aside with indulgence, as you do a child when it is lisping its prattle out of season. ." Of the closely-knit arguments and the eloquent illustrations of this speech it is impossible, by extracting portions of it, to give any idea. The court answered it, as might have been expected, by a reference to their own practice and to that of their immediate predecessors, leaving untouched the many sound, admirable, and unanswerable arguments with which it abounded. "Such a judicial practice," said Lord Mansfield, on the precise point, from the Revolution, as I think, down to the present day, is not to be shaken by arguments of general theory or popular declamation.”

But it was shaken, and to its foundations, by the popular declamation upon which the chief justice set so light a price. It was the consciousness of this which supported Mr. Erskine through his despised and ungrateful office. He knew, that in offering his arguments to the unwilling ears of the judges, he was at the same time addressing them to the lively and just apprehension of the people of England, who would not endure that the freedom of the press should be thus violated, and deprived of its best protection — the trial by jury. The speech of Mr. Erskine, without doubt, prepared the way for the introduction of Mr. Fox's libel bill, which has declared the despised opinion of Mr. Erskine to be the law. In his own words," If this be not an awful lesson of caution respecting opinions, where are such lessons to bę read?"

The political situation and connections of Mr. Erskine occasionally brought him, about this period, into the society of the Prince of Wales, who appears to have been warmly attached to him; and, on the establishment of his household, bestowed upon him the appointment of his attorney-general. During the king's illness, in 1788, and the negotiations for a formation of a Whig ministry under the auspices of the prince, as regent, Mr. Erskine was to have exchanged this office for that of attorneygeneral to the king.* But the speedy recovery of the sovereign terminated the whole project.

The speech delivered by Mr. Erskine, in 1789, on the trial of Stockdale for a libel reflecting on the house of commons, has been deemed by some persons the most exquisite specimen of his powers. It certainly exhibits in great perfection the grand characteristics of his oratory, -elevated sentiment, brilliant imagery, and passionate declamation, all resting upon that broad foundation of principle which has been noticed as invariably forming the groundwork of his speeches. In consequence of the publication of the articles of impeachment against Mr. Hastings, whilst the impeachment itself was pending, the Reverend Mr. Logan, a Scotch minister of talents and learning, composed a defence of Mr. Hastings, which was published by Mr. Stockdale in the regular course of his business. The pamphlet contained certain strong, and, as it was asserted, libellous observations on the proceedings of the commons, which were said to have proceeded" from motives of personal animosity, not from regard to public justice." With a jealousy of their reputation which might well have been spared, the house addressed a prayer to the king, that the attorney-general might be directed to file an information against the publisher of the libel, which, coming on for trial, Mr. Erskine appeared as the counsel for the defendant. A more favourable opportunity for the display of his brilliant talents could not well have occurred, and most successfully did he avail himself of it. The impregnable position in which he intrenched himself, the principle of his speech, was, that the alleged libel was a bona fide defence of Mr. Hastings; and to the establishment of this position the whole of his arguments. were directed. By way of collaterally strengthening that position, he touched upon the general merits of Mr. Hastings' case, of which, had he not been himself a member of the commons, he would undoubtedly have been selected as the conductor. Of the splendid effort which the public would then have witnessed, we may form some idea from the passages in the present speech devoted to that subject.

The trial of Mr. Hastings at the bar of the lords is

thus magnificently and picturesquely described by Mr. Erskine :- "There the most august and striking spectacle was daily exhibited that the world ever witnessed. A vast stage of justice was erected, awful from its high authority, splendid from its illustrious dignity, venerable for the learning and wisdom of its judges, captivating and affecting from the mighty concourse of all ranks and conditions which daily flocked into it as into a theatre of pleasure; there, when the whole public mind was at once awed and softened to the impression of every human affection, there appeared, day after day, one after another, men of the most powerful and exalted talents, eclipsing by their accusing eloquence the most boasted harangues of antiquity-rousing the pride of national resentment, by the boldest invectives against broken faith and violated treaties, and shaking the bosom with alternate pity and horror, by the most glowing pictures of insulted nature and humanity: ever animated and energetic from the love of fame, which is the inherent passion of genius; firm and indefatigable from a strong prepossession of the justice of their cause."

"The accusing eloquence" of Burke and of Sheridan was hardly superior to the oratory of Erskine, in suggesting the only defence of which Mr. Hastings could successfully avail himself.

"Gentlemen of the jury, if this be a wilfully false account of the instructions given to Mr. Hastings for his government, and of his conduct under them, the author and publisher of this defence deserve the severest punishment, for a mercenary imposition on the public. But if it be true that he was directed to make the safety and prosperity of Bengal the first object of his attention, and that under his administration it has been safe and prosperous; if it be true that the security and preservation of our possessions and revenues in Asia were marked out to him as the great leading principle of his government, and that those possessions and revenues, amidst unexampled dangers, have been secured and preserved; then a question

much beyond the consequence of the present prosecution, involving perhaps the merit of the impeachment itself which gave it birth a question which the commons, as prosecutors of Mr. Hastings, should in common prudence have avoided; unless, regretting the unwieldy length of their proceedings against him, they wished to afford him the opportunity of this strange anomalous defence. For although I am neither his counsel, nor desire to have any thing to do with his guilt or innocence, yet, in the collateral defence of my client, I am driven to state matter which may be considered by many as hostile to the impeachment. For if your dependencies have been secured, and their interests promoted, I am driven, in the defence of my client, to remark, that it is mad and preposterous to bring to the standard of justice and humanity the exercise of a dominion founded upon violence and terror. It may and must be true that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both ;-he may and must have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the faithful viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God and nature had given it ;— he may and must have preserved that unjust dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying, overbearing, and insulting superiority, if he was the faithful administrator of your government, which, having no root in consent or affection, no foundation in similarity of interests, nor support from any one principle that cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature: to be governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would have been long since lost to Great Bri

--

tain, if civil and military prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority, which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can sanction.

“Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject; and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself, amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler over the desert encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventurers, who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us: and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated men all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection.

6

"These reflections are the only antidotes to those anathemas of superhuman eloquence which have lately shaken these walls which surround us; but which it unaccountably falls to my province, whether I will or no, a little to stem the torrent of, by reminding you that you have a mighty sway in Asia, which cannot be maintained by the finer sympathies of life, or the practice of its charities or affections. What will they do for you,