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tage of France, to the short-sighted policy of England alone.

Speech. (10) Have in some degree affected a part of his Majes แ ty's revenue, particularly Ireland." Moniteur. This is a remarkable passage. Last year you said, that the Orders in Council had all the success you expected, that your trade was augmented by that of America and neutral powers; now you recant all this; you admit that your trade has laboured under difficulties, that your revenues are diminshed, and yet the Continental system has been only three months in force. What will it then be in three years? The accounts of the French finances proves that it has quite a contrary effect upon them. It is true, that in France, as well as in other places, numerous instances of private misfortune have occurred; but these have no effect upon the national revenues. Bankruptcies have taken place, because speculators, seduced by lucre, become the discounters of your credit. The canals by which you drew to yourselves the substance of the whole continent of Europe, have been all blocked up by the shocks that you have received. It is for and by England that this circulation of paper has been created; but the crisis is past, and new channels are disclosing themselves for the real trade of the continent.

The English government can have no credit when that of its trade declines. It feels every private bankruptcy. The French government, on the contrary, has a credit independent of that of bankers and merchants. Nine hundred millions of revenue, collected in specie, constitute the proper revenue of the empire, represent the riches of its soil, and are more than sufficient for all its expences; while 17 or 1800 mil

lions for the necessary expences of England, can only be collected through the medium of a paper circulation, which only supporting it

self by that immense currency which, through Amsterdam and Hamburgh, embraced the whole continent of Europe; while 17 or 1800 millions are not the consequence of the riches of the soil, or the revenues of the country, but of industry and of a system of credit, which is not suffi cient to provide for the wants that it has to satisfy, the moment it is prevented from extending to the continent. A three months check has already made the city of London turn pale; and there is not an Enghsh speculator who can coolly contemplate the perspective of ten years of a similar system. The French Exchange for the last four years has been constantly improving, and that in all the commercial towns of the world, at the rate of from three to ten per cent. That of England is constantly losing. Within the last three months, it has fallen from 30 to 40 per cent. Nothing can more completely represent the relative situation of the two countries. In point of finance, as well as politics, France owes every thing to the erroneous calculations of that hatred by which the English government is constantly blinded.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

Court of King's Bench, Feb. 7.

THE KING V. FINNERTY.

[Concluded from page 67.]

The Attorney General stated, that he had heard wth deep regret and considerable disgust, the address recently made, in which the defendant had endeavoured to introduce fresh calumnies upon the prosecutor. That their lordships had long abstained from interfering, from a merciful consideration of the defendant, but which he conceived from his conduct he did not deserve, though he knew their lordships would extend mercy towards him. That it was impossible to have heard his address without seeing that he entertained a deliberate object in the publication of the libel, in defending himself against the

charge, and in the address he had now made, namely that of representing Lord Castlereagh as a monster of iniquity, and that, against his own knowledge of the facts which he pretended himself to have correctly stated. That he had libelled every description of persons in the country, from the judges on the bench to the Middlesex magistrates, first arraigning the declaration of the court that the letter complained of was a libel, and then desiring their lordships not to send him to the custody of the magistrates of Middlesex, because, owing to political differences, he was of opinion his life would be endangered. That he asked any one acquainted with the manner in which justice was administered, whether they could believe that the defendant really thought such hardships would be inflicted upon him as would lead to his death. The Attorney General called upon the court to consider what redress Lord Castlereagh was to receive for the gross injury he had sustained, considering the situation in which Lord Castlereagh stood, the spirit in which Mr. Finnerty published the libel in question, the spirit in which he had suffered judgment by default, and in which he had now defended himself. That to endeavour to aggravate the case would indeed be an ineffectual attempt; that the nature of the libel was too striking to escape observation, and such as to shew the deliberate malice which actuated it. That Mr. Finnerty had stated himself not to have been without legal advice, but that from what he (the Attorney General) knew of the gentlemen at the bar, he was satisfied he must have received advice which he had rejected; for that no barrister would have advised the offering of such affidavits as those which had been tendered, but that they would have told him he was violating the law, and insulting the court by producing them. That he (Mr. F.) had acted as a man reckless of his own life, so that he could do but mischief to one whom he chose to consider as his enemy. That without regard to any thing like foundation for that which he had imputed, he had endeavoured, first by his affidavits, and then by his address, to heap upon Lord Castlereagh unmerited infamy; and therefore he trusted their lordships would feel it a duty to inflict upon the detendant, by their sentence, a punishment considered as attaching infamy! That if ever their lordships had

