The Sun.
London, England, 1839-11-08 00:00:00

EVENINt4 EDITION.

TRIAL BY JURY.

The friends of Radical Reform in the metropolis dined
together on Tuesday evening at Radley's Hotel, Bridge-
street, Blackfriars, to commemorate the 45th anniver-
sary of the acquittal of Thomas Hardy, John Horne
Tooke, John Thelwall, and others, of the charge of high
treason. The meeting was very numerous, and Mr.
lieppel was called to the chair.
After the cloth had been removed,
The CHAIRMAN, after claiming the indulgence of the
meeting, said, that the first toast he found on his list
was not one immediately growing out of the occasion
that called them there, though in the liberality of its
principle it was intimately and mainly connected with
the institution of trial by jury. The first toast was the
" Sovereignty of the people."—(Cheers.) That toast
he had frequently bad the good fortune to hear given
within those walls, and he was sure that it must come
! home to the best wishes and feelings of all friends to
trial by jury.—(Cheers.) By the sovereignty of the
people, he understood that great moral power which
the people would have the means of exercising when
education was largely diffused. By the sovereignty of
the people he did not understand the power of a mob,
he meant the power of a people so educated and civilized,
and possessing so much of intelligence, as to force Go-
vernment into the adoption of measures that would con-
! tribute to the good of all.—(Cheers.)
The toast was drunk with three times three.
The CHAIRMAN, in rising to propose the next toast,
said, that having drunk a toast by which they gave a
clear declaration of opinion as to where the real and
essential Sovereignty of the nation rested, he would
proceed to propose the health of the individual to whom
their duty was now owing, she being by the laws of this
country, in which they participated, placed as the vi-
sible organ of that authority. He meant to propose
" the Queen."—(Cheers.) He found coupled with that
" the continued improvement of the Ministry."—(Cheers
and a laugh.) If he could convince himself that there
could be any step towards improvement in that body he
would very freely and willingly make the aspiration re-
quired ; his opinion, however, upon that matter was not
as appeared from the toast coincident with the opinions
of all around the table, and he knew that some were
of opinion that although a great deal could not be said
for them, yet they were not so bad as they might be.
It was only in this sense, and with the hope that after
repeated disappointments in their wishes by the infu-
sion of some new blood which had been effected of late,

