every individual under our happy establishment has a right upon this important subject to think for himself.

The defendants therefore are not arraigned before you, nor even censured in observation, for having associated at Manchester to promote what they felt to be the cause of religious and civil liberty; nor are they arraigned or censured for seeking to collect the sentiments of their neighbours and the public concerning the necessity of a reform in the constitution of parliament; these sentiments and objects are wholly out of the question: but they are charged with having unlawfully confederated and conspired to destroy and overthrow the government of the kingdom by OPEN FORCE AND REBELLION, and that to effect this wicked purpose they exercised the King's subjects with arms, perverting that which is our birthright for the protection of our lives and property to the malignant purpose of supporting the enemies of this kingdom in case of an invasion; in order, as my friend has truly said, (for I admit the consequence if the fact is established,) in order to make our country that scene of confusion and desolation which fills every man's heart with dismay and horror when he only reads or thinks of what is transacting at a distance upon the bloody theatre of the war that now reigns in the world. This, and nothing different or less than this, is the charge which is made upon the defendants, at the head of whom stands before you a merchant of honour, property, character, and respect; who has long enjoyed the countenance and friendship of many of the worthiest and most illustrious persons in the kingdom, and whose principles and conduct have more than once been publicly and gratefully acknowledged by the community of which he is a member, for standing forth the friend of their commerce and liberties and the protector of the most essential privileges which Englishmen can enjoy under the laws.

Gentlemen, such a prosecution against such a person ought to have had a strong foundation; and, indeed, putting private justice and all respect of persons wholly out of the question, should not, but upon the most clear conviction and the most urgent necessity, have been instituted at all we are at this moment in a most awful and fearful crisis of affairs; we are told authentically by the Sovereign from the throne that our enemies in France are meditating an invasion, and the kingdom from one end to another is putting in motion to repel it :-in such a state of things, and when the public transactions of government and justice in the two countries pass and repass from one another as if upon the wings of the wind, is it a politic thing to prepare this solemn array of justice upon such a dangerous

dangerous subject without a reasonable foundation, or ra ther without an urgent call, and at a time too when it is our common interest that France should believe us to be what we are and ever have been, one heart and soul to protect our country and our constitution? Is it wise or prudent, putting private justice wholly out of the question, that it should appear to the councils of France, apt enough to exaggerate advantages, that the judge representing the government in the northern district of this kingdom should be sitting here in judgment in the presence of all the gentlemen whose property lies in the country, assembled, I observe, upon the occasion, and very properly, to witness so interesting a process, to trace and to punish the existence of a rebellious conspiracy to support an invasion from France? A conspiracy not existing in a single district alone, but maintaining itself by criminal concert and correspondence in every district, town, and city in the kingdom; projecting nothing less than the utter destruction. and subversion of all the authorities of the country: Good God! can it be for the interest of government that such a state of this country should go forth ?-Unfortunately the rumour and effect of this day's business will spread where the evidence may not travel with it to serve as an antidote to the mischief; for, certainly it never will nor can be believed in France, or in Europe, who know the spirit of our laws, what we are witnesses to to-day;-it never will be credited that all this serious process has no foundation either in fact or probability, and that it stands upon the single evidence of a common soldier, or rather a common vagabond, discharged as unfit to be a soldier; a wretch, lost to every sense of God and religion, who avows, that he has none for either, and who is incapable of observing even common decency as a witness in the court: this will never be believed, and the country, whose best strength at home and abroad is the opinion and confidence of soundness in all its members, will suffer from the credit which government will receive for the justice of this proceeding.

What then can be more beneficial than that you should make haste as public and private men to undeceive the world, to do justice to your fellow-subjects, and vindicate your country: what can be more beneficial than that you, as honest men, should upon your oaths and repronounce cord by your verdict, that however Englishmen may differ in religious opinions, which in such a land of thinking ever must be the case; that however they may separate in political speculations as to the wisest and best formation of a house of commons; that though some may think highly

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of the church and its establishment, whilst others, but with equal sincerity, prefer the worship of God with other ceremonies, or without any ceremonies; that though some may think that it is unsafe to touch the constitution at this particular moment, and some that at no time it is safe to touch it, while others think that its very existence depends upon immediate reformation, and that this is of all seasons the wisest for men of rank and property, while yet they have authority and influence, to employ these high trusts. of high station for the universal good; what can be more beneficial than that your verdict should establish that though the country is thus divided upon these political subjects, as it ever has been in every age and period of our history, yet that we all recollect that we live in the land which our fathers have left us as an inheritance, that we all know and feel we have one common duty and one, common interest, and that we are all ready to stand or fall by our country this will be the language of : your verdict whatever you yourselves may think upon these topics connected with, but still collateral to the cause :-whether you shall approve or disapprove of the opinions or objects of the defendants, I know that you will still with one mind revolt with indignation at the evidence you have heard, when you shall have heard also the observations I have to make upon it, and, what is far more important, the facts I shall bring forward to encounter it; to these last words I beg your particular attention: I say when you shall hear the facts with which I mean to encounter the evidence, because my learned friend has supposed that I had nothing with which to support the cause, but by railing at his witness and endeavouring to traduce his character by calling others to reproach it: he has said that I could encounter his testimony by no one fact, but that he had only to apprehend the influ ence which my address might have upon you; as if I, an utter stranger here, could have any possible weight or influence, to oppose to him who has been so long known and honoured in this place.