met with a case in which there was dis coverable a greater degree of malignity by the libeller, against the person libelled, they would pass a mitigated sentence against Mr. Finnerty; but that while their lordships remembered that justice was to be tempered with mercy, they would remember somewhat of their own dignity, and the dignity of the law, That they would not forget how the law had been outraged and insulted by the defendant, and how that outrage had been aimed at the law through the persons of their lordships, in the reflections cast upon the conduct pursued by their lordships. That they would remember the repeated and accumulated injuries which the prosecutor had received at the hands of the defendant: and having put into the one scale every thing in extenuation, giving to extenuation as much weight as they could, they would place in the other the claims of justice. And he thought they would feel themselves bound to inflict a sentence of the severest nature!

Mr. Garrow followed on the same side, stating, that if any one unacquainted with the forms of proceeding had come into the court, he would have supposed, that instead of Mr. Finnerty be ing awaiting their lordships' judgment for a libel published by him, Loid Castlereagh and other persons of high consideration were there to defend themselves against a supposed malversation in office. He concluded by observing, that if this course of proceeding were to be suffered with impunity, libels would increase, but most probably prosecutions would decrease, for that no man would have the firmness to come to the court to ask for justice.

Mr. Justice Grose then pronounced the judgment of the court in nearly the following terms :

"PETER FINNERTY-You are to receive the sentence of this court, upon an indictment charging you with having composed and published one of the most inflammatory libels against Lord Viscount Castlereagh, as one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state, that the envenomed pen of malice could put upon paper, in respect of a gentleman of his rank and situation in the country. Of this libel we must deem you to be the composer, for upon the indictment it is so charged, and by your suffering judg ment to go by default, you have admitted the fact. Upon the precise nature of it

I have had so lately occasion to comment, in giving the judgment of the court on another offender, that I need only repeat, that that which was an offence in him, must be a still greater offence in you, the author; and whether we consider the steps taken by you preparatory to the publication of this libel, or the malignant purpose of taking those steps and sending it into the world, nothing can be devised much more studiously libellous, base, cruel, or malig nant than this offensive publication. As to mitigation, we in vain look for any thing like it; the whole of your conduct seems to shew you to have proceeded with a cool deliberate intention to commit the crime charged upon you; and in what has passed this day we are sorry to find nothing like a sense of your of fence, or any thing like true contrition. I have stated that the whole of this subject has been lately before us. It has been so lately before us, and is so fresh in our memory, that we have no difficulty in passing upon you, without further deliberation, the sentence of the law; and accordingly this court doth order and adjudge," that for this of "fence you be imprisoned in his Ma"jesty's gaol, in the county of Lincoln, "for eighteen calendar months, and that "at the expiration of that time you do give security for your good behaviour "for five years, yourself in 500l. with two sureties in 2501. each; and that you be further imprisoned in the said gaol till such security be given.-And "that you be in the mean time com"mitted to the custody of the Marshal "of the Marshalsea, in execution of your sentence."

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THE KING 7. MESSRS. HUNT.

Trial before the Chief Justice, Lord Ellenborough, in the Court of King's Bench, at Westminster, on Friday, Feb. 22, 1811, on an Ex Officio information, laid by the Attorney-General, Gibbs, against Messrs. Hunt, the proprietors and one of the printers of a weekly news-papers, called the Exa

miner.

A SPECIAL JURY had been called for by the prosecutor, and were, of course, summoned; but, only two of them appeared. Of course the trial was obliged to be put of, or ten men were to be taken from the common jurors.-The Attorney General chose this, and thus the jury was formed.

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3 Robert Maynard, Glass-house Street, Oilman.

4 Walter Row, Gt. Marlborough Street, Stationer.

5 Richard Bolton, Silver Street, Porkman. 6 John Rutton, Vigo Lane, Cutler. 7 Henry Perkins, Great Marlborough Street, Grocer.

