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into legislative, and giving an awful stretch of power, which would have placed every disaffected Englishman in the hands of government to be dealt with as it chose, and the mercy to which it was inclined was manifested in the present trials.

"Godwin's keen and logical mind easily detected the flaws in Sir James Eyre's reasoning, and his eloquence set them forth clearly and forcibly. He repeated and praised the first exposition of the Law of Treason by the Judge. In all this preamble of the Chief Justice,' he says, 'there is something extremely humane and considerate. I trace in it the language of a constitutional lawyer, a sound logician, and a temperate, discreet, and honest man. I see rising to my view, a Judge resting upon the law as it is, and determinedly setting his face against new, unprecedented, and temporizing constructions. I see a Judge that scorns to bend his neck to the yoke of any party or any administration, who expounds the unalterable principles of justice, and is prepared to try by them, and them only, the persons that are brought before him. I see him taking to himself, and holding out to the jury, the manly consolation that they are to make no new law, and force no new interpretation, that they are to consult only the statutes of the realm, and the decisions of those writers who have been the luminaries of England. Meanwhile, what shall be said by our contemporaries, and by our posterity, if this picture be reversed, if these promises were made only to render our disappointment more bitter, if these high professions merely served as an introduction to an unparalleled mass of arbitrary constructions, of new-fangled treasons, and doctrines equally inconsistent with history and themselves.' He then proceeds to argue that the thing to be proved was not whether the accused were guilty of a moral crime, but of a crime against law. 'Let it be granted,' he says, 'that the crime is, in the eye of reason and discretion, the most enormous that it can enter into the heart of man to conceive, still I have a right to ask, is it a crime against law? Show me the statute that describes it; refer me to the precedent by which it is defined, quote me the adjudged case in which a matter of such unparalleled magnitude is settled.'

"Mr Godwin then proceeds to analyse the various modes in which the Chief Justice supposes it possible that these men, associated for the purpose of obtaining Parliamentary Reform, were guilty of High Treason. 'One mode,' he says, 'is by such an association, not in its own nature, as he says, simply unlawful too easily degenerating, and becoming unlawful in the highest degree.' It is difficult to comment upon this article with the gravity that may seem due to a magistrate delivering his opinion from a bench of justice. An association for Parliamentary Reform may degenerate, and become unlawful in the highest degree, even to the enormous extent of the crime of High Treason. Who knows not that? Was it necessary that Chief Justice Eyre should come in 1794, solemnly to announce to us so irresistible a proposition? An association for Parliamentary Reform may desert its object, and become guilty of High Treason. True; so may a card club, a bench of justice, or even a Cabinet Council. Does Chief Justice Eyre mean to intimate that there is something in the purpose of a Parliamentary Reform, so unhallowed, ambiguous, and unjust, as to render its well-wishers objects of suspicion rather than their brethren and fellow subjects? What can be more wanton, cruel, and inhuman than thus to single out the purpose of Parliamentary Reform, as if it were of all others most especially connected with degeneracy and treason.

"But what is principally worthy of attention is the easy and artful manner in which the idea of treason is introduced.' After commenting with extreme severity on the insinuation of intention, of which there was not a particle of truth, he continues: 'But the authors of the present prosecution probably hope that the mere names of Jacobin and Republican will answer their purposes, and that a jury of Englishmen will be found who will send every man to the gallows without examination to whom these appellations shall once have been attributed.'

"Mr Godwin then comments on the Chief Justice's observations on a convention, a word brought into disrepute by its adoption in France, but by no means foreign to English History. Because of the present use of the name, the Judge declared that

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it deservedly became an object of jealousy to the law.' 'Can anything,' exclaims Godwin, 'be more atrocious than the undertaking to measure the guilt of an individual and the interpretation of a plain and permanent law by the transitory example that may happen to exist before our eyes in a neighbouring country.'

"After much more on this and on other heads, Mr Godwin comes to the last point of the charge--that in which he bids the Grand Jury find a true bill, if they should discover on the part of the accused a design to overawe King and Parliament, so that afterwards it might be subjected to a judicial course of enquiry. The Chief Justice,' he says, 'quits in this instance the character of criminal judge and civil magistrate, and assumes that of a natural philosopher, or experimental anatomist. He is willing to dissect the persons that shall be brought before him, the better to ascertain the truth or falsehood of his preconceived conjectures. The plain English of his recommendation is this. Let these men be put on their trial for their lives, let them and their friends be exposed to all the anxieties incident to so uncertain and fearful a condition; let them be exposed to ignominy, to obloquy, to the partialities, as it may happen, of a prejudiced Judge, and the perverseness of an ignorant jury; we shall then know how we ought to conceive of similar cases. By trampling on their peace, throwing away their lives, or sporting with their innocence, we shall obtain a basis on which to proceed, and a precedent to guide our judgment in future instances.'

