richmond's letter: all the petitions in 178038 had been rejected by Parliament. This made the Duke of Richmond exclaim, that from that quarter no redress was to be expected, and that from the people alone he expected any good; and he, therefore, expressly invited them to claim and to assert an equal representation as their indubitable and unalienable birth-right-how to assert their rights, when Parliament had already refused them without even the hope, as the Duke expressed it, of listening to them any more. Could the people's rights, under such circumstances, be asserted without rebellion? Certainly they might; for rebellion is, when bands of men within a state oppose themselves by violence to the general will, as expressed or implied by the public authority; but the sense of a whole people, peaceably collected, and operating by its natural and certain effect upon the public councils, is not rebellion, but is paramount to, and the parent of, authority itself.

edy for discon

people.

Gentlemen, I am neither vindicating nor speaking the language of inflammation or The true remdiscontent. I shall speak nothing that tent is to ac can disturb the order of the state- knowledge the rights of the am full of devotion to its dignity and tranquillity, and would not for worlds let fall an expression in this or in any other place that could lead to disturbance or disorder. But for that very reason I speak with firmness of THE RIGHTts of THE PEOPLE, and am anxious for the redress of their complaints, because I believe a system of attention to them to be a far better security and establishment of every part of the government, than those that are employed to preserve them.

38 In that year Parliament was overwhelmed with innumerable petitions on the subject of the increas ing influence of the Crown, the abuse of prerogative, and the rights of the people.

Attorney General has remarked upon this proceeding at Sheffield (and whatever falls from a person of his rank and just estimation, deserves great attention)—he has remarked that it is quite apparent they had resolved not to petition. They had certainly resolved not at that season to petition, and that seems the utmost which can be maintained from the evidence. But supposing they had negatived the measure altogether, is there no way by which the people may actively associate for the purposes of a reform in Parliament, but to consider of a petition to the House of Commons? Might they not legally assemble to consider the state of their liberties, and the conduct of their representatives? Might they not legally form conventions or meetings (for the name is just nothing) to adjust a plan of rational

Parliament should be dissolved? May not the people meet to consider their interests preparatory to, and independently of, a petition for any specific object? My friend seems to consider the House of Commons as a substantive and permanent part of the Constitution. He seems to forget that the Parliament dies a natural death; that the people then re-enter into their rights, and that the exercise of them is the most important duty that can belong to social man. How are such duties to be exercised with effect, on momentous occasions, but by concert and communion? May not the people, assembled in their elective districts, resolve to trust no longer those by whom they have been betrayed? May they not resolve to vote for no man who contributed by his voice to this calamitous war, which has thrown such grievous and unnecessary burdens upon them? May they not say, "We will not vote for those who deny we are their constituents, nor for those who question our clear and natural right to be equally represented ?" Since it is illegal to carry up petitions, and unwise to transact any public business attended by multi

The state and government of a country rest for | their support on the great body of the people; and I hope never to hear it repeated in any court of justice, that peaceably to convene the people upon the subject of their own privileges can lead to the destruction of the King-they are the King's worst enemies who hold this language. It is a most dangerous principle that the Crown is in jeopardy if the people are acquainted with their rights, and that the collecting them together, to consider of them, leads inevitably to the destruction of the Sovereign. Do these gentlemen mean to say that the King sits upon his throne without the consent, and in defiance of the wishes, of the great body of his people, and that he is kept upon it by a few individuals who call themselves his friends, in exclusion of the rest of his subjects? Has the King's inherit-union for a wise choice of representatives when ance no deeper or wider roots than this? Yes, gentlemen, it has-it stands upon the love of the people, who consider their own inheritance to be supported by the King's constitutional authority. This is the true prop of the Throne; and the love of every people upon earth will forever uphold a government founded, as ours is, upon reason and consent, as long as government shall be itself attentive to the general interests which are the foundations and the ends of all human authority. Let us banish, then, these unworthy and impolitic fears of an unrestrained and an enlightened people; let us not tremble at the rights of man, but, by giving to men their rights, secure their affections; and, through their affections, their obedience. Let us not broach the dangerous doctrine that the rights of Kings and of men are incompatible. Our government at the Revolution began upon their harmonious incorporation; and Mr. Locke defended King William's title upon no other principle than the rights of man. It is from the revered work of Mr. Locke, and not from the Revolution in France, that one of the papers in the evidence, the most stigmatized, most obviously flowed. For it is proved that Mr.tudes, because it tends to tumult and disorder, Yorke held in his hand Mr. Locke upon Government, when he delivered his speech on the Castle Hill at Sheffield,39 and that he expatiated largely upon it. Well, indeed, might the witnesses say he expatiated largely, for there are many wellselected passages taken verbatim from the book; and here, in justice to Mr. White,10 let me notice And here I must advert to an argument emthe fair and honorable manner in which, in the ployed by the Attorney General, that absence of the clerk, he read this extraordinary the views of the societies toward uniperformance. He delivered it not merely with versal suffrage carried in themselves distinctness, but in a manner so impressive, that (however sought to be effected) an I believe every man in court was affected by it. implied force upon Parliament. For that, supGentlemen, I am not driven to defend every posing by invading it with the vast pressure, not The language expression. Some of them are im- of the public arm, but of the public sentiment of proper undoubtedly, rash, and inflam- the nation, the influence of which upon that asmatory; but I see nothing in the sembly is admitted ought to be weighty, it could whole taken together, even if it were have prevailed upon the Commons to carry up a connected with the prisoner, that goes bill to the King for universal representation and at all to an evil purpose in the writer. But Mr. annual Parliaments, his Majesty was bound to 39 Mr. Yorke was a member of the London Corre-reject it; and could not, without a breach of his sponding Society, and was appointed a delegate from coronation oath, consent to pass it into an act. I that society to similar societies at Sheffield and other can not conceive where my friend met with this places. 40 The Solicitor to the Treasury. law, or what he can possibly mean by asserting

