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entertained? I shall only advert to one other subject; I mean, the eloquent efforts which were made on behalf of the West India slaves. Could there be a more delicate subject than that, or one which required to be more cautiously handled? Were not all the masterly speeches of Mr. Pitt on that subject, pictures of horrors from beginning to end; and did any one impute a wish to excite insurrection in him, although he was addressing islands peopled with blacks? This privilege if it is good for any thing, is good for all; and I have a right to discuss any subject. But is there no danger of mutiny to be apprehended from the infliction of these military floggings, in the sight and hearing of thousands of soldiers and peasantry, although the danger which the mere narrative of them is to produce be great? Is this fund of peasantry, out of which your future soldiers are to be drawn, to hear with their own ears, and see with their own eyes, the horrors of a military flogging, without thinking twice before they enter this army? All this is a chimerical fear; let their eyes feast on the sight, let their ears be glutted with the sound; all is safe, there is no fear of their being moved; but have a care how you describe or comment upon all this (we have scarcely or very inadequately done either the one on the other), but of all things take care how you argue on the policy of this system; for a single word of argument will occassion those troops to revolt, and that peasantry to turn their attention to some other way of life, who saw and heard a military flogging with the coolest satisfaction. Gentlemen, I have done; the whole case is before you; and you will now decide, whether an Englishman has any longer the privilege of discussing public measures!

The Attorney-General replied: he agreed with the learned gentleman in his remarks upon the licentiousness of the press; and perhaps it fell more in the Attorney-General's way than in that gentleman's to know the number of weak nerves which were affected by this dread of libel. It was now a question with publishers, not whether this or that line of opinion was the result of their conviction, but whether it would sell their paper best, and the court had an affidavit to this effect upon its records, (alluding to the late case of The Day newspaper.) It had been said, that this was a free and liberal discussion of a public mea

sure; and that its arguments were justified by the example of two gallant of ficers: but to rank Sir Robert Wilson, aud Brigadier-General Stuart, with the proprietors of the Examiner, was laugh-. able. It might be a question whether it was adviseable in these officers to make their thoughts on the army (which the Attorney-General had not before seen) public, when they had a private opportunity of communicating them where they might have been more efficacious; and it might be also a question whether it was prudent in one of these gallant officers to enlarge upon. the corporal punishment of the soldiery, in such ardent and glowing language. But the officers could have no other object in view. Not so the defendants; and the question was, what was the object of Messrs. Hunt, proprietors of the Examiner? He protested against any invasion of the liberty of the press!

Lord Ellenborough then charged the Jury. It had been stated by the counsel for the defendants, in a speech of great ability, eloquence and manliness, that the question was, whether it were lawful to an Englishman to comment on any particular policy. Of this there could be no doubt, and that whether privately or through the press, provided it were done decently and with a true regard to public and private interests. This was an anxious and awful moment, when the personal liberty of every man depended upon our resistance to Buonaparté, and all the powers of Europe who were combined with that formida ble foe. It therefore became doubly necessary to see that he had no auxiliary from within us, and that he had not the aid to his ambitious tyranny of the British press. The freedom of discussion was in proportion to its delicary; and he could not help thinking, that the gallant officer on the Bench would have done better to have made a communication of his sentiments in a more prirate form. The soldiery were now a class of men upon whose fidelity to the banners of their country every thing depended; and it could not be supposed that the subject of their punishment had not undergone the consideration of those who were supposed to be full of all honourable feeling.-His lordship then read, and commented upon the libel. The title, "One thousand Lashes," was printed in capitals to catch the eye; and the lashes were in one instance ad-. ded together, and not apportioned to

each offence, for the purpose of aggravation. The words, "with their usual consistency," were a fling at the country. Was this fair discussion? Do we use force to recruit our armies? The duty of being balloted for the militias played upon every body alike, with certain exceptions; and yet it was meant to be represented that equal force was used in recruiting our army with what was employed in France, where every man was drawn out and sent from Holland to Spain, fighting for a territory to which he had no title, and merely subserving the views of a tyrant. By the French code of conscription, the punishments inflicted on those relatives who conceal edobjects of conscription were truly horrible; they were condemned to linger out their lives in the gallies, and to other severities. If the writer had been really actuated by a feeling for the soldiery, why did he not make a private representation to some member of the legislature, instead of drawing a picture calculated to harrow up the souls of his readers, and to attract the attention of the military, and render them disgusted with the service. In the conscientious discharge of his duty, his lordship had no hesitation in pronouncing this a seditious libel.

