The Sun.
London, England, 1840-01-13 00:00:00

law and justice; and the estimation of an enlightened
world, according to the prinelples upon which those cases
proceeded. Chief Justice Finnean in the case to which
he had last referred, said that all who were engaged in
the insurrection were guilty of high treason—even those
who had not committed robbery, because the insurrection
was against the regal honour of the King. Here was a
new privilege asserted far the King—a new offence
eteated, unknown to the Statute of Edward, unknown to
the hietdry of the country; to ties law of treason, and to
justice, establishing the regal honour of the King, de-
t,rmlnlng it to be high treason to do anything which might
affect him.

Chief_Justice Tindal—la that Burton's case?
Mr Thorrias—:Ne, lily Lord, the case of the apprentices
Chief Justice Tindal—The: first in order of time was
Dammaree's, the second Burton's, the thifd Bensted's.
Mr. Thomas expressed the pleasure and gratitude he
felt at these proofs that he was honoured with the atten-
tion of their Lordships as well as of the Jury. Hie in-
structions had been received a" late that he had not becn
able to do justice to the case, but lie had devoted a great
deal of study to the law of constructive treason, and he
was endeavouring, for the benefit of himself and his ceun-
rry, to lay net,- t!,e jury the conclusions o which he had
-lime upon it, and vettiel he hoped in God would be esta-
dished by the law of the eeittotry. The learned gentleman
then read passages from Luder, and continued—ln refe-
rence to the cases he had read and referred to, that Laud,
!ike all others who promoted prosecutions on constructive
treason, shortly afterwards met the fate of him the accusation
saainst whorti he promoted, and it was to be found in the
volumes of the State Tr ialg, that they who promoted such
arosecu, ioes .eere rec .rded as led to the scaffold in p iges
which related tee fate of those whom they accused. This
Laud who assisted in promoting and making out, the
constructive treason against Bensted shortly afterwards
iollowed him to the block. There was now no Pretender.
There was no intention on the part of his client to levy
an army and put himself upon the throne ; and was it not
eontemptible, in this as in other cases, to charge him with
levying war" as it was meant by the statute ? Did it
Tit strike the Jury that such constructions were monstrous
n this age el tntelligence, and this was not a case in
a'nich the last puniahrtient of the law should be inflicted.
fr struek him 'hat the wars of Hd'spur, and those of the
louse of York and Lancaster were the wars, regular wars,
which alone came under the statute of Edward 111., arid
-hat this was the intention of the Legislature in enacting
and that such rneating! as that in which the prisoner
had been engaged were widely distinguished from those
s'nich came under the clause of t. levying war." So it
tied been held by Sir Matthew Hale, in Messinger's
seise, against eleven other judges, and who had the in-
dependence to maintain it, although stroogly worked
upon to the contrary by the Crown. Severe punishments
did not operate upon the terror of mankind, and where the
!aims were mercifully administered Juries would convict, and
the sympathy of the world w auld accompany the pitmen-
ment; therefore he abhorred the principle of hal ling 'up
lien as bugbears who were not guilty of high crimes with
'.which they were charged, although guilty of minor
offences. Those cases he had brought before them and
the Court to direct the attention of their Lordships
especially to them, with the hope that something
might be done to regulate and define this law. Lords
Mansfield and Tenterden and Mr. Justice Buller, had
in cases where they presided drawn to themselves the
power of bringing matter within the statute which
ought not to be so. This was a sad thing, and he
would now beg to draw the attention of the Court to
.he character of the Judges by whom the law was ad.
,ninistered in the old time, and he would quote from
t writer who, like himself, held in high estima-
,ion the Judges who now administered the law of the
land. The Learned Gentleman again quoted from Luder.
The jury would perceive that the conduct of the Judges
was such in those days that, worked upon by the Crown,
the life of no man was safe Fortunately, however, it had
been since decided that, although words spoken were
not treason, yet written articles could be brought within
the statutes enacted in reference to that crime, and he
could now read a passage from an eminent writer (Ser-
geant Talfourd), who was not far from him, which, if he
had written in the reign of Henry VIII., would have
brought him to the block or the scaffold, although the
learned gentleman had no more treason in his heart than
he (Mr. Thomas) or any of the gentlemen of the Jury. In
a noble production, written by his learned friend, the fol-
lowing thoroughly Republican passage occurred :
Never more
Let the great interest of the state depend
Upon the thousand chances that may sway
A piece of human frailty Swea- to me
That you will seek hereafter in yourselves •
The means of soreeeign rule : our narrow space,
So happy in its confines,—so compact—
Needs not the magic of a single name,
Which wider regions may require to draw
Their interests into one ; but circled thus,
Like a bless'd family, by simple laws
May tenderly be governed,"
If that and other passages had been written when the
judges to whom he had referred administered the law, his
Learned Friend would have suffered tason the scaffold, and
his entrails would have been torn out and cast in his face,
unless the Sovereign spared him, as certainly as Sydney
or Russell, the ancestor of one of the promoters of this
prosecution, who was punished by death because he was
merely present when another person uttered treasonable
expressions, whilst Sydney was similarly punished because
his " Dissertation on Government" was found in his
house. It was true that the sentence of Russell was re-
versed after his death, but this of course could only benefit
his family. The Learned Gentleman then referred to
Lord Mansfield's charge in the case of Lord George
Gordon, which stated the circumstances of the case—
the riotous assemblage of 40,000 men, who had burned
a number of houses in London arid four of the
public gaols, and yet Lord George Gordon, who was
their adviser, was acquitted of the charge of high
treason, but was punished, together with many others
who were punished for riot. It was not, therefore, because
some acts of violence had been committed, that they con-
stituted treason. In the case of Horne Tooke and Hardy,
the circumstances were much worse than in the present
case, and they were tried in times of great anxiety ; but
these trials for constructive treason failed, and the rights
of the people were established by having secured to them
the rights of meeting, and by the putting down of the
spirit of persecution by means of constructive treason.
