is a mere repetition of that attempt, without any additional aggravation. In 1794, the design, and odious enough it was, was confined to the doctrine of constructive guilt; but it did not venture upon the atrocious outrage of a substituted jurisdiction. The Englishman was tried on English ground, where he was known, where he could procure his witnesses, where he had lived, and where he was accused of the crime, whether actual or constructive; but the locality of the trial defeated the infernal malice of those prosecutions. The speeches of half the natural day, where every juryman had his hour, were the knell of sleep, but they were not the knell of death. The project was exposed, and the destined victims were saved. A piece so damned could not safely be produced again on the same stage. It was thought wise, therefore, to let some little time pass, and then to let its author produce it on some distant provincial theatre for his own benefit, and at his own expense and hazard. To drag an English judge from his bench, or an English member of parliament from the senate, and in the open day, in the city of London, to strap him to the roof of a mail coach, or pack him up in a wagon, or hand him over to an Irish bailiff, with a rope tied about his leg, to be goaded forward like an ox, on his way to Ireland, to be there tried for a constructive misdemeanor, would be an experiment, perhaps, not very safe to be attempted. These merlins, therefore, thought it prudent to change the scene of their

sorcery;

t

modo Roma, modo ponit Athenis!

The people of England might, perhaps, enter into the feelings of such an exhibition with an officiousness of sympathy, not altogether for the benefit of the contrivers

Nec natos coram populo Medea trucidetand it was thought wise to try the second production before spectators whose necks were pliant, and whose hearts were broken; where every man who dared to refuse his worship to the golden calf, would have the

furnace before his eyes, and think that it was at once useless and dangerous to speak, and discreet, at least, if it was not honest, to be silent.-I cannot deny that it was prudent to try an experiment, that, if successful, must reduce an Englishman to a state of slavery more abject and forlorn than that of the helots of Sparta, or the negroes of your plantations-for see, my lords, the extent of the construction now broadly and directly contended for at your bar.-The king's peace in Ireland, it seems, is distinct from his peace in England, and both are distinct from his peace in Scotland; and, of course, the same act may be a crime against each distinct peace, and severally and successively punishable in each country-so much more inveterate is the criminality of a constructive than of an actual offence. So that the same man for the same act against laws that he never heard of, may be punished in Ireland, be then sent to England by virtue of the warrant of Mr. Justice Bell, endorsed by my lord Ellenborough, and after having his health, his hopes, and his property destroyed for his constructive offences against his majesty's peace in Ireland, and his majesty's peace in England, he may find that his majesty's peace in the Orkneys has, after all a vested remainder in his carcass; and, if it be the case of a libel, for the full time and term of fourteen years from the day of his conviction before the Scottish jurisdiction, to be fully completed and determined. Is there, my lords, can there be a man who hears me, that does not feel that such a construction of such a law would put every individual in society under the despotical dominion, would reduce him to be the despicable chattel of those most likely to abuse their power, the profligate of the higher, and the abandoned of the lower orders; to the remorseless malice of a vindictive minister, to the servile instrumentality of a trading justice?-Can any man who hears me, conceive any possible cause of abduction of rape or of murder, that may not be perpetrated, under the construction now shamelessly put forward? -Let us suppose a case.-By this construction a