that they would at length see the error of their ways,
and become the fit Ministers of a free people, that he
proposed the toast.—(Cheers.)
The toast was drunk with three times three.
The CHAIRMAN, in proposing the next toast, said it
was one intimately connected with that meeting ; it was,
" Trial by Jury in its Purity."—(Cheers.) That being
the forty-fifth anniversary of the event they had met to
commemorate, it would be idle in him to attempt to
enter into a disquisition of the advantages of trial by
jury. He might be allowed, however, to recal the ad-
vantages that were derived from such meetings as the
present, keeping vividly in their recollection the attempts
made by a profligate Ministry to destroy able and honest
men, and at the same time keeping in recollection the
protection afforded by trial by jury. Since that time
other occasions had occurred where the liberties of the
subject bad by the same means been preserved from the
attacks of the Crown. The case of Mr. Hone afforded
another memorable example of the advantages of this
institution. It was to preserve freshly in their memory
the use of such an institution that they were assembled
there that day, and to remind their children and their
children's children what a powerful shield trial by jury
presented to the attacks of a profligate and dishonest
Ministry.—(Cheers.)
The toast was drunk with acclamation.
Major REVELL, having been called upon to propose
the next toast, said that in doing so he would have to
call to their recollection some of the best and most able
men that he had ever had the honour to be acquainted
with in the course of a long life. He had to propose
the memory of Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke,
John Thelwall, John Augustus Bonney, Stewart Kyd,
Richard Hodgson, Thomas Holcroft, Jeremiah Joyce,
Thomas Wardle, Matthew Moore, John Baxter, and
John Richter.—(Cheers.) He happened to live in the
days when those men were persecuted—for prosecuted
he could hardly say they were.—( Hear, hear) More
honourable, honest, virtuous, or able men he had never
known. To suppose that such men were animated by
any other feeling than that of devotion to the interests of
their fellow-citizens, was ridiculous and absurd. These
were the men whom a corrupt government and a corrupt
aristocracy had attempted to destroy—an attempt in
which they would have succeeded, if they had succeeded
in their attempt to pack the jury. Had the jury been
taken from the freeholders of Middlesex alphabetically,
they would have met that day to commemorate the
death, and not the triumph, of those virtuous men ; but
fortunately the Crown lawyers were defeated, the names
of the Jury were put into a hat and drawn indiscrimi-
nately, and they thus obtained a fair and impartial Jury.
They were met that day to commemorate the glorious
pioneers who led them on to victory. Without that
great sacrifice they would never have got the moderate
measure of parliamentary reform which a Liberal Ad-
ministration had given to the people. There was one
advantage which those good and great men had—they
meant what they said.—(Cheers.) In all advance-
ments of great public objects, the most virtuous of their
first supporters were made the victims of popular delu-
sion ; and it was as the advocates—the early advocates
of national improvement and national welfare, that he
called upon the meeting to drink, and with no common
enthusiasm, the memory of the gentlemen whose names
he had read.—(Cheers.)
The toast was drunk in solemn silence.
Mr. COPPOCK was called upon to move the next
toast. He said it had been well observed by Major
Revell that the men who, forty-five years ago, were on
this day acquitted, were but pioneers in the path which
they had since been pursuing, sometimes slowly, some-
times more rapidly ; forty-five years had elapsed, and
found them still very far from that position which, as
freemen and Britons, they had a right to attain. They
were still far removed from the free exercise of those
privileges which were as much their right as their
birth-right, which ought to be as freely exercised as any
other privilege they possessed, and which ought to be
left as pure and uncontrolled as the air they breathed.
The toast he had to propose contained several princi-
ples in which he most fully concurred. Those principles
were Radical Reform, Extension of the Suffrage, Equal
Representation, Short Parliaments, and Vote by Ballot.
It reform were not radical it was worth nothing. As
long as reform was in the slightest degree incomplete
and imperfect, it was the duty of every Englishman to
persevere until it was rendered perfect. Without com-
plete reform,it was totally impossible to contend success-
fully against the corrupting influence and power of that
faction which, for a hundred years, had rioted without
restraint or control, at the expense of the country, the
men who prevented the free exercise of judgment forty-
five years ago, by endeavouring to bring to the scaffold
men infinitely more pure and honest than themselves.—
(Cheers.) That faction could never be fairly rooted out
of the country until they had radical reform. He cared
not for the strife of party, or for the preponderance of
one party over another. The end of his aspirations
and hopes was the radical reform of all abuses, good and
cheap government, and the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.—(Loud cheers.) Mr. Coppock, after
commenting on the measures alluded to in the toast,
) proceeded to state 1 the present Government had not
done much good, they had done no evil.—(Cheers.)
During their whole administration since 1832, there had
not been a single ex-officio information. They had not
interfered with the liberty of the press. They had not,
indeed, progressed so rapidly as he wished, but they had
not gone backwards.—(Cheers.) If the Tqries had
been in power they would have gone back, and instead
of meeting in that room, they would have incurred the
risk which forty-five years ago had been incurred by
Thomas Hardy and his companions.—(Cheers.) To
produce any useful and extensive reform there must be
union amongst Reformers. Without union all their
efforts would be vain. If those persons who only wanted
one or two of the principles embraced in the toast re-
fused to co-operate with those who wanted them all,
and if those who wanted all quarrelled with those who
\
did not go so far, the result must be a weakening of
the force of Reformers generally. The Tories, if they
did nothing else, set them an example of union. Let
amtlY thing cone forward inscribed with the name of
"747, and if it be only a wig block, the Tories to a man
supported it. Against such a party they could only
succeed by the strongest union, and the man that advo-
cated disunion at this moment could not be a sincere
friend of Radical Reform
The toast was drunk '
with loud cheers.
Mr. GALLOWAY having been called upon to propose
the next toast, namely,. The memory of the London
Corresponding Society," said that he believed that never
had there been more intelligent men, or men more de-
voted to the best interests of the country.—(Cheers.)
It should, however, be recollected, that they had been
but a very few years embodied, and the people of the
present day had not only an additional experience of
forty-five years, but had also the experience of the con-
duct of that Society. He agreed with Mr. Coppock,
that it was only by union that the ReformersagcoauinldsthTav:
any reasonable chance of being successful
/Tina. If men were pertinaciously to resist receiving
part unless they could get the
very honest, but he could not call them
.the_eint tpraeyetiTeailhtplebae.
He knew enough of the rttrh. community to
know that men did not go from positive wrong to posi-
tive right at one step. There must be many steps.--
(Hear, hear.) He would go with others as far as they
would go with him ; and when they were inclined
tol halt, he would march on cheerfully withoutf them.
{Cheers.) The Reform Bill, he admitted, was eec we ;
hut if the Radical Reformers of that day had only looked
at its defects, and had not considered it as the first glo-
ri(!us attempt to resist the unjust encroachments of the
arlitheraeY—if they had opposed the Reform Bill be-
cause it did not go far enough, they would have pre-
vgited all reform. He was gratified to see the great
practical iniPlOvementethat had taken place in the pre-
sent day, as Compared with the days of Pitt. He be-