which, in a moral point of view, belongs to them, the list of pernicious advisers would affect a grave English auditor with melancholy, a lively one with laughter, and both with immeasurable scorn. Men of native birth, whom the country has righteously discarded-foreign women, whom it may too easily have adopted -and others, whose presumptuous impertinence is screened from reprimand by the sacred offices and missions with which these dames have been associated-such might probably be found to swell the obnoxious catalogue of intruders between a British King and people."-(Times, May 10, 1832.)

"The Anti-Reformers will soon be taught by severe chastisement, that the only real force which can be brought to bear upon this vast question of national interest is in the people, and in them alone. If, under the direct injunctions of their constituents, the House of Commons stop the supplies, where stands the Tory Government? If the shrewd and resolute people of this country, combining for the execution of that scheme of passive resistance which in Ireland has baffled all the dexterity of the law, should refuse to pay taxes, where, we repeat, would be the Conservative Government ?"-(Times, May 11, 1832.)

"The accounts from every quarter of England are awful. Birmingham refuses to pay taxes; Manchester refuses to pay taxes; Westminster and London, there is reason to believe, will not pay taxes until the Reform Bill is passed. But will this dry rot in the foundation of all Government-this famine of the State-be confined to the above three spots, however great and popular? No,unquestionably; for the sentiment is everywhere, the obligation to nonpayment is felt throughout the kingdom, by a large majority of men of all ranks, as THE MOST SACRED OF POLITICAL DUTIES."-(Times, May 12, 1832.)

"If the answer be unfavourable, the struggle against our liberties will have commenced, and ARTHUR Duke of WELLINGTON had better look to consequences. His Grace is as well acquainted with the feeling of this country as he is with that of the Chinese or Japanese. He prepares to meet it by coercive laws and po

licy; but what is that law worth which is universally odious to a mighty nation? And what sort of Legislature will pass such laws? A minority of the House of Commons. But oppressive and revolting laws must be enforced by violence; there is no other method. It is not, then, the people's Bill, but the people's butchery. This is to be our prospect, is it? If so, may the right hand of every free Englishman perish from his body if he do not himself, his children, and country, right upon the head of the murderer."-(Times, May 17, 1832.) These quotations, and ten thousand others as seditious, and far more so, that might be taken from the Times, and from one and all of the chief champions of the people's own bill, the Examiner, Spectator, Sun, Globe, &c., might well stare Sir James Campbell out of countenance, even were it composed of the metal of the most vulgar coin. Hear Mr Kelly.

"The prosecution, I again say, was cowardly, because they allowed another paper, which had also offended, to pass unpunished, under the circumstances which I have stated. They dared not prosecute particular persons and bodies, but they dared attack this paper. This will become matter of history. It will go down to posterity, that a nobleman, a great friend of the Government of the day, did counsel the people to resist the payment of the assessed taxes. It will also be matter of history, that when the nobleman in question was afterwards called on, in his place in the House of Commons, to declare the truth or falsehood of the statement made respecting him, that nobleman answered, Certainly, it is true.' It will be added, that this declaration was made in the presence of many of the Cabinet Ministers and of the Attorney and Solicitor-General of the day-that the individual passed unpunished, he having since become a Peer and a supporter of the Governmentthat his advice passed unnoticed; but that when the same course was advocated by a paper, not so influential as the one which had before passed unpunished, the paper was prosecuted-that the case brought before a jury of England, and that a jury of England Gentlemen, it will remain for you

