Rev. James Kirkwood sworn.-Examined by Mr. Jeffrey.

I

Are you acquainted with Mr. Baird have had that pleasure for nearly two years. Do you know him intimately?-Very intimately. No one more so.

In the course of your acquaintance with Mr. Baird, have you had conversations with him on political subjects?—I have.

Has he expressed his sentiments with apparent sincerity and conviction ?-With the greatest I have no doubt.

Did he express an attachment to the constitution as established by law, or a desire to have it altered?-1fe expressed a desire that the popular part of the constitution should be strengthened and increased, never that the constitution should be overturned.

He wished some reformation of the representation of the House of Commons?—Yes.

Did he ever explain by what means he thought this should be attempted?—I have often heard him say he was anxious that any thing like violence should be avoided, and that none but constitutional measures should be taken.

Does Mr. Baird attend your congregation? -Yes.

Is he a man of peaceable and moral conduct? -To the best of my knowledge he is so.

Did he ever discover any tendency to riotous or disorderly conduct?-I never observed any thing of that kind in him.

He is a peaceable man?--I think so. Has he any family?—He has several children.

Do you think him capable of intentionally exciting tumult or violence among the people? -I should certainly think he is altogether incapable of designedly doing so.

John Wyllie sworn.-Examined by
Mr. Cockburn.

Do you hold any office under government? -I am surveyor of taxes for the third district of Ayrshire.

Do you hold any military commission ?-I was in the Volunteers till 1809, and I still hold a commission in the Local Militia.

I need hardly ask you if you are a keen reformer yourself? I never attended meetings for such purposes.

You are rather ministerially inclined, I presume. Do you know Mr. Baird ?—Yes.

What appeared to be his political sentiments?-He seemed to be a friend to the constitution, but wished a reform in the representation.

He had no desire to overturn the constitution? I have heard him warmly extol the constitution.

Is he a quiet man?-Yes, he has been so ever since I knew him, and that is the greatest part of his life.

Is he respectable in point of situation? Very much so.

Have you served along with him in any corps?—I was subaltern, and he was a captain in the Ayrshire.

Did his conduct as an officer give satisfaction ?—He was a very active officer.

Do you know of a meeting held at Kilmarnock in December last ?-I heard of it.

Had you any conversation with Mr. Baird about it?-Yes, once or twice. I heard a gentleman read an account of the proceedings in a company from a Glasgow paper.

Did you ever hear Mr. Baird say any thing about the speeches?-I never heard him make any remarks on them.

Do you know Mr. M'Laren?-Yes.

Was he in that corps you spoke of?-Yes, in my company.

sir.

Did he behave well?-As far as I know,

John Brown sworn.-Examined by
Mr. Jeffrey.

Are you a writer in Kilmarnock ?—Yes. Have you a partner in business?—Yes, the town-clerk.

Are you acquainted with Mr. Baird ?—Very well. Is he a respectable man?-One of the most so in the town.

Has he a family?-He is a widower, with four or five children.

Do you recollect a meeting in December last for petitioning parliament ?—Yes, I do.

Do you know whether a committee met before and after that meeting?-I believe one sat several days before the meeting.

Were you a member of it ?—No, nor was I ever at the meeting..

Did Mr. Baird ever communicate to you what was passing?-Scarcely a day passed in which we did not converse on the occurrences of the meeting; and I was in the habit of asking what passed at the committee.

What did he state as the object of the petitioners ?-To procure a reform in parliament. By what means?-By constitutional means. Did he disavow violence or other means?— Most distinctly.

You know Mr. Baird was at the public meeting: Did he give you any account of what took place there? Yes, he told me who spoke. When the proceedings were published, I was surprised at seeing a paragraph which I did not look for, and I told him it was a pity it was there. He said he disapproved of it himself, and was against printing it at all, but that a vote was taken on the subject by the committee, and they determined to print it, as they did not wish a garbled statement of the pro ceedings to go before the public.

Did he make observations on any of the other speeches?-He pointedly objected to M'Laren's speech.

