public has a right to decide on the truth or falsehood of his averments, and to deliver that decision in language as strong, though not so vulgar and coarse, as his own. What, shall this man tell an officer in His Majesty's service" it will distinctly appear, that Major Draper has purposely and intentionally mis-stated a material fact," and not only this, but even accuse hin of perjury*—when that officer hurls back the lie in his teeth, and proves his mis-statements, and expresses the honest indignation of a virtuous mind, is he to be threatened with an action, to be called to account before a jury, for his presumption in vindicating his own honour? But certain it is, that your violent patriots, who declaim most loudly in favour of liberty, and against oppression, are ever the greatest tyrants in their conduct. No doubt, Mr. Fullarton is galled, most sorely galled, at the practices which Colonel Draper has detected, and at the truths which he has uttered. But "let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung." For our part, we will have a parrot taught to repeat "the Pictonian Prosecution" in his ears, though it should offend them as much as the sound of Clerk-colonel did in the year 1780, when the late Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Fox so properly reprobated the misconduct of the ministers, in assigning to a commis the command of a regiment. Since, however, Mr. Fullarton is determined to heap prosecution on prosecution, he is certainly entitled to credit, for proceeding by way of action instead of instituting a criminal process. (To be continued.)

An Address to the Public, containing a Review of the Charges exhibited against Lord Viscount Melville, which led to the Resolutions of the House of Commons on the 8th April, 1805. Third Edition. 8vo. PP. 84. Hatchard. 1806.

SUB judice lis est. While a cause was pending before an appropriate tribunal, we should, some years ago, have reprobated any astempt to enter upon a discussion of its merits, with a view to prejudice either the judges themselves, or the public mind, before trial; but a variety of novel circumstances have occurred of late years, to render such attempt not merely excusable, but a matter of necessity, arising out of the paramount principle of self-preservation, planted in us by the paternal hand of an all-benevolent Providence. In cases of a criminal nature, before the ordinary tribunals, the insatiate rage for news which infects the present age, has led those persons whose trade and whose interest it is to gratify it, to violate one of the first principles of distributive justice, by the publication of the ex-parte examinations of witnesses for the prosecution before magistrates, who, it is well known, can only examine the evidence for the prosecution, and

* See Mr. Fullarton's " Refutation," pab,

from

from thence judge whether there be circumstances of suspicion, or of fact, sufficiently strong to send the party accused before a Grand Jury. It would be au insult to the understanding of rational beings to argue this point, for the purpose of proving the gross impropriety and injustice of publishing the substance, of such examinations. That description of men of which Petty Juries in this country are generally composed, frequent either the coffee-house or the ale-house, in order to read the news of the day; for a newspaper has become as much a necessary in these factitious times, as meat and drink, and much more so than a Prayer-book or a Bible, Here, then, they read these partial accounts, Dot always, and indeed seldom, reported with accuracy, but mostly accompanied with such comments and animadversions as the prejudices of the reporter may suggest It is almost needless to say, that men of the description to which we advert, take every thing for gospel which they read in the newspapers; and thus they imbibe the senti ments of the reporters; or, at all events, if the report be faithful, they contact, from such partial accounts, a prejudice against the person accused, which certainly incapacitates them, morally speaking, from discharging their duty as jurymen. Under such circumstances, a prisoner is deprived of that to which every British subject is entitled, a fair and impartial trial. The conclusion is so obvious, that it is needless to pursue our suggestions farther. It becomes then the right, and often the duty, of a person accused, who has been subjected to the injustice of such attempts, to endeavour, by his own statements and arguments, to counteract their effects on the minds of those who are to sit in judgment upon him, by removing the impressions which they have been led to entertain. But even this remedy is extremely inadequate, be cause the accusations go forth stamped with the authority of a judicial proceeding, while the defence bears no such character, but is exposed to the suspicion of equivocation and perversion.