The Learned Gentleman then referred to the cases of
Brandreth and Thistlewood, which was the last case of high
treason tried in this country, and thus twenty years has
elapsed since the last trial for treason, and he bad hoped
that he would never have heard of another, for he did not
believe that such prosecutions were necessary while the
Crown was secure, and his Learned Friends themselves
had declared that any attempt upon the Crown was int.-
possible and completely absurd, and while they say that
t'sis is too ridiculous, yet they ask you to fix all the
guilt o f every one of the parties upon my client. The sta-
tute which he (the Learned Gentleman) considered he
should have bean indicted under, and which had directly
provided against the. offence he had committed, was the 6th
George 1., cap. 2, welch enacted that such riots as the
prisoner had been engaged in should be punished as felons
without the least benefit of clergy. Under that Act the
prisoner should have been indicted, and the Jury should
bear in mind that although a man might be found not
guilty of one offence, yet he could be prosecuted for ano-
ther. In this case there was too much doubt whether the
prisoner intended to levy war in the meaning of the Act;
and unless the Jury could bring their minds to the clear
determination that there could be no doubt that the object
of Zephaniah Williams was to depose the Queen and to pnt
clown all laws—unless they came to that conviction, it
was impossible they could find him guilty. Before he pro-
aeeded to call the attention of the jury to the evidence
which had been produced, he would refer to the nature of
the meetings which the prisoner had been accused of at-
tending ; he could show that such meetings had been held
from the time of William the Conqueror down to the pre-
sent ; and such meetings for the redress of grievances, the
alteration of the laws, or to petition the Legislature, were
legal, and were the birthright of Englishmen; and if they
were not so, what would become of the possibility of an
amelioration of the laws? Now the rules and principles upon
which the associations with which the prisoner was
connected were to procure the Vote by Ballot, and he
( Mr. Thomas) would like to know how many of those
who instituted this prosecution were opposed to the
Ballot—why the Ballot had been adopted as the best
means of selecting a Jury in those cases, and there were
many Members of Parliament, some of whom he believed
were present, who were of opinion that the Vote by Ballot
should be instituted; but if the Jury or oth ors were not of that
opinion, was a man, because he thought otherwise, to be
hunted to death by a vindictive prosecution. Then, with
regard to Annual Parliaments, it had been the law that
Annual Parliaments should be held down to the reign of
William 111., and that they had been made septei•nial was
a blot upon the statutes nook ; but the seeking for Annual
Parliaments was but desiring to bring back the old
law. He would challenge the Ssilicitor-Generat to fiad
to
instance where any Charter had been established btu by
force, or by another mode of proceeding, the refusal of the
supplies, the aids to the King. He would defy the Learned
y
Gentleman to show any one instance of a Charter esta.
Wished which was not
wrung
from the fears ofthe sovereign,
and maintained at the point of the sword. He next referred
the Jury to the speech of Lord John Russell itt the House
of Commons, where he said that Noble Lard declared,
that he would have been dig osed„ if te• had been an Irish
Catholic, and, considering the manner in which the Orange-
men conducted themselves, to become a member of the
Catholic Association. Was it, he then said, to be won-
dered at, when such an opinion was pronounced by the
head of the Government that men in the same condition
of life that the prisoner 'was, and who was a Ckarti t,
should also by such unions and such associations seek to
attain his object. By the Reform Bill some advantages
had been obtained
; but institutions which required im_
provement would obtain amelioration as peace continued,
the arts Le trished, and science advanced. How was Reform
to be stopped ? Was it by the plan devised by Periander,
who, when asked how was the pride of the people to be
humbled, took a person into his garden, and lopped off the
heads from the fairest flowers. Was this the way popular lead-
era were to be disposed of? or was this the mode in which the
desire for freedom was to be put an end to? No; for
when the spark was trodden upon, it would fly in the face
of him who was endeavouring to put it out, or, as Bacon
said, it would be like shutting the gates of a field to pre-
vent the crows from flying abroad. They could not stop
the progress of Reforms The Attorney General could
not stop it. He declared, before them, that there was not
a principle laid down in the Charter that he did not ap.
prove of ; and he would rattier return to the humble situa-
tion from which
he was raised, than conceal one single
opinion of his, mind. He drew his opinions from reading,
and from observations and he had ever held himself as he
meant to do, free from all parties. He was surprised to
find, upon looking to the principles of the Chartists,
that they were his own. He found the principles of the
Charter advocated by the ablest men amongst the
living and the dead—by the venerable Earl Grey, and
by Lord Erskine, the noble advocate of popular rights
against the doctrine of constructive treason, What did
the Chartists here ? that which he himself had seen
thousands marched down to Wititehall—if they had passed I
done, in the case of the Reform Bill, where hundreds and 1