was

to fill up the sentence !" The learned counsel continued-"Let me again beg you to understand, that I do not attempt to justify the guilt of one man by the guilt of another, but I say distinctly, that when a prosecutor has admitted one man to be innocent of an offence, he cannot call for a sentence of guilty against another for a precisely similar offence. I need hardly mention the fact, that the noble individual in question, from his peculiar political situation, could hardly be supposed not to know what was the law on the subject, and yet, although it appeared in all the newspapers of the day, not one of those papers was charged with the intention of exciting rebellion, and of subverting the laws and constitution of the kingdom. No! in fact it was thus. So long as any measure is to be passed which will be for the interest of the Government -then take any measures you will -call public meetings-talk to your constituents how you will-do what you will-you are perfectly safe! But as soon as any measure is brought forward against the supposed interests of Government; then, although the taxes may be ruinous, spreading misery and devastation among the poorer classes in the metropolis, when such acts are supposed to be obnoxious because they tend to oblige the Government to put a tax on corn, or to do any other thing which may happen to be against their temporary interests; then, I say, take care that you are not brought forward as a criminal, charged with being guilty of an attempt to overturn the constitution and laws of the country, and to excite the people to resist the payment of the assessed taxes! I will pass over a hundred examples, wherein the same language has been used as that now under prosecution. I could cite them, but it will not be necessary. I have now called your attention to the main features of this prosecution, and shall content myself with appealing to you to say whether this publication could have taken place with any such intent as that with which the defendants are charged in the information. Consider the date of the publication (May, 1833), a time when disappointment prevailed, when public meetings

were frequently taking place, and when discontent was universal. Whatever may have been the tendency of the libellous article, it is quite clear that it had not had the effect alleged to have been intended by it. There has as yet been no rebellion, nor has the Government yet been upset. Whether such prosecutions as these may lead to do so, remains to be seen. Why then should you, when you find that all those anticipated evils have not occurred, distort and extend the meaning of the words to give them a meaning which they do not in themselves bear? Now, I leave the case in your hands, asking-where is that equality and justice which have been called the birth-right of every Englishman, when men are commended by the Government on one day for acts which on another are execrated by them, and prosecuted as criminal ?"

Sergeant Talfourd, in his speech, made some slight sarcastic allusion to Lord Durham and his affidavits, which, it seems, awakened the mirth of the crowded Court, till the titter ran a risk of becoming a guffaw. Greatly incensed was the SolicitorGeneral by such behaviour on the part of the Sergeant and his admiring and merry audience; and he rebuked counsel for thus " holding up that nobleman to public odium." There seemed to him something excessively shocking in dropping a hint about "that delicate investigation." It was even more wicked to sneer at the Earl of Durham than to assail the assessed taxes; for a word may be sufficient to hold him as well as them up to "public odium." Now, we say that there is no need "to hold his Lordship up to public odium;" for low as he now lies, public odium, by the laws of gravitation, descends upon his humiliated head. The coronet was placed there by the People. He was the very man of the People; and he says that he begot the Bill, or rather the Bill leaped forth, full formed and with all its clauses, from the skull of this Northumberland Jupiter. He broke their fetters, and set free the slaves of the soil-telling them that thenceforth the people of Britain were their own masters. Yet this very man— if you but touch his temper-or

probe his pride-with the point of a pen-will move heaven and earth and the King's Bench to put you into prison, and to make you pay a fine to the King, for questioning the loyalty of his noblest subject. Though he has himself been, often as it might suit his purpose, a mean and malignant libeller, the shabby tyrant will not suffer a single syllable to be printed about him and his doings, that is not praise; while praise the most fulsome he swallows from his parasites, till he grows yellow in the face; while those parasites, presuming that they know all the wishes of his heart-yet sometimes, we hope, in their zeal mistaken-are ready to wreak ven. geance on the head of him who shall "hold his Lordship up to public odium," executing what the Whigs call "justice."

We allude to an attack made upon Mr Hernaman, editor of the Newcastle Journal, by a gang of five ruffians, whom the law punished-but more than one provincial and metropolitan Whig newspaper applauded for their spirit. The reason falsely assigned for this most cowardly outrage was, that a handbill, containing offensive personalities, had been printed at Mr Hernaman's office. Had it been so, not the less had those five been cruel cowards; but the handbill was as harmless as it was inane, and the friends of the convicted gang did not dare to publish it. The gang wronged Lord Durham in believing that he could look on the agents in this affair but with disgust; or that he would have countenanced the design of such an outrage. But has his Lordship frowned away from him his savage serfs? We should think not, and for this reason; Lord Durham's own conduct in re Hernaman,-though very different from that of the gang,-was far worse. They were a set of low fellows, and acted like low fellows; but Lord Durham is a high person, and acted like a high person, with high Whig habits and high Whig principles. Noblemen like him, to do them justice, prefer, to the horsewhip or the cudgel, as an instrument of cruelty and oppression, the iron hand of the law. A mere assault on the person is generally over in a few minutes, especially when made on one man by five, and all of them

