country was now placed, and he would ask them, whether they would not accept of the compromise that the sentiments, numbers, and force of the societies, who had been held up as dangerous to the constitution, should remain exactly as they were at present? But there was no situation of things in which those gentlemen were not provided with an answer. If it was urged that the designs of those societies had been checked, they would ask, whether they ought to withdraw the security at the moment they had succeeded in repelling the danger? If the influence of the societies was said to be increased, they would contend that the force which it had been found necessary to oppose to an inferior danger, became still more indispensable when the danger was increased. If they were called upon in a time of war, they would allege, that was not the proper time to judge of the degree of power to be granted to the executive government; if during the interval of peace, they would enlarge upon the necessity of guarding against the consequences of an intercourse with the daring republicans of France; there was no situation in which they would not be provided with some argument for suspending this chief bulwark of the rights and liberties of Englishmen. The suspension would be justified, not merely as a guard against the crime of treason, but, according to the new phrase, against any disposition to moral guilt which might be productive of dangers. On such pretences, would the suspension be justified, and the act itself never again restored? He would remind gentlemen of the grounds on which the suspension had been voted: the preamble of the act stated, that, 'Whereas a traitorous and detestable conspiracy has been formed for subverting the existing laws and constitution, and for introducing the system of anarchy and confusion which has so fatally prevailed in France,' &c.

"He now came to facts. Did this traitorous, detestable conspiracy exist, if, indeed, it had ever existed at all? It would be necessary to prove, not only that it once existed, but that the same danger still continued. Were they prepared to go to the length of these assertions? He would not shrink from what he had said on a former occasion, that he considered Ministers as the sole fabricators of these plots. What he had then declared from strong surmise and deep suspicion, he was now enabled to repeat from the evidence of facts. He had, at his back, the verdict of reputed juries, who had negatived the existence of any such plot. But the opinion of juries had been lately treated in such a manner, that he was almost afraid to quote their authority; but he would remind a learned gentleman (Sir John Mitford) that for language much less unconstitutional than he had employed, with respect to the verdicts of these juries, a learned sergeant had formerly been committed to prison by the House of Commons. That learned gentleman had told them, that the acquittal of a jury did not declare the man innocent, it only exempted him from being tried again upon the same charge. He had always understood that it was a maxim of the law of England, that every man was presumed to be innocent till he was found guilty. But, so far from this being the case, he was now told, that not even the acquittal of a jury established his

innocence, or restored him to his former place in society. Much stress was laid upon the decision of a grand jury. He did not rest much upon that, more especially as he understood that some degree of management had been employed in forming that grand jury. Letters were sent round, one of which he now held in his hand, dispensing with the attendance of some who might otherwise have sat on that grand jury; and, so far as that went, had the effect of packing them. But he could not certainly regard the authority of any grand jury as of much weight, if, after the prisoner was put upon his trial, by their finding a bill against him, he was still, by the liberal spirit of the law of England, to be considered innocent till he was found guilty by a verdict of his peers. An honourable gentleman (Mr. Wyndham) had gone even further than the learned character to whom he had alluded; he had thrown down the gauntlet to his right honourable friend (Mr. Fox). How far it was prudent or proper in that gentleman so to do, he would not take upon him to determine, especially when he recollected that, on a former occasion, he had declared that he would not give up the title of his friend till his right honourable friend had first given him a hint for that purpose. The neighbourhood into which the honourable gentleman had lately got, had, perhaps, impaired his memory. He had not waited for the hint; he had now renounced the title. Nor was such a hint to be expected from his right honourable friend, by those who knew with what strength of attachment he clung to all those of whom he had been accustomed to think favourably, and how unwilling he was to give up any who had once formed claims upon his friendship. Now, however, that the honourable gentleman had voluntarily disclaimed the connexion, he had no hesitation to declare that he should henceforth meet him on the ground of fair and avowed hostility. That honourable gentleman, next to another person, had been the principal instrument of bringing the country into the calamitous situation in which it was now placed. He trusted that he had abilities to extricate it from the difficulties of that situation. At any rate, he knew that he had boldness to wait the responsibility which would ultimately attach to all the authors of the present war. Except, indeed, there was something in the support of the war that corrupted and degraded the human heart, he should have thought that the honourable gentleman would have been the last of all men to apply to persons acquitted by juries of their country, the opprobrious epithet of acquitted felons. There might have been some ground for this epithet, if those persons had owed their escape to any flaw in the indictment, or to any deficiency of technical forms; it might then have been urged, that they were not entitled, by the verdict of a jury, to a regeneration of character, and were still to be considered in the light in which the honourable gentleman had placed them-as men branded with guilt, and outcasts from society. He would not say that every man acquitted was therefore innocent; there could be no rule of that sort without an exception; a criminal might owe his acquittal to a flaw in the indictment, or a failure of the evidence. It had been stated the other night that a person might be charged with murder who had only been guilty of house