charged not always proper;

but neither lan indicate evil in

guage nor acts

tentions.

may they not, for that very reason, depute, as they have done, the most trusty of their societies to meet with one another to consider, without the specific object of petitions, how they may claim, by means which are constitutional, their imprescriptible rights?

Reply to the

Attorney Gen ing universal

eral as to urg

suffrage.

"Salus populi suprema lex, is certainly so just and fundamental a rule, that he who sincerely follows it can not dangerously err. If, therefore, the executive, who has the power of convoking the legislative, observing rather the true proportion, than fashion of representation, regulates, not by old custom, but by true reason, the number of members in all places that have a right to be distinctly represented, which no part of the people, however incorporated, can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance which it affords to the public, it can not be judged to have set up a new legislative, but to have restored the old and true one, and to have rectified the disorders which succession of time had insensibly, as well as inevitably, introduced; for it being the interest as well as intention of the people to have fair and equal representation, whoever brings it nearest to that, is an undoubted friend to, and establisher of, the government, and can not miss the consent and approbation of the community; prerogative being nothing but a power, in the hands of the Prince, to provide for the public good, in such cases, which, depending upon unforeseen and uncertain occurrences, certain and unalterable laws could not safely direct; whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the good of the people, and the establishing the government upon its true foundations, is, and always will be, just prerogative. Whatsoever can not but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society, and people in general, upon just and lasting measures, will always, when done, justify itself; and whenever the people shall choose their representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures, suitable to the original frame of the government, it can not be doubted to be the will and act of the society, whoever permitted or caused them so to do." But as the very idea of universal suffrage seems now to be considered not only to be dangerous to, but absolutely destructive of, monarchy, you certainly ought to be reminded that the book which I have been read

that the King can not, consistently with his cor- | stand amazed at, and every one must confess onation oath, consent to any law that can be needs a remedy." stated or imagined, presented to him as the act of the two Houses of Parliament. He could not, indeed, consent to a bill sent up to him framed by a convention of delegates assuming legislative functions. If my friend could have proved that the societies, sitting as a Parliament, had sent up such a bill to his Majesty, I should have thought the prisoner, as a member of such a Parliament, was at least in a different situation from that in which he stands at present. But as this is not one of the chimeras whose existence is contended for, I return back to ask upon what authority it is maintained, that universal representation and annual Parliaments could not be consented to by the King, in conformity to the wishes of the other branches of the Legislature. On the contrary, one of the greatest men that this country ever saw, considered universal representation to be such an inherent part of the Constitution, as that the King himself might grant it by his prerogative, even without the Lords and Commons-and I had never heard the position denied upon any other footing than the Union with Scotland. But be that as it may, it is enough for my purpose that the maxim, that the King might grant universal representation, as a right before inherent in the whole people to be represented, stands upon the authority of Mr. Locke, the man, next to Sir Isaac Newton, of the greatest strength of understanding that England, perhaps, ever had; high, too, in the favor of King William, and enjoying one of the most exalted offices in the state. Mr. Locke says, book ii., c. xiii., sect. 157 and 158: "Things of this world are in so constant Views of a flux, that nothing remains long in the Mr. Locke. same state. Thus people, riches, trade, power, change their stations, flourishing mighty cities come to ruin, and prove, in time, neglected desolate corners, while other unfrequented places grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants. But things not always changing equally, and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges, when the reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass, that in gov-ing, and which my friend kindly gives me a note ernments, where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, that, in tract of time, this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied when we see the bare name of a town of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheep-cote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd, is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers, as a whole county, numerous in people and powerful in riches. This strangers 41 He was one of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations.

42 Mr. Locke alluded to Old Sarum, in Wiltshire. in which a few fragments of foundation-walls are the only traces of a town ever having existed. It was totally deserted in the reign of Henry VIII.; but yet,

to remind you of, was written by its immortal author in defense of King William's title to the Crown; and when Dr. Sacheverel ventured to broach those doctrines of power and non-resistance, which, under the same establishments, have now become so unaccountably popular, he was impeached by the people's representatives for denying their rights, which had been asserted and established at the glorious era of the Revolution.

up to the passing of the Reform Bill, in 1832, when the borough was disfranchised, Old Sarum was rep resented in Parliament.

ited from preaching for three years, and his two ser 43 A. D. 1709. Being found guilty, he was prohib mons, which had given so much offense, were ordered to be burned by the common hangman. The famous decree passed in the Convocation of the University of Oxford, asserting the absolute authority and indefeasible right of princes, was also ordered to be, in like manner, committed to the flames.