The jury, after some consultation, withdrew for an hour and an half, and then returned their verdict

NOT GUILTY.

TRIAL AT LINCOLN FOR AN
ARTICLE ON MILITARY FLOGGING.
TILE KING 7. DRAKARD.

At nine o'clock on Wednesday the 13th. inst. the trial of this traverse or indictment came on, before the hon. Baron Wood and a special jury; the grand jury, before whom the indictment was laid, having on Tuesday afternoon found a true bill. It had been expected that the proceedings would be carried on in the nature of an information ex officio by the attorney-general, but the trial was proceeded on in the common way of indictment.—Only six special jurymen of the pannel answered to their names.

The pleadings were opened by Mr. Reynolds, and the case was stated by Mr. Clarke, who, with Serjeant Vaughan and Mr. Reader, conducted the prosecution. The libel was stated to have been published in the paper called Drakard's Stamford News. of the 24th. of August last, and to be embodied in some

observations headed "ONE THOUSAND LASHES!" tending to create disaffec tion amongst the soldiers, to alienate their regard from their officers, and to occasion a general prejudice to the military service of the country, by holding up the discipline of the army to abhorrence, and deterring his Majesty's subjects from entering therein. The publication, Mr. Clarke stated, was of a nature so infamous, so seditious and dangerous, that no good man who heard it read, could restrain his resentment or hesitate in his judgment upon it; and he thought the attorney-general would have been grossly derelict of his duty, had he not proceeded to prosecute the author and publisher of venom so foul as that contained in the libel. He then read various passages of the libel complained of, the tendency and object of which, he maintained, could only be to breed mutiny, subvert the military establishment of the country, and make us, by the disaffection of our soldiery, an easy conquest to our implacable enemy; and he called upon the jury by their verdict to pronounce their sense of the heinousness of the publication laid before them.

The printing and publishing of the libel were then proved by the production of a copy of the paper of the 24th. of August delivered to the stamp-office.

Mr. Brougham (who had been brought from the York circuit) then rose, and on behalf of the defendant, addressed the jury in a speech of two hours and a quarter, distinguished by a very rare degree of eloquence and animation.

[This speech we intend giving in our next.]

Mr. Clarke, in reply, enlarged on what he termed the malignity of the libel.

The judge, in his address to the jury, enlarged on the licentiousness of the press, and on the presumption of the people in discussing even the laws of the country! If the jury could be of opinion that any thing but mischief was meant by the publication under their consideration, they would acquit the defendant; but he (the learned judge) in the conscientious discharge of his duty, had no hesitation in saying, that he considered it a most wicked libel.

The jury withdrew for about ten minutes, and brought in a verdict of Guilty! Judgment on the defendant will be delivered in the court of King's Bench

next term,

[B. Flower, Printer, Harlow.

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HAD our countrymen seriously put the question to themselves,

at any period during the late and present war-What is the object of the contest ?—It would have been difficult for them to have given a rational answer. The objects held up by their authors and promoters have been so various, and so uniformly yielded, that the nature of the contest has been perpetually changing; and the only advantages we have gained, in return for the many thousands of lives sacrificed, for hundreds of millions lavished, and for those complicated calamities, the natural result of rapidly increasing debts, and grievously oppressive taxation, are a few occasional victories, which in their consequence have been followed with increasing infatuation on the part of our rulers, and the people at large, impelling them to a farther prosecution of the war; thus setting the invaluable blessing of peace at a still greater distance, and involving the nation in new, and still more complicated calamities.

The chapter of accidents has for years past, contained all the hopes of ministers, their supporters, and the friends of war in general, throughout the nation: the chance of success in the retreat of the French armies, the earnest desire for new coalitions, and new insurrections on the continent, and that by these means the power of France might be diminished, if not the government of NAPOLEON be overthrown:-these are the visionary prospects which have deluded our rulers and the people at large, and are now afresh deluding, and hurrying them to the more speedy accomplishment of an object they have nearly attained-NATIONAL RUIN!

It is melancholy to observe the great increase of this general delusion, in consequence of the retreat of the French armies from Portugal; an event so far from being expected, that all parties were prepared for the return of Lord Wellington and the British VOL. IX.

F

forces to their own country; and measures were actually taken on the part of government, to enable his lordship to re-embark his army, whenever he might deem it necessary.