breaking, and, because he was not found guilty upon the first charge, was he therefore to be considered as a pure and honourable character? But did the men who had lately been acquitted stand in that situation? If there was any case in which the verdict of a jury went completely to establish the innocence of the party accused, it ought to be with respect to the charge of high treason. That charge, it was to be recollected, came with the highest authority, and with a degree of influence which it was difficult for any individual to resist. It was to be recollected, too, that, with respect to the crime of high treason, the country itself was both party and judge, since he who conspires against the life of the King, conspires at the same time against the peace of the country.

"With respect to the charge of levying war, it was possible that the party accused might escape from the incompetency of the evidence; but with respect to the charge of compassing and imagining the King's death, the intention itself constituted the crime: and if the jury had in their own minds a conviction of the criminal intention, and there was sufficient proof of the overt act, they were bound to find their verdict guilty. Mr. Sheridan said, he would now put it, whether, in the course of the late trials, anything that could have been brought forward against the prisoners was omitted from any want of time or attention? He had heard, indeed, a gentleman (the Solicitorgeneral) say, that the jury, if they had known all that he did, would have found their verdict differently. But he conceived that he must have been asleep at the time, otherwise it must be inferred that he had neglected to state to the jury all that he knew, and thereby shown himself disqualified for the place which he held-a confession which he surely would not wish to make to the gentlemen along with whom he sat, far less to those on the other side. He could not mean that anything further had since come to his knowledge, since he had himself admitted that the effect of those acquittals went to prevent the parties from being again tried on the same charge. No pains had surely been spared to bring those persons to a conviction, if they had been really guilty. A report of that house was brought forward, containing almost everything that was afterwards brought out in evidence, and that was followed by the decision of the grand jury. Neither could it be contended, that there was any want of time: some of the persons tried were taken up in May; the six months previous to their trial were employed in collecting and arranging evidence; a task in which many respectable persons, urged by sense of what they had conceived to be their duty to their country, were induced to take an active part. Neither was there any deficiency of legal ability; twelve gentlemen of the greatest professional eminence, whose talents were adequate to any cause, were retained on the side of the Crown, at an expense of upwards of £8,000, independently of the bill of the solicitor to the treasury.*

* Mr. Sheridan here read the list of the names of the counsel for the prosecutionSir John Scott (the Attorney-general, afterwards Lord Eldon), Sir John Mitford (the Solicitor-general), Mr. Anstruther, Mr. Sergeant Adair, Mr. Bearcroft, Messrs. Bower, Law, and Garrow, King's counsel; Mr. Wood, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Perceval.

"The Attorney-general (continued he) assures me that he exerted his abilities gratuitously; an example which, I trust, will be imitated, and for which I give him credit, though I cannot approve of his doctrines of high treason-doctrines which, if they were once to be admitted, no man could, in my opinion, be safe: nor yet of the detestable evidence of spies, so much resorted to in the conduct of the prosecution. Such an array could only, indeed, have been encountered by the abilities and eloquence of my honourable friend (Mr. Erskine), who, by his conduct on that occasion, 'acquired the highest honour, but to whom all professional honour was become superfluous; and therefore he may deem it fortunate that he was associated with Mr. Gibbs, who deservedly comes in for a share of credit in the transaction. No exertion less vigorous, no abilities less splendid, would have been sufficient to withstand the weight of authority and of evidence with which it was attempted to crush and overwhelm the prisoners. But, perhaps, the gentlemen engaged in the prosecution will contend that they did not bring a sufficient number of witnesses; that they were willing to spare the trouble of persons engaged in different occupations, and residing in distant parts of the country. How far this is the case (said Mr. Sheridan) will appear by a paper from which I shall now read the list of the witnesses summoned in the case of Mr. Joyce, who was never tried.*

