or the work can be justified or condemned, and the charge upon the record being the naked charge of a libel, the cause resolves itself into a question of the deepest importance to us all, THE NATURE AND EX

TENT OF THE LIBERTY OF THE ENGLISH PRESS.

But before I enter upon it, I wish to fulfil a duty to the Defendant, which, if I do not deceive myself, is at this moment peculiarly necessary to his impartial trial.-If an advocate entertains sentiments injurious to the defence he is engaged in, he is not only justified, but bound in duty, to conceal them; so, on the other hand, if his own genuine sentiments, or any thing connected with his character or situation, can add strength to his professional assistance, he is bound to throw them into the scale. In addressing myself, therefore, to gentlemen not only zealous for the honour of English government, but visibly indignant at any attack upon its principles, and who would, perhaps, be impatient of arguments from a suspected quarter, I give my client the benefit of declaring, that I am, and ever have been, attached to the genuine principles of the British government; and that, however the Court or you may reject the application, I defend him upon principles not only consistent with its permanence and security, but without the establishment of which, it never could have had an existence.

The proposition which I mean to maintain as the basis of the liberty of the press, and without which it is an empty sound, is this ;-that every man, not

intending to mislead, but seeking to enlighten others with what his own reason and conscience, however erroneously, have dictated to him as truth, may address himself to the universal reason of a whole nation, either upon the subject of governments in general, or upon that of our own particular country: -that he may analyze the principles of its constitu-tion,-point out its errors and defects,-examine and publish its corruptions,-warn his fellow-citizens against their ruinous consequences, and exert his whole faculties in pointing out the most advantageous changes in establishments which he considers to be radically defective, or sliding from their object by abuse. All this every subject of this country has a right to do, if he contemplates only what he thinks would be for its advantage, and but seeks to change the public mind by the conviction which flows from reasonings dictated by conscience..

If, indeed, he writes what he does not think ;-if, contemplating the misery of others, he wickedly condemns what his own understanding approves ;or, even admitting his real disgust against the government or its corruptions, if he calumniates living magistrates, or holds out to individuals, that they have a right to run before the public mind in their conduct, that they may oppose by contumacy or force what private reason only disapproves ;-that they may disobey the law, because their judgment condemns it ;-or resist the public will, because they honestly wish to change it-he is then a criminal upon

every principle of rational policy, as well as upon the immemorial precedents of English justice; because such a person seeks to disunite individuals from their duty to the whole, and excites to overt acts of misconduct in a part of the community, instead of endeavouring to change, by the impulse of reason, that universal assent which, in this and in every country, constitutes the law for all.

I have therefore no difficulty in admitting, that, if, upon an attentive perusal of this work, it shall be found that the Defendant has promulgated any doctrines which excite individuals to withdraw from their subjection to the law by which the whole nation consents to be governed;-if his book shall be found to have warranted or excited that unfortunate criminal who appeared here yesterday to endeavour to relieve himself from imprisonment, by the destruction of a prison, or dictated to him the language of defiance which ran through the whole of his defence; if throughout the work there shall be found any syllable or letter, which strikes at the security. of property, or which hints that any thing less than the whole nation can constitute the law, or that the law, be it what it may, is not the inexorable rule of action for every individual, I willingly yield him up to the justice of the Court.

Gentlemen, I say, in the name of Thomas Paine, and in his words as author of the Rights of Man, as written in the very volume that is charged with seeking the destruction of property,

"The end of all political associations is, the "preservation of the rights of man, which rights "are liberty, property, and security; that the nation "is the source of all sovereignty derived from it: the right of property being secured and inviolable, "no one ought to be deprived of it, except in cases "of evident public necessity, legally ascertained, and "on condition of a previous just indemnity."

These are undoubtedly the rights of man-the rights for which all governments are established-and the only rights Mr. Paine contends for; but which he thinks (no matter whether right or wrong) are better to be secured by a républican constitution than by the forms of the English government. He instructs me to admit, that, when government is once constituted, no individuals, without rebellion, can withdraw their obedience from it,-that all attempts to excite them to it are highly criminal, for the most obvious reasons of policy and justice,—that nothing short of the will of a WHOLE PEOPLE can change or affect the rule by which a nation is to be governedand that no private opinion, however honestly inimical to the forms or substance of the law, can justify resistance to its authority, while it remains in force. The author of the Rights of Man not only admits the truth of all this doctrine, but he consents to be convicted, and I also consent for him, unless his work shall be found studiously and painfully to inculcate these great principles of government which it is charged to have been written to destroy.

Let me not, therefore, be suspected to be contending, that it is lawful to write a book pointing out defects in the English government, and exciting individuals to destroy its sanctions, and to refuse obedience. But, on the other hand, I do contend, that it is lawful to address the English nation on these momentous subjects; for had it not been for this unalienable right (thanks be to God and our fathers for establishing it), how should we have had this constitution which we so loudly boast of?—If, in the march of the human mind, no man could have gone before the establishments of the time he lived in, how could our establishment, by reiterated changes, have become what it is ?—If no man could have awakened the public mind to errors and abuses in our government, how could it have passed on from stage to stage, through reformation and revolution, so as to have arrived from barbarism to such a pitch of happiness and perfection, that the Attorney General considers it as profanation to touch it further, or to look for any future amendment?

In this manner power has reasoned in every age -government, in its own estimation, has been at all times a system of perfection; but a free press has examined and detected its errors, and the people have from time to time reformed them. This freedom has alone made our government what it is; this freedom alone can preserve it; and therefore, under the banners of that freedom, to-day I stand up to defend Thomas Paine.-But how, alas! shall

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