But although my learned friend seems to have expected no adverse evidence, he appears to have been apprehensive for the credit and consistency of his own; for he has told you that we have drawn this man into a lure not uncommon for the purpose of entrapping witnesses into a contradiction of testimony; that we have ensnared him into the company of persons who have drawn him in by insiduous questions, and written down what he has been made to declare to them in destruction of his original evidence, for the wicked purpose of attacking the sworn testimony of truth and cutting down the consequences which

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would have followed from it to the defendants. If such a scene of wickedness has been practised it must be known to the witness himself, yet my learned friend will recollect that though he made this charge in his hearing before his examination, he has positively denied the whole of it; for I put it to him point by point, pursuing the opening as my guide the witness denies that he has been drawn into any lure; he denies that any trap has been laid for him; he denies that he has been asked any questions by any body;-if I am mistaken I desire to be corrected, and ticularly so by my learned friend, because I wish to state it as it is; he has then denied all these things; he has further sworn that he never acknowledged to Mr. Walker that he had wronged or injured him, or that the evidence he had given against him was false; that he never had gone down upon his knees in his presence, to implore his forgiveness; that he never held his hands before his face to hide the tears that were flowing down his face in the moment of contrition, or of terror at the consequence of his crimes: all this he has positively and repeatedly sworn in answer to questions deliberately put to him; and instead of answering with doubt or as trying to recollect whether any thing approaching such a representation had happened, he put his hands to his sides and laughed, as you saw, at me who put the questions, with that sneer of contempt and insolence which has accompanied the whole of his evidence, on my part at least of his examination:-if nothing therefore was at stake but the destruction of this man's evidence and with it the prosecution which rests for its whole existence upon it, I should proceed at once to confound him with testimony, the truth of which my learned friend himself will I am sure not bring into question; but as I wish the whole conduct of my clients to stand fairly before you and not to rest merely upon positive swearing destructive of positive testimony, and as I wish the evidence I mean to bring before you and the falsehood of that which it opposes to be clearly understood, I will state to you how it has happened that this strange prosecution has come before you.

The town of Manchester has been long extremely divided in religious and civil opinions, and while I wish to vindicate those whom I represent in this place I desire not to inflame differences which I hope in a short season will be forgotten; I wish on the contrary that every thing which proceeds from me may be the means of conciliating rather than exasperating dissentions which have already produced much mischief and which perhaps but for the lesson of to-day might have produced much more.

Gentlemen,

Gentlemen, you all know that there have been for centu ries past in this country various sects of Christains wor shipping God in different forms, and holding a diversity of religious opinions; and that the law has for a long season deprived numerous classes, even of his Majesty's protestant subjects, of privileges which it confers upon the rest of the public, setting as it were a mark upon them and keepthem below the level of the community by shutting them out from offices of trust and confidence in the country: whether these laws be wise or unwise, whether they ought to be continued or abolished, are questions for the legisla ture and not for us; but thus much I am warranted in saying, that it is the undoubted privilege of every man or class. of men in England, to petition parliament for the removal of any system or law, which either actually does aggrieve or which is thought to be a grievance: impressed with the sense of this inherent privilege this very Constitutional Society, which is supposed by my learned friend the attorney general to have started upon the breaking out of the war with France, for the purpose of destroying the constitution, this very so ciety owed its birth to the assertion of this indisputable birth right of Englishmen, which the authors of this prose. cution most rashly thought proper to stigmatize and resist. It is well known that in 1790 the Dissenters in the different parts of the kingdom were solicitous to bring before parliament their application to put an end for ever to all divisions upon religious subjects, and to make us all, what I look forward yet to see us, one harmonious body, living like one family together; it is also well remembered with what zeal and eloquence that great question was managed in the House of Commons by Mr. Fox; and the large majority with which the repeal of the Test Acts was rejected; it seems therefore strange that the period of this rejection should be considered as an Æraeither of danger to the church or of religious triumph to Christians; nevertheless, a large body of gentlemen and others at Manchester, whose motives I am far from wishing to scrutinize or condemn, considered this very wish of the Dissenters as injurious to their rights, and as dangerous to the church and state; they published advertisements expressive of these sentiments, and the rejection of the bill in the commons produced a society stiled the Church and King Club, which met for the first time to celebrate what they called the glorious decision of the House of Commons in rejecting the prayer of their dissenting brethren.

Gentlemen, it is not for me to say, that it was unjust or impolitic in parliament to reject the application; but surely I may without offence suggest, that it was hardly a