"There was one circumstance to be noticed: many of those men were kept in prison for a considerable time, till they were wanted for that purpose; there they were cooped up, half witnesses and half principals, till the day of trial; and yet, to the men who had been placed in this situation, many of whom had lost their business and been hurt in their character, not the smallest compensation had been given; he would not say, because they had failed in giving evidence which might have been favourable to the views of the prosecution; some of them had been sent back to Sheffield, with £3 to defray their expenses. With regard to the manner in which the proceedings had been conducted, at least, no labour had been spared. The first speech on the trials took up no less a space than nine hours. Had he been in the situation of a juryman, the very circumstance of an Attorney-general taking nine hours to tell him of an overt act of high treason, would have been a reason why he should have given as his opinion, that he could not believe it, and that it could not possibly be true. The whole procedure, on the part of the prosecution, was a piece of delicate clock-work, a sort of filigree net, too slight to hold a robust traitor, and yet so contrived as to let all the lesser cases of libel and sedition escape. The very intricacy and labour of the proceeding was, to his mind, the most satisfactory testimony that the case could not be supported on the grounds of substantial evidence and constitutional principles. If he was asked, did there not appear, from these trials, instances of sedition? he had no hesitation to say, that they exhibited in

Mr. Sheridan here read an abstract of the list of witnesses, amounting in all to 207 persons.

stances of many gross and scandalous libels. He was ready to admit there were in the societies mischievous men, intent on mischievous purposes. There were others actuated by enthusiasm, whom he could not consider in the same light, because it was that sort of enthusiasm which had actuated men of the purest minds. As to the phrases convention,' &c., in which they had affected an imitation and approbation of the proceedings of the French, the worst that could be said of them was, that they were contemptibly foolish.

"He had attended the trials, he said, from a principle of duty. He was of opinion that every man who loved the constitution, and who thought that it was endangered by false alarms, would feel it incumbent, on such an occasion, to attend trials which he considered as originating from ministerial artifice; and to watch the conduct of the crown lawyers and of the judges, in order to avert those calamities from the country in which, at former times, it had been involved, to prevent that most dreadful of all wars-a war of plots and conspiracies; wars in which the purest blood had been shed by the most destructive of all weapons-the perjured tongues of spies and informers. That there was no real danger, appeared from the declaration of the Chief Justice Eyre, who, in summing up on one of the trials, stated that it was an ostentatious and boasting conspiracy; and that it was much in favour of the accused, that they had neither men, money, nor zeal, to effect the purposes with which they were charged. On the first trial one pike was produced, that was afterwards withdrawn from mere shame. A formidable instrument was talked of, to be employed against the cavalry; it appeared, upon evidence, to be a tee-totum in a window at Sheffield. There was a camp in a back shop, an arsenal provided with nine muskets, and an exchequer containing nine pounds and one bad shilling; all to be directed against the whole armed force and established government of Great Britain. Mr. Sheridan said that he, in the first instance, had shown the most obstinate incredulity with respect to all the rumours of a plot. He endeavoured to call to mind whether the present ministry had, in any former instance, availed themselves of a similar artifice. He recollected that in the year 1783, at the period when the coalition took place, they represented those who were engaged in that measure as setting up a fourth party in the state, as wishing to supersede the authority of the King and to destroy the constitution, and had actually persuaded many well-meaning people at the time to be of that opinion, and to regard the authors of the measure as enemies to their country, whose destruction was necessary for the preservation of the established government. He recollected, too, that the very men who had set up the coalition were now in the cabinet, and that the charge brought against them must therefore have been false, and an instance of successful deception. was more confirmed in his persuasion of the trick when he looked to the conduct of the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Pitt), who had adopted the policy of keeping open the door of reform that he might get himself out by it, and whose system it had uniformly been, on that question, to do just as

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