8 William Lonsdale, Broad Street, Cabinet Maker.

9 John Sebrook, Rupert Street, Cook. 10 Thomas Rixon, Carnaby Street, Victualler.

11 John Nunn, Great Crown Street, Victualler.

12 David Millar,Carnaby Market North, Baker.

Mr. Richardson opened the pleadings, by stating, that this was a criminal information filed against John Hunt and Leigh Hunt, the printer, and two of the proprietors of the Examiner, Sunday newspaper, for a seditious libel, to which the defendants had pleaded Not Guilty.

The Attorney General then rose, and said, that he had thought it incumbent on him to presecute the defendants for a libel; the tendency of which was not only to excite the disaffection of the soldiery, by representing that they were treated with improper and excessive severity, but (what was still more mischievous) to represent the treatment of Bonaparte towards his troops, and the means which were used to enlist them, as infinitely preferable to the system employed in Great Britain. The effect of this libel was obviously to excite discontent and dissatisfaction in the minds of the soldiers who had already entered the British service, and to disincline others from entering into that service. How fatal such efforts were to the country, it was unnecessary for the Attorney General to state. The defendants had chosen to select for their motto, what they sup posed him to have said upon the occasion of a former trial of this nature, when it became necessary for the Attorney General to prosecute Mr. Cobbett for animadversions of extreme severity and injustice, upon an occasion of a mutiny in the local militia, which was punished by a court-martial, with a sentence of lashes, the infliction of a part of which was remitted. The defendant on that

occasion chose for his motto, or text, a statement of the circumstance from the news-papers; to which he subjoined a libel of extreme malignity, upbraiding those who endeavoured to suppress the mutiny, and insulting those who stood by to see it punished. On that occasión, too, the defendants took an opportunity of speaking of the manner in which Bonaparte was supposed to recruit his army, taunting and reviling those who talked of his severity, and telling them it was ridiculous to animadvert on his cruelty while so much greater existed in our own army. After observing in that case upon the mild sentence and still milder infliction which attended the mu-. tiny of those men who had risen upon their officers, the Attorney General supposed he did use the sentence which the present defendants had selected for the motto of their libel-" The aggressors were not dealt with as Bonaparte would have treated his refractory troops." (Speech of the Attorney General.) He repeated this assertion now; he verily believed it in Bonaparte's army the offenders would not have escaped with their lives. Mr. Cobbett having been convicted for this libel the present publishers took up the subject; and, whereas Mr. Cobbett took up a particular in stance of military punishment upon which to comment, the present writers tock all they could collect from all the papers and presented them in a mass in the most aggravating manner, evidently for the purpose of inflaming the minds of the soldiers, rendering them disaffected to the service, and subjecting the public to all those calamities which would follow the effect which this publication was calculated to produce. The Attorney General assumed it as a fact, that wherever there was an army, it was absolutely necessary that that army should be governed by laws which were not applicable to the rest of society. In families, it was necessary that children should be obedient to their parents, servants to their masters; and where this obedience did not obtain, the most serious domestic evils were found to ensue. But there the evil ended. In the army it was otherwise. If once the army were let loose from its code of laws, not only would follow the destruction of the military system, but the downfal of the whole state. It was unnecessary to state the consequences which would ensue. It could not be said, that this publication

had not a tendency to these consequences; for what could tend to that end more directly than to represent the military code as cruel and oppressive, and administered with unnecessary severity?Could such a representation as this b exceeded in atrocity? Yes, it could.— The English army could be brought into comparison with the French army, and the preference given to the latter. Having thus opened the principles, upon which the Attorney-General was sure the jury would decide this publication to be a libel, he proceeded to read and comment upon it as follows:

ONE THOUSAND LASHES.

(From the Stamford News.) "The aggressors were not dealt with as Buonaparté would have treated his "refractory troops."-Speech of the Attorney-General.

This was the first motto, and implicated the libel which followed it so closely, that the Attorney General took it to be a continuance of that libel for which Mr. Cobbett had received the sentence of the court. The second motto consisted of the reports of military punishments, collected from all the London newspapers (of which it might be necessary to inform some of the jury, that 60 different ones were published every week) and represented in one mass. The number of troops subject to these punishments consisted of 180,000 local militia, and 90,000 original militia, in all 270,000, besides all the regular troops in the service; and was it fair to pick out all the punishments which had been sentenced on the soldiery, without reporting, at the same time, the number of offenders who had been pardoned, and the number of persons subject to commit the offence? Was this the course of proceeding of a fair discusser of the policy of military flogging? "Corporal Curtis was sentenced to re"ceive ONE THOUSAND LASHES; but,

after receiving two hundred, was, on "his own petition, permitted to volun"teer into a regiment on foreign serVice.-William Clifford, a private in "the 7th royal veteran battalion, was lately sentenced to receive ONE THOU

