Q. Do you know Jeremiah Brandreth? A. Yes. Q. What condition of life was he in? Q. Was that before this matter occurred? A. Yes. Q. Did he and his family have relief from your parish? A. Yes; they were removed to Wilford from Sutton Ashfield. Mr. DENMAN. May it please your Lordship, Gentlemen of the Jury. After the very able and impressive address which you have just heard, if I thought myself at liberty to consult my own judgment alone, I should probably leave it to you to decide this question without any observations from me ; because, feeling it necessary to go very much over the same ground with my learned friend, I am quite sure I can present nothing to your minds with so much force as it has already been presented by him. But, for my own part, I feel on the present occasion that my learned friend and myself are invested with something like a public duty; and that when the Act of Parliament-the Act of William III. with a proper jealousy of state prosecutions, gave the prisoner the privilege of being heard by two counsel, both those counsel were in a manner bound by the same law to bring before a Jury such observations as might occur. to their own minds. In some sense indeed it is a satisfaction to me that I must, in so great a degree, adopt, the ideas of my learned precursor, because my own opinions, which were formed at a great distance from him, and without any opportunity of conferring upon the subject till we met at this place, have received that degree of countenance and sanction from his concurrence in them which gives me the fullest confidence in their justice. With the same confidence therefore I shall proceed to lay them before the Court and you; and looking to the manner in which this case was stated, it will be necessary for me to follow my learned friend in proclaiming at the outset my strong dissent from the doctrine laid down by my learned friend the Attorney General. It appears to me that that doctrine is not the law of England. I will state the reasons which have led to that opinion, and of the validity of those reasons it is you I think who are to judge. Gentlemen, the first count in this Indictment is framed upon the Statute of 25th Edward III. for levying war against the King; and it was stated to you, I think very distinctly, by my learned friend, the Attorney General, that the other two counts, in fact, resolve themselves into the first. In both of those other counts, which are framed upon a more recent Statute, the levying war is the important overt act: if no war was levied, no High Treason was committed. I think I collected, as the result of what he said, that the single question for your consideration is, whether war has or has not been levied against the king? Now, Gentlemen, I must be allowed to express my sur prize that the learned Attorney General should have stated the law upon the subject so very shortly, and with so little reference to the great authorities which are to be found upon this subject; because though I trust and believe that none of you have come with the chance of taking upon you this important office with which you are now invested, without accurately informing your own minds upon the subject of this Trial-upon the subject, I mean, of Trials for High Treason in general, so as to come here prepared for correctly understanding the language which must be held upon this occasion; yet it is impossible that it should not be to you, as it is indeed to us all, in many respects, a new subject; I therefore think it would have been quite as well if the learned Attorney General had gone a little more fully into the history of this business, and laid the law before you, as it is to be found in the Statute Books, and in the writings of the most eminent individuals upon that Statute. Gentlemen, it appears to me, that even the preamble of that Statute will form an important ingredient in the consideration of any Jury to whom such a question is referred, stating as it does in the language employed by the Parliament itself, the reasons for having passed the Statute. I am about to quote a passage now from a most important treatise-the treatise of Sir Matthew Hale, who has written very largely upon this subject, and has set forth not only the Act of Parliament upon which this question arises, but the preamble also by which it is introduced. The preamble is this: "That as the Justices of our Lord the King assigned in divers counties have adjudged persons impeached before them to be Traitors for divers causes, unknown to the generality to be Treason," they petition that "it will please our Lord the King, by his council, and by the great men and sages of the land to declare the points of Treason in this present Parliament," Because the Judges in their assizes have convicted persons of Treasons unknown to the law of England, therefore King Edward and his Parliament determined to come to a declaration of the law, by which the Jury shall be enabled at once to declare upon the evidence whether or not the fact has been committed. It was to avoid therefore all construction that this Act of Parliament was passed; for it was known that in former times these constructions had been improperly engrafted upon the law of the land, and that the same constructions might afterwards be fastened upon the subject; and therefore whatever respect I entertain for Sir Michael Foster, and for the treatise compiled by him in his leisure, and for other text writers on this branch of the law, I own I entertain much more respect for the text written by the King, Lords, and Commons, for the protection of men against arbitrary Treasons. What are the Treasons then that they have declared?First, the compassing or imagining the death of our Lord the King, and afterwards the levying, war against our Lord the King in his realm. There are other Treasons not immediately connected with this occasion, but which I shall take the liberty of specifying, that you may see, from the first to the last, except in this unfortunate article of levying war, there is not any single Treason susceptible of being extended by construction. In language the most distinct and positive it is declared Treason to compass or imagine the death of our Lord the King-to murder the Chancellor, Treasurer, or the King's Justices in their places when performing their offices-to offer personal violence to the females of the royal family—or to levy war against the King. The Treason fourthly declared is, adhering to the King's enemies, within the realm or without, and being proveably attainted thereof by open deed by people of their own condition; then counterfeiting the King's great or privy seal, or his money; and lastly, bringing counterfeit money into the realm. " Now, Gentlemen, I would submit to you, that it is impossible for any language to be throughout more clear and direct; and you will in a moment be convinced that the language employed in describing the particular Treason for which this individual stands before you, is as distinct and as impossible to be mistaken as any one of these clear descriptions of facts which I have read to you. My learned Friend, the Attorney General, did indeed venture to ask "if this is not High Treason, repeatedly calling it Treason by construction of law. What is High Treason?-if this is not levying war, what is levying war?" I think my learned Friend, (Mr. Cross) has given to this question a complete and satisfactory answer; it is answered by every page of history, and more especially of our early history, When, seventy years ago, the Pretender arrived in this very town with vast force, with an exchequer, with allies, claiming the Crown of the Realm, stating that King George was an usurper on his rights, that was a levying of war. The Pretender might be called a foreigner coming to invade a country which did not belong to him; and his case might fall under the observations my learned Friend rather unnecessarily made, when he told you that war might be levied, without a foreign invasion, by persons within the realm. Most undoubtedly war may be levied by the subjects of this realm; most undoubtedly war has been levied by the subjects of this realm; most undoubtedly at the time when this Statute passed, there was no offence whatever so common, so clear, so intelligible to all mankind as this very offence of levying war against the King by his subjects in his realm, not by construction, not by interpretation, not by classing together a vast variety of motives, by saying you did mean this in fact, and therefore must have meant something else by construction of law, but by plain direct overt acts, which it is impossible to misunderstand. Gentlemen, look to the reign of King Edward II. the father of the King who passed this act of Parliament. He was deposed by his subjects, who rose in arms against him. Against this King war was levied in his realm. Or look to the reign immediately following that of Edward III. and you will remember that King Richard II. also was deposed by his subjects, headed by the Duke of Lancaster, who afterwards assumed the title of Henry the Fourth. That was a levying of war against the King. In subsequent reigns there were usurpers claiming right to the Crown; great barons, powerful subjects, canvassing thei several claims according to their own partialities and affections, raising forces on their own estates, assembling and uniting them in order to depose the reigning Monarch from his kingly state and imperial name. In the reign of Henry the Fourth, you know that the conspiracies of Northumberland and Hotspur his son were raised for the purpose of deposing that King, Henry, whom they had asșisted to gain the Crown, by levying war against his predecessor. And so it was when the Pretender came in 1745, and induced numbers of His Majesty's subjects to join him for the purpose of dispossessing the actual King of these Realms. I think, then, I answer the ques1 tion satisfactorily, and I am quite sure there is no single overt act which admits of being stated in more ordinary |