In cases of prosecution by the House of Commons, a public appeal to the justice of the judges and of the country is still more indispensably necessary, because, by the connivance of that House in a constant and systematic violation of its own order, all its debates are published and circulated with rapidity throughout the realni. In such cases too, it often happens that the charges are not examined with that coolness, soberness, and solemnity which ought to characterize every proceeding of a judicial nature. We have not unfrequently seen such inquiries by former Houses of Commons, originating in personal pique, or in party malignity; the shrivelled fruit of disappointed ambition; sometimes having for their sole object the destruction of a statesman's character, for the interested purpose of overthrowing an administra tion of which he formed an essential part, that the accusers might ob tain power and emolument for themselves; and mostly conducted with that intemperance, indecorous invective, and abuse, which marked the impure source whence the accusations sprang. Happily for the country, the public virtue, patriotism, and consistency of the present House of Commons, preclude the possibility of suspicions of

this nature attaching to any of its prosecutions, while they call for the unreserved and undivided applause and confidence of the nation. We are, however, surprised that even this House of Commons should not feel the Becessity of enforcing its standing order, for clearing the galleries, when they debate the propriety of bringing any individual to trial. The publication of their debates on such subjects, they must know, must be highly prejudicial to the party accused, and, in the event of his acquittal, what reparation could they possibly make? In such event, they would certainly acknowledge that it would have been more wise and proper not to have suffered the publication of their charges, and of their animadversions upon them. The only means, then, of counteracting the dangerous prejudice imbibed in such cases, is an appeal to the nation, through the medium of the press. Hence it is, that what cannot be defended in the abstract, in principle, has become necessary, by adventitious circumstances to self-preservation.

-Our author begins his address with a remark, the truth of which must strike every reader of common observation most forcibly.

"It is a little singular, that in the representations of the drama our sympathy is always called forth in favour of suffering rank, and we feel a desire to soften the misery of afflicted greatness. But in real life we appear to act on the reverse of this feeling; and are, for the most part, inclined to accelerate the fall of human power, and to exult in the condition of a man degraded from high state, and put down from the seat of authority. The obscure and feeble prisoner asks our compassion, and receives it; he solicits our aid to testify his innocence, and we lend our prompt exertion to his cause. But when crime is imputed to a man high in power, we withdraw ourselves, with something like a feeling of congratulation, to a distance, that we may behold him grappling with the foe; and, however undeserved the attack, we please ourselves with think, ing that at least the pride of his stature will be humbled, and the ermine of his fame be spotted in the wrath and bitterness of the encounter.

"There is an odd perversity in human nature. To lead the bulk of mankind always and solely by just representations, is not practicable; buţ to mislead them by false representations, is matter of no difficulty. To in flame their passions, is easy; but to attempt wholly to remove their prejudice, is ploughing the rocks."

Certainly this strange inconsistency of conduct arises from the bad passions and propensities of man. In contemplating the fall of past greatness, the best feelings of his nature have their full scope, and they display themselves accordingly; but in a struggle with existing greatness, envy and other evil passions obtrude themselves, to the exclusion of his good feelings, and render him inhuman and unjust. Many other observations follow, equally just and equally appropriate to the immediate subject of discussion. The author wisely and strongly deprecates the introduction of party-spirit into a judicial in quiry, and professes, what he indeed manifests in every page, an in violate attachment to the laws and constitution of his country. He considers the charges originally preferred by Mr. Whitbread, whom

he

he styles the arch accuser of Lord Melville, in his introductory speech, first, with having applied the public money to other uses than those of the Navy, in contempt of an Act of Parliament; secondly, with con= niving at a system of peculation in another, for whose conduct he was responsible; and, thirdly, but this charge is so novel in its nature, and urged in a way so truly curious, that we must give it in the orator's own words:

"There is still a third, on which I shall not insist very largely now, but which, IF inquiry is instituted, I shall feel myself most powerfully called on to support in this House. I mean here to allude to the strong suspicion, that the noble Lord himself was a participator in the system of pe

culation to which I have referred !!!"