The unexpected intelligence of the retreat of MASSENA and the forces under his command have inspired the British cabinet, and of course all their tools, dependents and supporters with new and lively hopes. Their exultations are as extravagant as they are foolish. Instead of pressing it on ministers, that as they now, contrary to general expectation, stand on somewhat higher ground, and consequently have an opportunity of entering on the importaut and necessary work of negociation more advantageously, than a few months since, it is their duty to seek peace, and pursue it ; the columns of our public prints, those on the ministerial side more particularly, are flattering us with hopes of new and continued success; fresh coalitions are talked of, formidable insurrections are reported, and the most confident hopes are expressed not only of the deliverance of Portugal, from which we are assured the French are "completely expelled," and also of Spain, but of various states on the continent, from the yoke of the "Corsican usurper and tyrant;" and to crown the whole, we are encouraged to hope that the ultimate result will be the shaking, if not the overturning of the throne of Napoleon, even in his own immediate dominions!

The Morning Post of Wednesday last, informs us, on the authority of " a gentleman just arrived in town, from the French "coast, (how many such gentlemen has the Morning Post employed

in its service during the war!)—" That the whole of the Dutch "provinces are in open rrbellion against the Corsican tyrant; that "an insurrectionary spirit has also been extensively displayed in Flanders, and even in different parts of France; and that a very "formidable plot has lately been discovered at Paris, in conse

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quence of which several persons of high station have been arres"ted." In confirmation of this charming intelligence of the "" gen"tleman" of the Morning Post, we are in the same day's paper assured, that the Speculator lugger (a most suitable vessel for the conveyance of such intelligence)" arrived in the Downs from the "Dutch coast, has brought intelligence corroborative of the above "statement, as far as it regards the insurrection in Holland; and "other accounts, entering into particulars state, that the populace "of Rotterdam, Amsterdain, Dort, and other places, had risen "against the several garrisons, possessed themselves of the batte"ries, and disarmed the French troops; that in France the spirit "of insurrection was also extending itself, and that the outcry "was loud in all parts, on account of the general distress." We are further encouraged to look to the good and faithful ally of this, protestant country, the poor old Fope, for his services in this new,

and cheering state of affairs; for the writer adds-" The Pope's "ill treatment, and captivity had given great offence; and as his "Holiness had refused his sanction to Bonaparte's divorce and sub"sequent marriage, the people considered the infant, nick-named "King of Rome, as illegitimate."

The reports of this" gentleman," and those brought by the "Speculator," do not appear to have obtained any great credit, but they at least shew the good wishes of the writer: no matter if the people of Europe be in a state of insurrection, or how much blood may be shed, or how many states ravaged, or whether a new coalition of the states on the continent, or of the pope and the devil, do the business! There is no occasion to inquire the cause of these insurrections, or by what means they are excited or supported! If our ministers can by any means light up the flame of war over Europe, and thus insure to the people a longer continuance of the contest, their great object will be so far attained.

All these reports have however been so frequently circulated during the late and present war, that their revival can benefit to a very trifling degree the common cause; they are indeed highly improbable: the Hollanders it is true are deprived for a time of the object of their idolatry-TRADE, which to extend and preserve, they for this half century past, have been willing to sacrifice their own liberties, and of course were careless of the liberties of the rest of the world: as to insurrections in Flanders, Germany, or France, it may reasonably be asked what hope of success, or what expectations of ameliorating their condition can the people reasonably entertain? After all we have heard of the "groans of the people "of Europe under the tyranny of the Corsican tyrant," we suspect that there are few states in which the people at large, and more particularly the lower classes, have not been benefitted by the revolutions which have taken place. One most oppressive grievance they have got rid of, their corrupt and tyrannical church establishments: one invaluable blessing they have gained-TOLERATION. Civil establishments of religion have in all countries proved the grand instruments of enslaving the people; and wherever these Anti-christian nuisances are removed; wherever religious liberty is fully established, and the corporation of the priesthood dissolved, we are persuaded that civil, and political liberty will ere long follow. Men whose minds are set free, cannot be long content to remain in a state of slavery in any sense of the word. When we hear of an object being held out to any people in a state of servitude sufficiently animating; when they have confidence in leaders who will offer them a restoration of those rights originally given them by God and nature, we may then, and not till then, entertain hopes that mankind will cheerfully rise up in defence of their original

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