Did he object to any of the others?-He disapproved of one or two, as having language' too keen and disrespectful.

Does it consist with your knowledge that he

has held commissions in military corps?—He commanded a company of rifle volunteers for some time.

Did he give satisfaction in his military capacity?—I never heard any complaint against him. I always conceived he behaved like a gentleman.

You will observe, then, that in the minor proposition of the indictment, the prisoners are charged-M'Laren with having, at a public meeting, on the 7th of last December, held in the neighbourhood of Kilmarnock, and attended principally by the lower orders of the people, used certain seditious and inflammatory language, in a speech which he then deliver

From what you know of him was he sincere in his sentiments in favour of constitutional modes of proceeding for obtaining redress of grievances ?-There is no question of that. He never approved of any other than constitutional modes of redress. I have known him intimately these eight or ten years.

Are you clerk to the road trustees?—Yes. Did you understand Mr. Baird objected to these expressions not as being improper in themselves but as likely to lead the persons who uttered them into a scrape?-He did not appear to be apprehensive of any consequences to result from them, but he objected to them as improper expressions.

Are you acquainted with M'Laren?-A little. I have met him on business.

Do you know anything of his character?-I never heard anything against him.

Lord Advocate.-Gentlemen of the jury; you have heard from the indictment that the panels are charged generally in the major proposition with the crime of sedition, a crime well known in the law of Scotland, and with the general description of which you must be already familiar, but with which, at all events, you have had additional means of being made acquainted, from the luminous and satisfactory judgments of their lordships, delivered this morning in the commencement of the trial. I shall not, therefore, in this part of the observations which it is incumbent upon me in discharge of my public duty to address to you, say any thing in further explanation of the law of sedition, which as a crime calculated to unsettle the order of society, and to introduce tumult, anarchy, and bloodshed into these realms, which, for upwards of a century have enjoyed the highest degree of freedom that ever fell to the lot of any people-is one of the most dangerous which can be committed against the state. Before, however, concluding the remarks with which I shall have to trouble you, it may be necessary for me to draw your attention to the application of the law to the charges preferred against the panels. In the first instance, however, I shall confine myself exclusively to the evidence which has been adduced, in order to establish that the acts at least, alleged in the indictment to have been committed by the prisoners, have been brought home to them.

VOL. XXXIII.

The other panel, Baird, is charged with baving published his speech, and with having been accessary to the printing and circulating a seditious tract or statement, purporting to be an" Account of the proceedings of the public meeting of the burgesses and inhabitants of the town of Kilmarnock, held on the 7th of December 1816, for the purpose of deliberating on the most proper method of remedying the present distresses of the country, with a full report of the speeches on that occasion." Then follow particular passages contained in that publication, which are alleged generally to be seditious, tending to inflame the minds of the public against the constitution of the kingdom, and which, it is affirmed, were published by him with the wicked and felonious purpose of exciting sedition against the Government, and of withdrawing the affections of the people from the established order of things in the country. The publication has been duly authenticated, and although I shall afterwards more particularly refer you to some of its most striking passages, the whole, I trust, will receive your full and deliberate consideration.

In the conclusion of the indictment both prisoners are charged with being accessaries to the crimes committed by each. From this you will understand, that if, from a full consideration and investigation of the proof which I have laid before you, you should be of opinion that the prisoner Baird was accessary to making the seditious speech delivered by M'Laren, or that the other panel, M'Laren, was accessary to publishing or circulating the seditious libel, stated more particularly to have been sent into the world by Baird, then you will have to find, supposing you are of opinion that the speech and publication are seditious, that both are guilty art and part of the crime laid in the indictment.

In considering this part of the case as a question of evidence, I do not think that it is necessary for me to go very deeply into the import of the depositions of the witnesses; for I conceive, that while you are called upon to E

or

"let us lay, our petitions at the foot of the throne, where sits our august prince, whose generous nature will incline his ear to hear the cries of his people, which he is bound to do by the constitutional laws of the country; and we are thereby bound to give him our allegiance:

deaf hear to the general cries" or "voice of his people, to hell with allegiance." That is the express statement given by a person who himself attended the meeting as a party, who cannot be supposed to be very unfavourable to the prisoners, and whose testimony, indeed, was given in a way that must satisfy your minds he did not intend to press the case more than it would bear against either of them.