The soupçonne d'être suspect of revolutionary France we never expected to hear adopted as a charge in a British House of Commons! But, tempora mutantur, et nos (we Englishinen) mutamur in illis. On the first of these charges, we formerly gave our opinion, in our review of Mr. Macleod's pamphlet on the subject. On the second, our author most particularly observes,

"When it is considered that no loss has been sustained by the public; that not one shilling of the public money passing through the hands of the Paymaster has been in any way embezzled; no, nor even the slightest delay or interruption occasioned in any one official payment; is it not natural that we should pause here, and ask where we are to find this system of peculation? No instance is produced, no act is in proof, real or pretended. What! public plunder, and not a sixpence purloined!! A system of robbery without a single theft!! I will not here inquire in what this prosecution originated, whether in the selfish purposes of party, or a cool sense of justice. I am addressing myself to the public; they will judge, they will perceive how it is conducted, and the manner will furnish a key to the motive."'

We suspect that Mr. Whitbread, in this case, made use of hard words, of which he did not know the meaning. If he had submitted to the necessary trouble of referring to his dictionary, he would have learned that peculation is "robbery of the public, theft of public money," and any clerk in an attorney's office would have informed him, that where no property has been lost, there can have been no robbery committed. The loss of property is the very essence, the sine quâ non of a theft or felony!

In our last Number (p. 431), we took occasion to call on Mr. Whitbread (and we will tell this gentleman that, as one of the representatives of the people of England, we, one of that people, have a right so to call upon him), to remove a false impression to which the report of his speech in the newspapers had given rise, by a plain statement of this fact that not one shilling of the public money has remained unaccounted for by Lord Melville; and that not one sixpence of the public moncy has, by his Lordship, or Mr. Trotter

himself,

himself, been lost to the public. Since that time we have heard it maintained, and that too by a Magistrate, by a man whose duty it is to investigate before he decides, and not to s bstitute newspaper reports for either moral or legal proofs, that the 10,000l. to which we there more particularly referred, was never accounted for by Lord Melville, and was actually lost to the public. We repeat, then, that it is the bounden duty of Mr. Whitbread to explain the fact as it is; for, although he be not responsible for the misrepresentation of his speeches in the papers, he is morally responsible, as a man of honour, and as a member of parliament, for the consequences of such misrepresentation, of which he has been the innocent cause, and to which his silence may be naturally enough considered as affording a sanction. Be that as it may, this wicked and diabolical talsehood has been circulated through the country, by the newspapers, to the prejudice of a nobleman, who is now upon his trial for high crimes and misdemeanours. That writer, who, knowing this, does not contribute his efforts to expose it, may be a prudent, but cannot be an honest

man.

On the third charge, as Mr. Whitbread most ridiculously called it, the author's remarks are unanswerable.

"This serious, but unsupported accusation, leads to what Mr. White bread calls a third charge, which is this:—that a suspicion arises that he was a participator in that system. If such a system, of which no evi dence has appeared, had been proved to exist; if Lord Melville, too, had appeared to have been an accomplice, then the charge of participa tion might, and certainly ought to have been brought forward. But that a suspicion should take the place of a charge, and this too grounded on a charge on a report which negatives the fact, is a novelty in criminal ju risprudence. In the regular administration of justice, the inquiry precedes the charge; one is surprized, therefore, to behold an accuser press forward with a charge, which, if an inquiry is insituted, he means to support. Such language savours too strongly of premeditated persecution; we cannot but lament that the zeal of party should so often hurry men beyond the limits which their own integrity would prescribe."

"Your ifs" have been, heretofore, considered as wonderful peace-makers; but now, in this revolutionary age, it seems a different province is assigned them, and they are to be enlisted in the service of party-prosecution. Thank Heaven, this is the first instance, within our knowledge, in which accusation has preceded inquiry, and, for the sake of justice, and for the honour of our country, we trust it will be the last.

Quotations are given from the speeches of that illustrious statesman, Mr. Pitt (illustrious, because his integrity was equal to his talents, unrivalled as these unquestionably were), to shew the precipitation and the inaccuracy of the Commissioners, on whose Reports these charges were professedly founded. Mr. Pitt perceived, and enforced the necessity of farther inquiry, before the House should come to any deci

sie