"The effect of this appeal, of which the passages quoted may give a sufficient notion, when it became widely spread through the papers, was memorable. Hitherto men had heard that the King's Ministers had discovered a treasonable conspiracy, and had arrested the traitors. They believed this. No project was

believed too wild or wicked for those who had imbibed the infection of the French Revolution, nor could any believe that the highest and most solemn council of the State would have proceeded against twelve subjects of the realm but on clear and undoubted grounds. The charge of the Chief Justice did not dissipate the illusion. It is true that all he said was wrapped in

'May-be,' and the Grand Jury was told that they were to discover secret, treasonable designs; but still Mr Pitt was a man of high character and vast talents-men leant on him with confidence, and readily saw gigantic dangers in the shadowy images of treason that were evoked. They could not believe that for the sake of an experiment, for the purpose of overawing the country, and extending his power beyond the limits of the constitution, he would put in slight account the lives and liberties of twelve men, his fellow subjects, whom he knew that there was no law to condemn, whom he only hoped to destroy through the influence of the panic which the proceedings in France had engendered in this country. But these remarks dissipated the mist that clouded men's understandings; they who before believed that the accused were undoubtedly guilty of treason began to perceive that a design to reform Parliament was not treasonable, and that however wrong-headed, and even reprehensible it might be to associate for such a purpose, this was no cause why men, otherwise innocent, should, themselves and their families, be subjected to the frightful pains and penalties of treason.

"Impartial men now looked forward to the event of these trials with very different expectations, both as to the nature of the charges to be brought, and the result. The friends of the accused, now that they dared hope for a fair trial, confided in an acquittal. The event shewed how reasonable and just were Godwin's reasonings; how strained, tyrannical, and barbarous the proceedings of ministers.

76 Hardy, a shoemaker by trade, was the man first selected by the Attorney-General to be placed at the Bar. The trial lasted eight days; the evidence brought was complicated and vast, but vague and inconclusive. He was acquitted. The trials of Horne Tooke and Thelwal followed; but the whole force of Government had been directed against Hardy, and when these also were acquitted, the public accusers felt their task ended. They allowed verdicts of acquittal to be recorded in favour of their other prisoners.

"Godwin, as he says, attended the trials every day, though he

MRS REVELEY'S ALARM.

135 knew himself to be a marked man, had his friends been found guilty. He was present when the Attorney-General announced that he gave up his intention of proceeding against Holcroft, who, on being liberated, left the dock, and, crossing the court, took his seat beside Godwin. Sir Thomas Lawrence, struck by the happy combination and contrast exhibited in the attitude and expression of the two friends, made a spirited sketch of them in profile.

"The feeling of triumph among the friends of liberty was universal. Even now there lingered on the English shores Gerrald, Muir, Palmer, and Skirving, who, victims of Scottish law, were sentenced to be transported to Botany Bay. Their fate filled their friends with grief and indignation; but worse had been since attempted, and it was a matter of virtuous triumph to find that the attempt failed, that our country was restored to the protection of its laws, and a boundary placed to the encroachments of arbitrary power. Godwin never forgot the delightful sensations he then experienced; it was his honest boast, and most grateful recollection, that he had contributed to the glorious result, by his letter to Chief-Justice Eyre."

The panic which was felt by some, who, belonging to the liberal party, feared they might be compromised by their accused friends, is reflected in a letter from Mrs Reveley, whom Holcroft had proposed to call as a witness, to what special point in his defence does not appear.

Mrs Reveley to William Godwin.

"SOUTHAMPTON ROW, EDGWARE ROAD, "Monday Morng., 27 October.

"I was very much surprised last night, to hear your statements of Mr Holcroft's determination concerning me, as it differed materially from what had been represented to me before; hitherto I have had no opportunity of conversing with you on the subject, and it is necessary that I should inform you of the exact state of my mind. Should it appear that Mr Holcroft's life is at all in