Part Third:
Examination

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public office, as a proof of the publicity of their proceeding, a the sense they entertained of their innocen For the views and objects of the society, we must look to the institution itself, which you are, indeed, desired to look at by the Crown; for their intentions are not considered as deceptions in this instance, but as plainly revealed by the very writing itself.

the society.

Gentlemen, if I were to go through all the matter which I have collected upon of the evidence this subject, or which obtrudes itself for the Crown upon my mind, from common reading in a thousand directions, my strength would fail long before my duty was fulfilled. I had very little when I came into court, and I have abundantly less already; I must, therefore, manage what remains to the best advantage. I proceed, therefore, to take a view of such parts of the evidence as appear to me to be the most material for the proper understanding of the case. I have had no opportunity of considering it, but in the interval which the indulgence of the court and your own has afforded me, and that has been for a very few hours this morning. But it occurred to me, that the best use I could make of the time given to me was, if possible, to disembroil this chaos; to throw out of view every thing irrelevant, which only tended to bring chaos back again; to take what remained in order of time; to select certain stages and resting-places; to review the effect of the transactions, as brought before us, and then to see how the written evidence is explained by the testi- I almost fancy I heard them say to me, "What mony of the witnesses who have been examined. think you of that to set out with? Show me the The origin of the Constitutional Society not parallel of that." Gentlemen, I am sorry, for (1) London having been laid in evidence before the credit of the age we live in, to answer, that Correspond you, the first thing, both in point of it is difficult to find the parallel, because the age date, and as applying to show the ob- affords no such poet as he who wrote it. These jects of the different bodies, is the original ad- are the words of THOMSON; and it is under the dress and resolution of the London Correspond-banners of his proverbial benevolence that these ing Society on its first institution, and when it first began to correspond with the other, which had formerly ranked among its members so many illustrious persons.4 Before we look to the matter of this [latter] institution, let us recollect that the objects of it were given without reserve to the public, as containing the principles of the [former] association. And I may begin with demanding, whether the annals of this country, or, indeed, the universal history of mankind, afford an assistance of a plot and conspiracy voluntarily given up in its very infancy to government, and the whole public; and of which-to avoid the very thing that has happened, the arraignment of conduct at a future period, and the imputation of secrecy where no secret was intended-a regular notice by letter was left with the Secretary of State, and a receipt taken at the

Gentlemen, there was a sort of silence in the court-I do not say an affected one, for Motto of I mean no possible offense to any onebut there seemed to be an effect expected from. beginning, not with the address itself, but with the very bold motto to it, though in verse: "Unbless'd by virtue, government a league Becomes, a circling junto of the great To rob by law; Religion mild, a yoke To tame the stooping soul, a trick of state To mask their rapine, and to share the prey. Without it, what are Senates, but a face Of consultation deep and reason free, While the determined voice and heart are sold? What, boasted freedom, but a sounding name? And what election, but a market vile, Of slaves self-barter'd?"

ng Society.

4-4

44 Previous to the formation of the London Cor

responding Society, there existed another called the Society for Constitutional Information. This was founded by some of the most distinguished Whigs of the kingdom. Soon after the commencement of the French Revolution, it was joined by Horne Tooke and others of more radical views, and many of its original members left it. This society took the lead in sending a deputation to the National

Convention of France, an act which was highly censured as derogatory to the English government. They also passed a vote of thanks to Thomas Paine for his work entitled the Rights of Man. Much of the evidence in the present case was intended to identify the Corresponding Society with the Constitutional Society, and thus to load Hardy with the odium of their proceedings.

men are supposed to be engaging in plans of anarchy and murder-under the banners of that great and good man, whose figure you may still see in the venerable shades of Hagley, placed there by the virtuous, accomplished, and publicspirited Lyttelton: the very poem, too, written under the auspices of his Majesty's royal father, when heir-apparent to the Crown of Great Britain, nay, within the very walls of Carlton House, which afforded an asylum to matchless worth and genius in the person of this great poet. It was under the roof of A PRINCE OF WALES that the poem of LIBERTY was written; and what better return could be given to a Prince for his protection, than to blazon, in immortal numbers, the only sure title to the Crown he was to wear -THE FREEDOM OF THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN? And it is to be assumed, forsooth, in the year 1794, that the unfortunate prisoner before you was plotting treason and rebellion, because, with a taste and feeling beyond his humble station, bis first proceeding was ushered into view under the hallowed sanction of this admirable person, the friend and the defender of the British Constitution; whose countrymen are preparing at this moment (may my name descend among them to the latest posterity!) to do honot to his immortal memory. Pardon me, gentlemen, for this desultory digression-I must express myself as the current of my mind will carry me.

45 This was done by the Corresponding Society, partly, no doubt, in the spirit of bravado.

46 Thnson was born at Ednam in Scotland, and

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