berating with closed doors, the president collected the votes of the members, beginning with the junior, and voting himself the last, the prisoner was unanimously found guilty, and in pursuance of the article of the law of

to the following effect,

condemned to suffer the punishment of death!

'Ordered, that the judge-advocate shall see the present sentence executed immediately.-Pièces Hist. p. xx.

The death-warrant was thus left blank; the judges could not even guess at the law under which they were to execute the victim, and they prudently signed the warrant IN BLANK! But Buonaparte says he had a fair trial, and Buonaparte is an honourable man!'

But we are not yet at the end of this series of illegalities, these mockeries of even military law. M. Dupin has discovered in the original papers the copy of another sentence, which, although equally condemning to death, differs in several important particulars from that which we have just read. Considering that, from the time the judge-advocate began his work, about one in the morning, to the time the sentence was passed, viz. at two precisely, was barely one hour, it seems strange that the judge-advocate and the captain-greffier (clerk of the court) should have employed themselves in writing out two different sentences, of which the last-mentioned alone has taken us forty minutes to copy, a task we undertook merely for the purpose of ascertaining the time that it would consume: the copy of the interrogatory is equally long, and we do not think it possible, supposing nothing else were to be done, that these two papers alone could have been written within the specified time. What are we to conclude from this a fact as black as all the rest of the proceeding; namely, that the first sentence was prepared before the trial, and that after it was signed, perhaps after it was executed, the murderers endeavoured to cook up the evidence and the sentence into what they thought a more ostensible shape. We shall see that their cookery only made the matter worse.

General Hulin endeavours to account for this matter by saying,

We tried many drafts of the sentence; amongst others the (first) one in question; but after we had signed it, we doubted (well they might!) whether it was regular, and we therefore made the greffier (clerk) proceed to prepare a new draft, grounded chiefly on a report of the privy counsellor Real and the answers of the prince. This second draft was the true one, and ought alone to have been preserved.-Expl, p. 11.. Now, we beg General Hulin's pardon, but we think the first

draft,

draft, supposing the blanks had been filled up, as little irregular as the second; for the first, he implies, was founded on the duke's answers alone; it was signed, and therefore, regular or irregular, sentence of death was passed, and the trial was over. But what was the second sentence? a new proceeding founded, not on the duke's answers alone, but on a new document produced after the trial, and that document no other than an unsworn statement of the accuser himself. If the first sentence had not been signed, General Hulin's explanation might be satisfactory; but it is signed by the whole court, and it (and not the second) was exécuted, and General Hulin's explanation only serves to show the atrocious juggling to which he and the court-martial so tamely submitted. No doubt every one concerned in the transaction would be glad to obliterate either or both these documents; but the accident which has preserved them is fortunate for the cause of truth and justice; and a comparison of them is absolutely necessary to an understanding of the fairness of that trial which Buonaparte boasts of. Some of the variations are very remarkable. The first sentence sets forth the evidence (viz. the duke's examination) but leaves in blank the law which applies to it. The second sentence sets forth the law which inflicts the punishment of death, but omits the evidence to which it applies! General Hulin, in his pamphlet, confesses, that they tried several different drafts of a sentence; why? obviously because they could not make the evidence tally with the law, and they were therefore under the necessity of illegally suppressing either the law or the evidence..

Another fact is equally remarkable. Both sentences bring the duke's case under three heads, to which heads three capital articles of the law are in the second sentence applied: will it be credited, that not one of these three fatal findings is the same as either of the three counts of the original indictment, nor as either of the six counts of the verdict recorded in the very same sentence? so that the duke was tried on three specific charges, found guilty on six other and different charges, and condemned to suffer death upon three other charges, different from all, and wholly unsupported by any colour of evidence. But Buonaparte says he had a fair trial, and Buonaparte is an honourable man.'

But the most extraordinary variation between the two sentences is, that the first orders immediate execution, which is directly contrary to the letter of the law, which, in all cases, allows twentyfour hours for an appeal. The second says nothing about execution, but directs that copies of the sentence should be sent within the time prescribed by law, to the grand judge, the minister at war, and the governor of Paris. So far the second sentence preserves some decency; but, alas, before the copies could be made,

and

and many hours before any one of them had reached its destination the sentence had been already executed!

Let us see then how the case stands. The first sentence orders immediate execution, but that was positively and confessedly against law; the sentence itself was, besides, signed in blank'; and General Hulin asserts, that this instrument was not the real sentence; it follows, therefore, if the duke was executed under it, he was most foully murdered. But if, as General Hulin says, the second sentence was the true one, then this sentence not only does not order execution, but recognizes the 'delay allowed by law;' if, therefore, in defiance of this sentence, the duke was executed, he was most foully murdered!—and by whom?-we can only answer, that M. Savary commanded on the fatal spot, and that the execution was performed by M. Savary's gendarmes!

We have not detailed half the monstrous defects, illegalities and violences which the legal acuteness of M. Dupin has exposed in every stage of this horrid proceeding. We have said enough (we fear too much) to prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that the duke was murdered-that all the excuses, and apologies, and alleviating circumstances subsequently made by Buonaparte were 'LIES, like the father who begot them, gross-open-palpable'and that on this, one of the most important occasions of his life, the great Napoleon had the meanness to endeavour to cloak, under the poorest pretences, the midnight murder which he had the villainy to commit.

