GREAT EXCITEMENT

counsel on either side are arguing, declaiming, coaxing, warning, flattering by turns; while the witnesses are being told to turn their faces toward the box; while the prisoner is casting anxious furtive glances in the same direction ; while the feelings of the spectators can hardly be restrained from open expression, — the jury remain unmoved. The bias of the judge it is seldom difficult to ascertain; but the most acute and practised observation can rarely penetrate the secret of the jury box. How great, then, must have been the power of the advocate which could extort from these grave tradesmen a thrill of horror, and what must have been the effect on all beholders of a demonstration so unusual!

When the exhausted orator at length sunk into his seat, repeated bursts of applause, which the officers of the court in vain attempted to check, interrupted the proceedings for some minutes. The populace are so susceptible of eloquence, and their sympathies are so easily excited against any assertion of authority, that their approbation can seldom be relied on as a testimony of merit, or quoted as an expression of public opinion entitled to much weight. But, on this occasion, there were plain manifestations of the old English hatred of oppression and acts of power. The audience in court were, for the most part, persons of the better sort, who had obtained admission by favour. They represented the growing sense of resentment, at the system lately pursued of suppress

OF THE PUBLIC.

ing all freedom of thought and opinion by the terrors of the law; and a feeling which widely prevailed that, on the result of these trials, it depended whether the trial by jury was any longer to be treated as a sure defence against tyranny and injustice. When the court adjourned at halfpast twelve, the space before the building, the approaches, and the adjoining streets, were thronged with people drawn and kept together by the fame of the great oration which had been made for English liberty. The judges could not get to their carriages. Everybody within the building was a prisoner; for it was found impossible to penetrate the dense mass of people which blockaded every avenue to the court. At length, Erskine went out and addressed a few words to the vast assemblage. He told them to place confidence in the justice of the country, that the only security for Englishmen was in the laws, and that any attempt to overawe or intimidate the court would not only be an affront to public justice, but would endanger the lives of the accused. Such an effect had these few words, that the people begun immediately to disperse, and in a short time the streets were clear. Several witnesses were called for the defence, chiefly, however, to speak to the character of Hardy as a quiet peaceable man, who only desired to promote reform by lawful means. Sheridan, Francis, and Mr. Strutt of Derby, gave evidence to that effect. The Duke of Richmond was called to prove his letter

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RESULTS OF THE

to Colonel Sharman, of which so much had been heard during the trial. This letter contained the duke's celebrated creed of Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and the Abolition of the Royal Veto on the Legislation of the two Houses of Parliament. The appearance of these distinguished persons, after the rabble of spies and informers who had been paraded before the jury for four days, would have attracted much attention at an earlier period; but the public interest in the trial subsided rapidly after the speech of Erskine. The general opinion was, that Hardy must be acquitted, and all men were impatient for the verdict. Nevertheless a very able and lucid summary of the whole case by Gibbs, the junior counsel for the prisoner was listened to with attention. Had it not, indeed, been overshadowed by the transcendant display of his leader, the junior's speech would have been considered a brilliant performance. As it was, it made his fortune at the bar, and ultimately raised him to the great post of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The Solicitor General Mitford replied upon the whole case. Mitford was a Chancery lawyer of fair attainments; but without any experience of the court in which he had now to perform the duty of replying upon Erskine. He undertook to reconstruct a long and complicated case which had been built up with great care by his leader, but had been shattered to fragments by the counsel for the prisoner. He set about his task with the

ACQUITTAL OF HARDY,

deliberation and patience which he was accustomed to in the Court of Chancery. The solicitor's speech consumed ten hours. During this prodigious performance, he fainted; but his audience bore up. The trial, which commenced on the 28th of October, was brought to a close on the 5th of November by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, which was decidedly against the prisoner, yet, on the whole, temperate and fair. At the conclusion of the judge's address, the jury, having requested to be furnished with a copy of the indictment, retired to their room. After an absence of three hours, they returned with a verdict of Not Guilty. Men now congratulated each other that the worst was over. The Government had received a signal check in the headlong career against the liberties of the people. The law had been nobly vindicated against the new doctrine of constructive treason; and, at all events, an Englishman might henceforth speak his mind, or combine with his countrymen, to effect a political object without being in peril of his life. It was thought that the rest of the prosecutions would be abandoned, or that if a further attempt was made, Baxter, the author of the infamous Bill called the Guillotine, or Thelwall, who blew off the head of the pot of porter and said he would serve the King in the like manner, might be put up. But, after hesitating for several days, the Attorney General announced his intention to proceed with another of the indictments, and, to the surprise of all men, the individual he fixed

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John Horne
Tooke.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CROWN

upon, as the successor of Hardy, was John Horne Tooke.

The law officers possibly argued, that though the case was weaker against Horne Tooke than against any of the others, they might have a better chance of fixing criminal responsibility upon so notable a person than upon either of the obscure and insignificant people included in the arraignment. Horne Tooke had, for many years, been the terror of judges, ministers of State, and all constituted authorities. He was that famous Parson Horne who attacked the terrible Junius, after statesmen, judges and generals had fled before him, and drove him back defeated and howling with his wounds. He it was who silenced Wilkes. Some years afterwards he fastened a quarrel on the House of Commons, which he bullied and baffled with his usual coolness and address. Horne Tooke, indeed, was no ordinary man-a profound scholar, and an accomplished man of the world, he could hardly have failed to attain eminence at the bar and in the Senate, had not a perverse destiny imposed on him the indelible orders of the Church. He applied himself to the study of the law, but the Inns of Court determined that a clerk in orders could not be admitted to the profession of the law. He obtained a seat in the House of Commons, and, for the same reason, an Act of Parliament was passed to disqualify him. The disappointments, for which a