Court of King's Bench to three months' imprisonment, -Messrs. Hunt having suffered a confinement of two years, and paid a fine of L.1000, for a far less slanderous attack on the Regent in 1802; and Mr. Drakard having, as we have seen, been confined eighteen months, for publishing some remarks on military punishments, which a Middlesex jury had just before pronounced to be no libel at all. Three years after Blacow's trial, Mr. D. W. Harvey and his printer were tried in the Court of King's Bench for a libel upon George IV. in a country paper published by them. It represented that sovereign as guilty of almost every crime which a prince can commit, and farther charged him with having rejoiced exceedingly at the death of his wife, his brother, and especially his only child, the Princess Charlotte. It was, perhaps, the worst case of libel ever brought before the court. When the defendants were brought up for judgment, they appeared without any counsel; but just as the sentence was about being pronounced, Mr. Brougham, who with Mr. Denman had defended them at the trial, beckoned to Mr. Harvey, who crossed the court apparently to receive some suggestion for his speech in mitigation of punishment. He then addressed the court, and on his concluding, was again beckoned to by his counsel, as if he had still omitted something. The court complained of this interference, as Mr. Brougham was not then retained for either of the defendants. Whereupon he stated that the reason why he had made Mr. Harvey cross the court was to suggest, what he now took leave to do as amicus curiæ, that Mr. Blacow for his scandalous sermon against the late Queen, had only

case.

been sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and that of course more could not be given in the present Their lordships expressed much displeasure at this interference, seeming not to set a high value upon the 'amicitia curia,' which had been testified; but after a short consultation, they sentenced Mr. Harvey and his co-defendant to the same period of confinement with Mr. Blacow.

SPEECH

IN THE

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS AT LANCASTER,

ON OPENING THE PROSECUTION

AGAINST

RICHARD BLACOW, CLERK.

SEPTEMBER 1821.

SPEECH.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIP, GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,—It is my painful duty to bring before you the particulars of this case; it is yours to try it; and my part shall be performed in a very short time indeed; for I have little, if any thing, more to do, than merely to read what I will not characterize by words of my own, but I will leave to you, and may leave to every man whose judgment is not perverted and whose heart is not corrupt, to affix the proper description to the writing, and his fitting character to the author. I will read to you what the defendant composed and printed; and I need do no more. You have heard from my learned friend,—and if you still have any doubt, it will soon be removed, to whom the following passage applies. Of the late Queen it is that this passage is written, and published.

"The term 'cowardly' which they have now laid to my charge, I think you will do me the justice to say, does not belong to me; that feeling was never an inmate of my bosom; neither when the Jacobins raged around us with all their fury, nor in the present days of radical uproar and delusion. The latter, indeed, it must be allowed, have one feature about them even more hideous and disgusting than the Jacobins themselves. They fell down and worshipped the goddess of reason, a most respectable and decent sort of