Next we have the witness Merrie, who ex

The first exception is, that there is something inaccurate in the words at the passage regarding allegiance; but he does not state, or allege, in what particular these expressions are inaccurate; neither does he deny that they convey the import of what he had delivered. And, no doubt, there is an inaccuracy in the printed account of this passage; because, you will observe, that one monosyllable, of very great import, is cautiously omitted, which, it is proved by the rest of the evidence, beyond all doubt, the prisoner actually employed. The word "hell" is omitted altogether; and while the prisoner refrained from stating what words were incorrectly given, I should be entitled to infer that it consisted in this omission; and, if so, it is of no importance to the general result. Indeed, it is enough for my purpose that he admits generally the accuracy and authenticity of the publication; because I have the means of supporting the strong evidence afforded by this general admission, by other testimony which supplies whatever is wanting in his own declaration.

The second exception which he makes is, that some words, which are mentioned at the end of the declaration, are printed, which he did not deliver at the hustings; but you will observe, that he admits that those words were in the copy of his speech which he gave to be printed, and that he does not allege that he, at any time. ever objected to the publisher, or to the committee, that his speech as delivered was not accurately given, but, on the contrary, that he acquiesced, down to the hour of his emitting this declaration, in its being the true and fair account of the speech he had made on that occasion.

Let us now attend to the parole proof, by which this déclaration has been amply confirmed.

Of the two witnesses who were first examined, you have Finnie, who swears that the speech which he heard M'Laren deliver on that occa sion contained these words: "We will lay,"

tinct as to the whole passage), that M'Laren made the first speech. He remembers the words "to hell with" or "for such allegiance." He says M'Laren "wished the people to address their august sovereign, and he meant their allegiance to him." Then he remembers the words, "if he turned a deaf ear to the voice of his people;" and after that came the words "to hell with allegiance."

Besides the testimonies I have now referred you to, I might, if it were necessary, go over the evidence of many more of the witnesses; but this must be superfluous. You will, however, keep in remembrance the evidence of Samson, who, when called back and examined for the prisoners, deposed, that he attended the meeting of the committee when the speeches were given in for publication by the different persons by whom they had been delivered at the public meeting; that M'Laren was present at that meeting of the committee, and that when he produced his manuscript, there was a correction made on it by Baird, which was read to the meeting; and that the pencils marking made by Baird were those very words I have referred to which are given in this speech, and copied into the indictment which is lying before you. He states, that the words which were added by Baird with the pencil are," which he is bound to do by the laws of the country: But should he be so infatuated as to turn a deaf ear to their just petition, he has forfeited their allegiance. Yes, my fellow countrymen, in such a case to hell with our allegiance." These are the words which with a pencil Baird added to M'Laren's speech in his own presence. Now why, I will ask, ace cording to the prisoner's own friend Mr. Samson, were they added? Why, because the committee wished to give a true account of what took place at the meeting, or, to use his own words, "because the manuscript delivered in was not complete according to the way in which the speech was delivered." The committee did not wish to garble the proceedings, but to give a minute, true and accurate account of what happened; and the passage therefore was inserted. All this, you will remember, took place in M'Laren's presence; and did he

the contrary, he agreed that the passage should remain there, because it was an accurate account of what he had said. Some feeling of propriety, no doubt, prevented the committee from putting in one word which had been used by M'Laren, and there is a blank accordingly in the printed paper; but the witnesses who were examined fill up the word, and tell you what is wanting. You have M'Laren's admission, therefore, in his declaration, of the general accuracy of the printed account of his speech; you have the parole proof; you have this statement of Samson's; and you have M'Laren's virtual admission in the committee, that these were the expressions he used. It does, therefore, appear to me to be unnecessary to go further in examining evidence on this part of the subject. I think it is clear that these words were used by M'Laren, and that of this it is impossible you should doubt. I may now, then, put the prisoner M'Laren aside altogether, in so far as the mere fact of the speech having been delivered by him is concerned; and it is exclusively to that I am speaking at present.