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SAND LASHES, for repeatedly striking "and kicking his superior officer. He "underwent part of the sentence, by

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receiving seven hundred and fifty lashes, "at Canterbury, in presence of the "whole garrison. A garrison court"martial has been held on board the

"Metcalf transport, at Spithead, on some men of the 4th regiment of foot, "for disrespectful behaviour to their officers. Two THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED

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"parte's soldiers cannot form any notion of that most heart-rending of all exhi"tions on this side hell-AN ENGLISH MILITARY FLOGGING!"-Now, why, in his outset, did this writer compare the treatment of our soldiers with that of Bonaparte's? Did he mean to recommend our government to abolish the present military code, and substitute that of Bonaparté? Did our system drag men from their homes, and oblige them, to enter the army against their will, as that of Bonaparté does? If it did, the Attorney-General could not have dared to stand up this day against any publication which execrated such a plan. Military punishments were severe but was it the interest of the inflicters of them to render them more so than was necessary? And was it not necessary to insure prompt obedience, by prompter justice than could be sought for in any other than the military code? The whole of the above paragraph was comparison with the French; and the obvious tendency of it was to elevate their conduct, and to debase our own.

LASHES were to be inflicted among "them.-Robert Chilman, a private in "the Bearstead and Malling regiment "of local militia, who was lately tried "by a court-martial for disobedience of orders, and mutinous and improper "behaviour while the regiment was em"bodied, has been found guilty of all "the charges, and sentenced to receive EIGHT HUNDRED LASHES, which are "6 to be inflicted on him at Chatham, to "which garrison he is to be marched for "that purpose."-London Newspapers. This was the second motto; and now the libel commences at "The Attorney General said what was 66 very true; these aggressors have certainly not been dealt with as Buona 66 parté would have terated his refractory troops; nor indeed as refractory troops would have been treated in any "civilized country whatever, save and except only this country. Here alone, "in this land of liberty, in this age of "refinement-by a people who, with "their usual consistency, have been in the habit of reproaching their neighbours "with the cruelty of their punishments--“is still inflicted a species of torture, at "least as exquisite as any that was ever "devised by the infernal ingenuity of "the inquisition.-No, as the Attorney "General justly says, Buonaparte does "not treat his refractory troops in this manner; there is not a man in his "ranks whose back is seamed with the lacerating cat-o'-nine tails ;-his sol"diers have never yet been brought up to view one of their comrades stripped "naked, his limbs tied with ropes to a triangular machine, his back torn to "the bone by the merciless cutting whip"cord, applied by persons who relieve "each other at short intervals, that they may bring the full unexhausted strength "of a man to the work of scourging. Buonaparte's soldiers have never yet, "with tingling ears, listened to the piercing screams of a human creature so tortured: they have never seen the "blood oozing from his rent flesh ;-"they have never beheld a surgeon, with "dubious look, pressing the agonized "victim's pulse, and calmly calculating, “ to an odd blow, how far suffering muy "be extended, until, in its extremity, it "encrouch upon life. In short, Bona

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VOL. IX.

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"Let it not be supposed that we in“ tend these remarks to excite a vague "and indiscriminating sentiment against punishment by military law :-no: "when it is considered that discipline "forms the soul of an army, without "which it would at once degenerate "into a mob; when the description of

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persons which compose the body of "what is called an army, and the situa❝tions in which it is frequently placed, are also taken into account, it will, we are afraid, appear but too evident, "that the military code must still be kept distinct from the civil, and dis"tinguished by greater promptitude and severity. Buonaparté is no favourite "of ours, God wot; but if we come to "balance accounts with him on this "particular head, let us see how mat"ters will stand."-The Attorney-General then pointed out with what extreme reluctance the enormities of the French system were mentioned. "recruits his ranks by force,-so do "we" as if by the same degree of force! The imprisonments and deaths to which he has recourse were slightly passed over." We flog those whom we have "forced-he does not. It may be said "he punishes them in some manner;"that is very true. He imprisons his "refractory troops, occasionally, in "chains; and in aggravated cases, he

"He

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