person in England, by procuring a misdemeanor to be committed in Ireland, is constructively guilty in Ireland, and, of course, triable in Ireland-let us suppose that Mr. Justice Bell receives, or says he receives information, that the lady of an English nobleman wrote a letter to an Irish chambermaid, counselling her to steal a row of pins from an Irish pedlar, and that the said row of pins was, in consequence of such advice and counsel, actually stolen, against the Irish peace of our lord the king; suppose my lord Ellenborough, knowing the signature, and reverencing the virtue of his tried and valued colleague, endorses this warrant; is it not clear as the sun that this English lady may, in the dead of night, be taken out of her bed, and surrendered to the mercy of two or three Irish bailiffs, if the captain that employed them should happen to be engaged in any cotemporary adventure nearer to his heart, without the possibility of any legal authority interposing to save her, to be matronized in a journey by land, and a voyage by sea, by such modest and respectable guardians, to be dealt with during the journey as her companions might think proper-and to be dealt with after by the worshipful correspondent of the noble and learned lord, Mr. Justice Bell, according to law? -I can, without much difficulty, my lords, imagine, that after a year or two had been spent in accounts current, in drawing and redrawing for human flesh between our worthy Bells and Medlicotts on this side of the water, and their noble or their ignoble correspondents on the other, that they might meet to settle their accounts, and adjust their balances. I can conceive that the items might not be wholly destitute of curiosity. Brother B. I take credit for the body of an English patriot.-Brother E. I set off against it that of an Irish judge.-Brother B. I charge you in account with three English bishops.-Brother E. I set off Mrs. M'Lean and two of her chickens; petticoat against petticoat.-Brother B. I have sent you the body of a most intractable disturber, a fellow that has had the impudence to give a threshing to Buona

parte himself; I have sent you sir Sidney. Dearest brother E.But, I see my learned opponents smile

I see their meaning.I may be told, that I am putting imaginary and ludicrous, but not probable, and, therefore, not supposable cases.But I answer, that reasoning would be worthy only of a slave, and disgraceful to a freeman. I answer, that the condition and essence of rational freedom is, not that the subject probably will not be abused, but that no man in the state shall be clothed with any discretionary power, under the colour and pretext of which he can dare to abuse him. As to probability, I answer, that in the mind of man there is no more instigating temptation to the most remorseless oppression, than the rancour and malice of irritated pride and wounded vanity, To the argument of improbability I answer, the very fact, the very question in debate, nor to such answer can I see the possibility of any reply, save that the prosecutors are so heartily sick of the point of view into which they have put themselves by their prosecution, that they are not likely again to make a similar experiment. But when I see any man fearless of power, because it possibly, or probably, may not be exercised upon him, I am astonished at his fortitude; I am astonished at the tranquil courage of any man who can quietly see that a loaded cannon is brought to bear upon him, and that a fool is sitting at its touch hole with a lighted match in his hand. And yet, my lords, upon a little reflection, what is it, after what we have seen, that should surprise us, however it may shock us?-What have the last ten years of the world been employed in, but in destroying the land marks of rights, and duties, and obligations; in substituting sounds in the place of sense; in substituting a vile and, canting methodism in the place of social duty and practical honour; in suffering virtue to evaporate into phrase, and morality into hypocrisy and affectation ?-We talk of the violations of Hamburgh or of Baden; we talk of the despotical and remorseless barbarian who tramples on the common privileges of the human being; who in defiance of

the most known and sacred rights, issues the brutal mandate of usurped authority; who brings his victim by force within the limits of a jurisdiction to which he never owed obedience, and there butchers him for a constructive offence. Does it not seem as if it was a contest whether we should be more scurrilous in invective, or more atrocious in imitation? Into what a condition must we be sinking, when we have the front to select as the subjects of our obloquy, those very crimes which we have flung behind us in the race of profligate rivalry!

My lords, the learned counsel for the prosecutors have asserted, that this act of the forty-fourth of the king extends to all offences, no matter how long or previously to it they may have been committed.The words are, "That from and after the first of August 1804, if any person, &c. shall escape, &c.Now, certainly nothing could be more convenient for the purpose of the prosecutors than to dismiss, as they have done, the words "escape and go into," altogether. If those words could have been saved from the ostracism of the prosecutors, they must have designated some act of the offenders, upon the happening or doing of which the operation of the statute might commence; but the temporary bar of these words they wave by the equity of their own construction, and thereby make it a retrospective law; and having so construed it a manifestly ex post facto law, they tell you it is no such thing, because it creates no new offence, and only makes the offender amenable who was not so before. That law professes to take effect only from and after the first of August 1804.No, for eighteen months before that day, it is clear that Mr. Johnson could not be removed by any power existing from his country and his dwelling; but the moment the act took effect, it is made to operate upon an alleged offence, committed, if at all, confessedly eighteen months before. But another word as to the assertion, that it is not ex post facto, because it creates no new crime, but only makes the party amenable. The force of that argument is precisely