3. We now arrive at the third object of M. Savary's pamphlet -the vindication of himself. We must confess that, until we read his publication, we had no idea how deep M. Savary was in this crime we supposed that he was a mere tool, a military automaton executing (perhaps reluctantly) the will of his master. It turns out that he was indeed a tool, but he was also something worse. The judges of the court were tools, and infamous tools; but this discussion has brought to light some circumstances which renders their conduct quite venial when compared with that of M. Savary.

He rests his defence on the several following statements, upon which we shall offer a few considerations :

1st. That he had no knowledge or concern in the affair, (having been but two days returned to Paris from Normandy,) till he received orders, which, as a military man, he was bound to obey.' We observe in reply, that seeing, as we have, the kind of trial Buonaparte intended, it is no proof of an honourable character to have been selected for such a duty; and as to the absence from Paris, and the supposed consequent ignorance of the whole matter, we are constrained to accuse M. Savary of a very mean equivocation

-absent

-absent in Normandy, indeed, he had been; but it was in following the clue of the very conspiracy, as a supposed accomplice of which the Duke was tried!

2d. M. Savary states that he had no share in the proceedings of the military commission, which was an open court, and at which he was, out of mere curiosity, a silent spectator. An open court! we echo M. Dupin's exclamation: an open court-at two o'clock in the morning-in the donjon de Vincennes-and all its avenues guarded by M. Savary's gensdarmes!' As Buonaparte assured us the trial was fair, Savary pledges himself that the court was open to the public, and they are both, both honourable men.'

But he took no part in the proceeding, and was a silent spectator, standing, as he tells us, behind the president's seat. The president tells us a different story.

That president was General Hulin-he had been a waiter at a lemonade shop; at the taking of the Bastile (or, as some say, after it) he had distinguished himself, and received a medal and the title of Vainqueur de la Bastille. He has been accused of having had no small share in the massacres of the 10th of August and the 2d of September; but of the proceedings of so obscure a person it is not easy to produce any satisfactory proof, and we hope that he has none of that blood to answer for. He afterwards went into the army, and rose to some eminence, through, as it would seem, the friendship of Murat. This, and the circumstances of his former life, were perhaps the causes of his being selected as president of the court-martial; and his zeal and services on that lamentable occasion were subsequently rewarded with the important trust of succeeding Murat as Governor of Paris. On the restoration he vanished from public view; and no one would have believed that the Bourbons, who never forget and never forgive, would have tolerated the presence of the mock judge of the Duke d'Enghien: we find, however, that he was residing, retired and unmolested, at Paris, when M. Savary's insane pamphlet recalled him to public notice, and induced him to make some atonement to public opinion. He has published a short pamphlet, so modest, so feeling, so ingenuous, that he not only disarms our anger, but entitles himself to our commiseration. Our readers will judge of the tone of this work by the introductory sentences.

The unhappy affair* of the Duke of Enghien has cost me near twenty years of deep sorrow.

6

Old-stricken with blindness-retired from the world-having no consolation but in the bosom of my family-my sorrow has been ag

That seems to be the fashionable word for deeds too monstrous for a distinct name.

gravated

gravated by a discussion which has re-produced, with offensive notoriety, scenes which, though never to be forgotten, were at least no longer the object of public debate.'-Explic. p. 1.

Let us now see what General Hulin says of Savary, who, it will be remembered, represents himself as standing behind the general's chair as a simple spectator. After acknowledging with great candour, and excusing, on the score of ignorance of the law and of the pressure of an overwhelming authority, the irregularities of the proceedings, General Hulin states, that the court were so far from ordering or even expecting an immediate execution of the sentence, that,

Scarcely was it signed when I began a letter to the first consul, in which I conveyed to him, in obedience to the unanimous wish of the court, the desire expressed by the prince of an interview with the first consul, and further to conjure the first consul to remit the punishment, which the severity of our situation did not permit us to elude!

It was at this moment that A MAN, (Savary) who had persisted in remaining in the court-room, and whom I should name without hesitation, if I did not recollect that even in attempting a defence for myself it does not become me to accuse another- "What are you doing there?" said this man, coming up to me. "I am," I replied, "writing to the first consul, to convey to him the wish of the prisoner and the recommendation of the court."- You have done your business," said he, taking the pen out of my hand," and what follows is MINE."

I confess that I thought at the moment, and so did several of my colleagues, that he meant to say that the conveying these sentiments to the first consul was his business. His answer thus understood left us still the hope that the recommendation would reach the first consul. I only recollect that I even at the moment felt a kind of vexation at seeing thus taken out of my hands the only agreeable circumstance of the painful situation in which I was placed.

Indeed, how could we imagine that a person had been placed about us with an order to violate all the provisions of the law?

I was in the hall, outside the council room, conversing about what had just occurred. Several knots of persons had got into private conversation-I was waiting for my carriage, which not being permitted (any more than those of the other members) to come into the inner court of the castle, delayed my departure and theirs. We were ourselves shut in, and could not communicate with those without, (this is what M. Savary calls an open court,) when an explosion was heard-a terrible sound struck us to the hearts and froze them with terror and fright.

Yes, I swear, in the name of myself and my colleagues, that this execution was not authorized by us; our sentence directed that copies should be sent to the minister of war, the grand judge, and the general governor of Paris.

One of the phrases is remarkable.

Appointed to be judges, we were obliged to act as judges at the risk of being judged ourselves.'—p. 9.

'The