younger and stronger men than their victim. The cuts or bruises received in that way are cured in a few weeks at farthest, and the man has, perhaps, not been kept a day from his work. But lay a criminal information against your political enemy, and, though you fail in getting the rule made absolute, you may yet subject him, at least, to severe expense; if you prosecute him to conviction-which, in the present state of the law of libel, you can almost certainly do, if you have common prudence-then you may have the satisfaction of ruining him utterlyhim and his family; a satisfaction sublimed by the accompanying consciousness-so worthy of a Lordthat all the while your victim is innocent of any moral offence, and has been, by you, fined, imprisoned, perhaps brought to beggary, disease, and death-for having done that very thing slightly, if at all, to you, which you have been doing always, and to the utmost extent of your poor abilities, ever since you were a Whig, to men in every way your superior, except it may be in rank and in mines, and in accumulation of capital in materials, that, till you try to burn them, you might imagine to be coals.

What was Mr Hernaman's offence against Lord Durham? His Lordship spoke to the people of England of a series of libels published by that gentleman, to bring him into hatred and contempt-like the assessed taxes. Most unlordly was that complaint and that appeal. The Father of the Freedom of Great Britain brought into hatred and contempt by the following bit of print!

"LOYALTY-THE EARL OF DurHAM.-Yesterday the tricolor was flying from the mast-head of the Earl of Durham's yacht, Louisa, now anchored in the Tyne. This disgraceful exhibition roused the sterling English feeling of hundreds of brave fellows, inhabitants of the two Shields, who fought the battles of their country during the last war, and who vented their indignation against the revolutionary flag of France, in curses loud and deep. After the insult offered by the ambitious Earl to the Royal flag of England in Cherbourg harbour, by ordering his own arms to be placed

" TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEWCASTLE

JOURNAL.

"SIR,-I observe in your paper of Saturday, the 28th instant, a paragraph, stating that the tricolor flag was flying from the mast-head of the Earl of Durham's yacht, Louisa, on Friday. I desire to state that the assertion is untrue, nor has the tricolour ever been hoisted since she entered Shields harbour. I therefore request you will insert this in your paper, that the public may be undeceived. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,

"JOHN THOS. CHALMERS, "Commanding Louisa. "R.Y.S. Cutter, Louisa, North Shields, Sept. 29, 1833."

The Editor, then, did all in his power to give the most complete and efficient contradiction to that part of the paragraph which was said to be untrue. But how happened it that he published that part of the paragraph at all? He did so on the faith of a gentleman who told him he saw the tricolor flying from the mast-head of the Louisa in the Tyne. A rule, however, was applied for and granted; and on an applica

tion to have the rule made absolute, came the tough tug of war, in which Lord Durham does not come up to our idea either of a Greek or a Trojan.

;

Lord Durham had procured the rule by an affidavit, in which he said " that he is owner of the yacht Louisa, and that the said vessel sailed into the river Tyne a day or two before the 28th of September last, and that on the day mentioned in the paragraph, she was anchored in that river; but that the said paragraph was in every other respect false, and without any foundation whatever, and that the tricolor or national flag of the Kingdom of France was never at any time flying from the mast-head of the said vessel called the Louisa, nor upon or from any part of the said vessel, whilst she was in the said river Tyne." Here Lord Durham makes the denial on his own personal knowledge, and without any qualification whatever; but of his own personal knowledge he could know nothing about the Louisa in the Tyne, for he was not then on board of her; and all he could have meant to say in his stupid affidavit was, that he had been told by those who were on board that the tricolor had not been hoisted, and that he believed his informants. The Lord Chief Justice has said, " that if it had been pointedly brought before the Court when the rule was obtained, (which happened to be in my absence,) that Mr Chalmers had made no affidavit on the subject, I very much doubt whether the rule would have been granted in the first instance at all." Nobody can doubt that it would not have been granted; for the Lord Chief Justice would grant no rule in the face of the law. But on his Lordship again applying to the Court-to make the rule absolute, which, but for some oversight, would never have been granted at all-the Lord Chief Justice, addressing Sir James Scarlett, at a part of his speech where he was making rubbish of the prosecutor's case, says, "You say that Mr Chalmers was the Master of the Louisa; I ask, does he swear that the tricolor was not hoisted while the vessel James answers-" There is no affidawas in the Tyne at Shields?" Sir vit of Mr Chalmers the denial is

T

f the Earl of Durham."