As to the prisoner Baird, we must also look to the terms of his declaration. He declares, "that the 7th of December last was fixed for a general meeting at the Dean-park: That the declarant attended that meeting, and Alexander M'Laren, weaver in Kilmarnock, mounted the hustings, and opened the meeting with a speech: That James Johnstone, muslin-agent in Kilmarnock, was called to the chair, and read a speech to the meeting from a memorandumbook. And being shewn a manuscript consisting of nineteen pages, declares, That he is pretty certain that it is the same that he read to the meeting, and which the declarant saw some days afterwards in Walter Andrew's office, and which is docqueted and signed as relative hereto. Declares, That the proceedings were ordered to be printed, and the declarant was appointed by the committee, along with several others, to superintend the printing: That the declarant assisted in correcting the grammatical errors in the manuscript, along with the said Walter Andrew, and the declarant assisted a little at the printing office in correcting the proof-copy: And being shewn a half-sheet of paper, titled on the back, "No. 5, Mr. Burt's letter," declares, That said words are of the declarant's hand-writing, and the said half-sheet of paper was given in by the declarant to the printer, along with the rest of the manuscripts, and said half-sheet of paper is docqueted and signed by the declarant and sheriff-substitute as relative hereto. Declares, That the proceedings of said meeting were printed by Hugh Crawford, and a great number of copies were sent to the declarant's shop, and he retailed them at 4d. a piece."

The result of this declaration seems to be, that the prisoner admits that he was one of the committee appointed to superintend the publication complained of that he assisted in correcting the manuscript to fit it for going to the

printing of it, assisting even in correcting the press, and that a great number of copies were sent to his shop which he retailed and distributed.

Accordingly this admission, which, I have said, is, in point of law, a strong circumstance of evidence against the prisoner, is amply confirmed by the depositions of the witnesses, by several of whom it has been proved that he attended the meeting upon the 7th of December, and that he heard the speeches contained in this publication delivered or read by the persons to whom they are attributed. By others it has been proved. that he was one of the committee appointed to superintend the publication; and by one of that committee it is established, that in the matter of publication he took a most active concern, perusing at least the manuscript of some of the speeches as they were given in by the authors or reputed authors; and that such was his vigilance, in providing that none of the precious matter which had come before the public meeting should be lost, that the passage which is chiefly complained of in the first charge against M‘Laren, having been omitted in the manuscript, he himself took his pencil, and, for the edification of the public, to whom the pamphlet was addressed, actually wrote it down on the press copy.

In like manner, you have it proved by Murray, Mr. Crawford's journeyman, that Baird attended at the office during the time the publication was printing—that he examined the first proof, and suggested at least one, if

not more corrections.

Again, as to the fact of publication, it is proved by the prisoner's shop-boy, and by the witness who bought a copy at his shop, as also by one of the members of the committee appointed to superintendt he publication, and who delivered great numbers of the pamphlet for the purpose of being sold and distributed, that Baird was the principal hand by whom this publication, be its merits or demerits what they may, was sent out upon the world.

When you consider this body of evidence, therefore, I cannot entertain a doubt that you must be clear that the fact of the publication by Baird is incontrovertibly established.

Upon this part of the question, therefore, I have only further to remark, that there can be as little ground for doubting, that the prisoner M'Laren, besides being bound to answer for delivering the speech, which in this indictment is charged with having been seditious, must also answer for being an accessary to printing and publishing the pamphlet upon the table. The facts of his having given in the manuscript copy of his own speech for the purpose of being published, and that he was a member of the committee of publication-facts which are proved beyond all contradiction by the witnesses to whom I have already referred, as well as by his own admission-can leave no manner of doubt upon this subject.