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LORD ERSKINE.

IN BEHALF OF JOHN STOCKDALE WHEN TRIED FOR A LIBEL ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS; COURT OF

THE KING'S BENCH, DECEMBER 9, 1789.

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Mr. Stockdale, who is

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY, brought as a criminal before you for the publication of this book, has, by employing me as his advocate, reposed what must appear to many an extraordinary degree of confidence; since, although he well knows that I am per- 5 sonally connected in friendship with most of those whose conduct and opinions are principally arraigned by its author, he nevertheless commits to my hands his defence and justification.

From a trust apparently so delicate and singular, van- 10 ity is but too apt to whisper an application to some fancied merit of one's own; but it is proper, for the honor of the English bar, that the world should know that such things happen to all of us daily, and of course; and that the defendant, without any knowledge of me, or any con- 15 fidence that was personal, was only not afraid to follow up an accidental retainer from the knowledge he has of the general character of the profession. Happy indeed is it for this country that, whatever interested divisions may characterize other places of which I may have oc- 20 casion to speak to-day, however the counsels of the highest departments of the state may be occasionally distracted

by personal considerations, they never enter these walls to disturb the administration of justice; whatever may be our public principles or the private habits of our lives, they never cast even a shade across the path of 5 our professional duties. If this be the characteristic even of the bar of an English court of justice, what sacred impartiality may not every man expect from its jurors

and its bench?

As, from the indulgence which the Court was yesterday 10 pleased to give to my indisposition, this information was not proceeded on when you were attending to try it, it is probable you were not altogether inattentive to what passed at the trial of the other indictment, prosecuted also by the House of Commons; and therefore, without 15 a restatement of the same principles, and a similar quotation of authorities to support them, I need only remind you of the law applicable to this subject, as it was then admitted by the Attorney-General, in concession to my propositions, and confirmed by the higher authority of 20 the Court; viz.,

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First, that every information or indictment must contain such a description of the crime that the defendant may know what crime it is which he is called upon to

answer.

Secondly, that the jury may appear to be warranted in their conclusion of guilty or not guilty.

And, lastly, that the court may see such a precise and definite transgression upon the record, as to be able to apply the punishment which judicial discretion may dic30 tate, or which positive law may inflict.

It was admitted also to follow as a mere corollary from these propositions, that where an information charges a writing to be composed or published of and concerning the Commons of Great Britain, with an intent to bring 35 that body into scandal and disgrace with the public, the

author cannot be brought within the scope of such a charge unless the jury, on examination and comparison of the whole matter written or published, shall be satisfied that the particular passages charged as criminal, when explained by the context, and considered as part 5 of one entire work, were meant and intended by the author to vilify the House of Commons as a body, and were written of and concerning them in Parliament assembled.

These principles being settled, we are now to see what 10 the present information is.

It charges that the defendant "unlawfully, wickedly, and maliciously devising, contriving, and intending to asperse, scandalize, and vilify the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled; and most wickedly 15 and audaciously to represent their proceedings as corrupt and unjust; and to make it believed and thought as if the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, were a most wicked, tyrannical, base, and corrupt set of persons, and to bring them into disgrace with the pub- 20 lic" the defendant published what? Not those latter ends of sentences which the Attorney-General has read from his brief, as if they had followed one another in order in this book; not those scraps and tails of passages which are patched together upon this record, and 25 pronounced in one breath, as if they existed without intermediate matter in the same page, and without context anywhere. No! This is not the accusation, even mutilated as it is for the information charges that, with intention to vilify the House of Commons, the defendant 30 published the whole book, describing it on the record by its title: "A Review of the principal Charges against Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal;" in which, among other things, the matter particularly selected is to be found. Your inquiry, therefore, is not 35

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confined to whether the defendant published those selected parts of it, and whether, looking at them as they are distorted by the information, they carry in fair construction the sense and meaning which the innuendoes 5 put upon them; but whether the author of the entire work I say the author, since, if he could defend himself, the publisher unquestionably can- whether the author wrote the volume which I hold in my hand as a free, manly, bonâ fide disquisition of criminal charges 10 against his fellow-citizen; or whether the long, eloquent discussion of them, which fills so many pages, was a mere cloak and cover for the introduction of the supposed scandal imputed to the selected passages, the mind of the writer all along being intent on traducing the House 15 of Commons, and not on fairly answering their charges against Mr. Hastings.

This, gentlemen, is the principal matter for your consideration; and therefore, if, after you shall have taken the book itself into the chamber which will be provided 20 for you, and shall have read the whole of it with impartial attention if, after the performance of this duty, you can return here, and with clear consciences pronounce upon your oaths that the impression made upon you by these pages is, that the author wrote them with the 25 wicked, seditious, and corrupt intentions charged by the information you have then my full permission to find the defendant guilty; but if, on the other hand, the general tenor of the composition shall impress you with respect for the author, and point him out to you as a man 30 mistaken, perhaps, himself, but not seeking to deceive. others - if every line of the work shall present to you an intelligent, animated mind, glowing with a Christian compassion towards a fellowman whom he believed to be innocent, and with a patriot zeal for the liberty of his 35 country, which he considered as wounded through the

Gentlemen, to enable you to form a true Judgment of e meaning of this book and of the intention of its thor, and to expose the miserable juggle that is played in the information by the combination of sentences 1 ich, in the work itself, have no bearing upon one other, I will first give you the publication as it is arged upon the record and presented by the Attorneyneral in opening the case for the Crown; and I will en, by reading the interjacent matter, which is studi- 1 sly kept out of view, convince you of its true interetation.

The information, beginning with the first page of the ok, charges as a libel upon the House of Commons the lowing sentence: "The House of Commons has now 2 ven its final decision with regard to the merits and merits of Mr. Hastings. The grand inquest of England ve delivered their charges, and preferred their impeachent; their allegations are referred to proof; and from e appeal to the collective wisdom and justice of the 2 tion, in the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, the quesn comes to be determined whether Mr. Hastings be ilty or not guilty?"

It is but fair, however, to admit that this first sentence, ich the most ingenious malice cannot torture into a 3 minal construction, is charged by the information ther as introductory to what is made to follow it than libellous in itself; for the Attorney-General, from this troductory passage in the first page, goes on at a leap page thirteenth, and reads, almost without a stop, as 3

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