Down falls this part of his Lordship's case, like a shot jackdaw from the top of a smoky chimney. But Sir James Scarlet has other affidavits:

"Now, I will proceed to shew to the Court very good reason why Mr Chalmers should refrain from making an affidavit. I have now in my hand an affidavit of Mr Cockerell, who says that, on the 27th of September, he was on board the Louisa, when he saw the tricolored flag flying from the mast. I have also the affidavit of Mr Summers, the very person who gave the information on which the defendant acted, who swears that on the 27th of September, he saw the tricolor, or national flag of France, flying at the mast-head of the Louisa whilst lying in the Tyne. That there could be no mistake in the flag, as he is perfectly conversant with the peculiarities of the French tricolor, consisting of three perpendicular stripes of blue, white, and red. I have the affidavits of William Duncan, and several others, seamen at North Shields, some of whom have served on board men of war, and are as well acquainted with the French as with the English flag, who speak with certainty of the fact of the tricolor being seen flying from the mast of the Louisa; and some of them also prove expressions of indignation on the part of the seamen. I have also the affidavits of William Tully, a highly respectable pilot at South Shields, and other persons of equal respectability on that side of the river, who prove the same facts. Now so far as relates to the transaction on the river Tyne, I have stated sufficient to shew your Lordships, that according to the rules by which this Court has always been governed, and I trust always will be, in the administration of this discretionary part of your authority, the Court cannot grant this rule, because the facts are proved to be strictly true."

Is Chalmers dead? No;-but he has cut and run-off to India seven weeks ago! Mr Hernaman, after refusal of the Court to make the rule against him absolute," anxious at all times to do justice to all men," publishes in his paper of the 15th February, Chalmers' second letter, and an affidavit sworn by him at Falmouth, to the effect that the flag

was not the French tricolor, but "a flag of three colours of a different device, called number three, in the code of yacht signals, which was hung with others promiscuously to dry.' This explanation may possibly be true, but it looks very suspicious, and sailors' eyes are not so easily deceived by false colours. But on what day did Chalmers sail from Liverpool? On the 25th of December; and Lord Durham's affidavit, which was used on the application to the Court of King's Bench, was sworn on the 11th of November

that of Davis the mate, on the 8th of November, three days earlier. The application was made to the Court of King's Bench on the 18th of December, five weeks after the latest moment at which the affidavit could be used at all! So much for the statement that Chalmers was off before his affidavit could be obtained. But Mr Hernaman says,

"We will add a word or two on the subject of Chalmers's second letter, and the affidavit made by him, 'under a flying topsail,' at Falmouth. The singular inaccuracies as to dates contained in the letter, shew that Chalmers is gifted with an infirm memory. He swears, that on the 28th day of November last, he was in command of the said Yacht in the river Tyne,' &c. &c. On the 28th day of November last, the said Yacht was not in the river Tyne ! On the 28th day of November last, Mr Chalmers had ceased to command the said Yacht! Whatever might have been done on board the Louisa on that day could have nothing to do with the alleged libel, which appeared in the Journal of the 28th of September, nine weeks before the time mentioned in Mr Chalmers' affidavit. He swears to circumstances taking place on board the Yacht on the 28th of November; Lord Durham's affidavit, filed in the King's Bench, on which the prosecution was founded, was sworn to on the 11th of November, seventeen days previous to the date sworn to by Mr Chalmers. In his affidavit he says, the flag in the Tyne was not the tricolor, but a flag of three colours of a different device, No. 3 in the Code of Yacht Signals.' The flag No. 3 of the Yacht Signals, is composed of three horizontal stripes;