114 Ch. 34. 1794 ACQUITTAL OF TOOKE. This result was anticipated by the public with as much certainty as the catastrophe of an illconstructed play. The whole proceeding, indeed, resembled the afterpiece which follows the grand tragedy. The intense excitement of Hardy's trial, the repeated bursts of feeling; the running commentary of rage and scorn which accompanied the cross-examination of the spies; the anxiety depicted in every countenance; the rapturous acclamation which attended and followed the great speech for the prisoner; all were wanting at the second trial. The people who thronged the Old Bailey to see Parson Horne tried for his life, resorted to the most attractive place of amusement for the time in London. The ready wit of the prisoner, his cool assurance, his battles with the Court, and with the law officers, in many of which he had the advantage, or seemed to have it, delighted the audience. Even the jury sometimes joined in the laughter which continually pealed through the Court. If anything was wanting to make the scene completely ridiculous, it was supplied by the counsel for the Crown. The AttorneyGeneral, in his reply, attempted a touch of pathos. Alluding to his character, which nobody thought of attacking, he described his good name as the only inheritance he should leave to his children; and, having tears at command, began to weep. The Solicitor mingled his tears with those of the Attorney; and while the spectators regarded with amazement the unprovoked emotion of the two FURTHER PROSECUTIONS. old Chancery lawyers, Horne Tooke, in an audible whisper, said 'the Attorney was crying at the thought of the little inheritance he should bequeath to his children.' After the verdict had been delivered, Horne Tooke, with the irregularity and independence which had marked his conduct during the whole proceedings, made a speech to the Court and jury, in which he praised and thanked them both in an approving and patronising style, which reached the height of impudence. Nobody expected to hear any more of the State trials; but, in the following week, the Commission again sat, when four of the prisoners, Bonney, Joyce, Kyd, and Holcroft, were acquitted, no evidence being offered against them. Holcroft, who had courted prosecution by voluntarily surrendering, wanted to address the Court; but the licence, which had been permitted to the privileged veteran Tooke, was not to be extended to the ambitious playwright; and Holcroft was peremptorily silenced. 115 Ch. 34. 1794 These prisoners being disposed of, Thelwall was Thelwall. placed in the dock for trial. Thelwall was one of those vain, shallow half-educated persons, who are to be found in the metropolis, and in every large town. He had set up as a political lecturer, but had not a particle of the talent and address which could raise him to the position of a demagogue. It is difficult to see what purpose could be answered by the conviction of such a man, after the Government had failed in their 116 1794 ACQUITTAL OF THELWALL. Ch. 34. attempt on the Secretary of the great revolutionary club, and on the only individual connected with the seditious societies, whose abilities and experience rendered him formidable. The acquittal of Thelwall, which followed almost as a matter of course, was accepted by the law officers as a final defeat, and the other prisoners awaiting their trial were immediately set at liberty. Beneficial results of the trials. Such was the issue of these famous prosecutions. They failed in their immediate object; but, like many measures of a short-sighted policy, they were attended with beneficial effects, which their promoters never foresaw. They inspired a confidence in the tribunals far more conducive to the public safety and the maintenance of existing institutions, than the blood of a hundred traitors. The people now felt secure, under the protection of the laws, from the wild assaults of a Government stricken with craven terror, from the attempts of prerogative lawyers to torture the letter of the law to their destruction, as well as from the plots of spies and informers, who infested every haunt of business and pleasure. If these twelve men, or either of them, had been brought to the scaffold, the consequence would have been disastrous. Disturbances in all the great towns, a rising in Ireland, dangerous commotions in Scotland, would probably have ensued. An Irish rebellion, already planned, and which broke out under less favourable auspices, three years later, would have afforded full employment to the available military force. The gentry. PROBABLE RESULTS OF A CONVICTION. and yeomanry, who were loyal to a man, could probably have suppressed any outbreak in the British Isles; but the English people are peculiarly jealous of blood shed in civil commotions; they had not yet forgotten the riot in St. George's fields, in which only some half dozen persons were shot down five-and-twenty years before; the Manchester massacre, as it was called, which took place fiveand-twenty years afterwards, agitated the island from north to south, and is yet remembered after more than forty prosperous and happy years. The spirit of the Scottish people, slowly moved, but stubborn and dangerous when aroused, has repeatedly been shewn. Government might, and probably would, have been able to maintain its authority; but there can be no doubt that the conviction and execution of Hardy and his associates would have given a fearful impulse to the principles of the French revolution in this country. 117 Ch. 34 If the Government had been advised that a clear case of treason could be proved against the members of the revolutionary societies, it would have been their duty to prosecute for the higher offence. But, if they thought there was any reasonable doubt that twelve men of plain understanding would be satisfied with the proof of a crime which is strictly defined by a single clause in a plain Act of Parliament, upon the production of a huge mass of incongruous papers, eked out by the odious and tainted evidence of spies and informers, it is equally clear that they ought not 1794 LORD ELDON'S REASONS FOR to have charged the highest crime known to the law. We are informed, on the first authority, that such doubts existed. The Attorney-General is reported to have said, shortly after the trial of Hardy, that the evidence was, in his opinion, so nicely balanced, that had he himself been on the jury, he did not know what verdict he should have given.' But Lord Eldon has himself recorded the reasons which determined him to frame these indictments. He states, that on the examination of the prisoners before the Privy Council, the judges, who were members of that body,' gave it as their opinion, that the parties were guilty of high treason. He adds, still more strangely, that the cases, as treasonable cases, were the subjects of communication to, or debates in, Parliament. In these circumstances, he did not think himself at liberty to let the offence down to a misdemeanour. He thought the whole of the evidence in his possession should be laid before the jury, and that it was more important to expose the transactions of the societies, than to obtain 1 SURTEES' Sketch of the Lives of Lords Eldon and Stowell, p. 87. * Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon. From the Anecdote Book, vol.i. p. 282. The only Common Law Judges who are ordinarily members. of the Privy Council are the chiefs of the three courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer; some one or more of whom must have presided at the trial. They would have acted with more propriety in declining functions which were within the province of the law officers. |