OF
 
 ) *}#!**?'* xv *-"- 
 ' f l - - - V 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 OF 
 
 HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, 
 
 UPON QUESTIONS RELATING TO 
 
 PUBLIC RIGHTS, DUTIES, AND INTERESTS; 
 
 WITH 
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTIONS, 
 
 AND 
 
 A CRITICAL DISSERTATION 
 UPON THE ELOQUENCE OF THE ANCIENTS. 
 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK ; 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS; 
 RIDGWAY AND SONS ; AND CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO. LONDON. 
 
 M.DCCC.XXXVJ1I.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 T '' A ' iK 
 
 Introduction, ... o 
 
 Slave Trade, 1810, ]9 
 
 Introduction, . . . f o 
 
 Missionary Smith, . -j 
 
 Negro Slavery, 18,30, 13l 
 
 Slave Trade, 1838, iG3 
 
 Negro Apprenticeship, . . 1^5 
 
 Eastern Slave Trade, . . 231 
 
 LAW REFORM. 
 
 Introduction, ... 287 
 
 Local Courts, . .. 400 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 Introduction, . . 333 
 
 Parliamentary Reform, . , 55 y
 
 S P E E C 11 E S 
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE 
 
 AND 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MR. WILBERFORCE MR. GRANVILLE SHARP 
 
 MR. CLARKSON. 
 
 THE history of the Slave Trade is too fresh in the re- 
 collections of men, to require any full details in this 
 place. As soon as South America began to be ex- 
 plored by the Spaniards and Portuguese, it was found 
 that the speculations of their insatiable avarice, which 
 the plunder and torture of the natives had only for 
 the moment appeased, could not be permanently car- 
 ried on without a supply of hands to work the mines, 
 and to cultivate in the islands, the rich produce of 
 tropical climates. The Indians, a feeble race, unused 
 to toil, were soon exceedingly reduced in numbers ; 
 and the practice was instituted of bringing over Ne- 
 groes from the coast of Africa. The shortness of the 
 distance between that continent and the Brazils first 
 suggested this traffic to the Portuguese, who had set-
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tlements on the African coast ; but it was not follow- 
 ed to any great extent, or in a regular manner. The 
 speculators of New Spain, however, soon felt the want 
 of hands to work their mines and cultivate their lands ; 
 and Bartolomeo de las Casas, a friar of the Dominican 
 order, who had charitably devoted his life to the pro- 
 tection of the unhappy Indians, treated like cattle, 
 only that they were more inhumanly used by their 
 cruel and profligate taskmasters, now joined in the 
 scheme, if he did not first suggest it, of supplying their 
 place with African Negroes. He never reflected, says 
 the historian, " upon the iniquity of reducing one race 
 of men to slavery, while consulting about the means 
 of granting liberty to another ; but, with the incon- 
 sistency natural to men who hurry with headlong 
 impetuosity towards a favourite point, in the warmth 
 of his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, pro- 
 nounced it lawful and expedient to impose one much 
 heavier upon the Africans." * Charles V. granted a 
 patent for introducing four thousand Negroes yearly 
 into Spanish America, and thus was begun that hor- 
 rible traffic which immediately began to ravage Africa, 
 and ended in exposing the American continent to the 
 utmost peril, while it brought eternal disgrace upon 
 the Christian profession and the European name. 
 
 After this scourge had been suffered to desolate 
 Africa, and to disgrace mankind for two centuries and 
 a half, the attention of men was at length directed to 
 it by some eminent philanthropists of this country. 
 Among these, a high place must be assigned to Gran- 
 ville Sharp, than whom a purer spirit never resided in 
 
 * Robertson's America.
 
 INTRODUCTION. . 
 
 the human form. With a perseverance which is only 
 not unexampled because it set an example afterwards 
 followed by other labourers in the same cause ; with 
 a benevolence which was quite universal, and made the 
 aspect of human suffering so painful to him, that he 
 would suffer any privation to lessen it ; with a piety 
 which, though it rose to an enthusiasm that oftentimes 
 w T arped his otherwise clear and sound judgment, was yet 
 wholly unattended with any the least vestige of harsh- 
 ness or intolerance ; he pursued, in privacy and seclu- 
 sion, the paths of charity which lead to no fame among 
 men, which conduct to that peace the world cannot 
 give, and which would have enabled him to hide a mul- 
 titude of transgressions, if Granville Sharp had had any 
 transgressions to hide. But he was not a mere tole- 
 rant follower of religion, and anxious dispenser of secret 
 benevolence, high and rare as these attributes are. He 
 was one of the most learned men of his time, and could 
 maintain the parts of lettered controversy, classical 
 and theological, with the most accomplished scholars 
 in the Church. The wholesale violation of all human 
 rights, and flagrant wreck of all Christian duties, with 
 which the Slave Trade and West Indian Slavery had 
 so long outraged and insulted the world, early attract- 
 ed his regard ; and he persevered in trying the legal 
 question, at first held to be desperate, How far a slave 
 coming to this country under the power of his master, 
 continues subject to that authority, or gains his per- 
 sonal liberty in common with the other subjects of the 
 realm. Although not bred to the legal profession, ho 
 devoted himself to the study of the law, for the pur- 
 pose of prosecuting this contention ; he enlightened 
 lawyers with the result of his researches ; he over-
 
 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 powered opposition by the force and the closeness of 
 his reasonings ; he disarmed all personal opposition by 
 the unruffled serenity of his temper, the unequalled 
 suavity of his simple yet frank and honest manners ; he 
 gave his fortune, as well as his toil, to the cause ; and 
 he ceased not until he obtained the celebrated judg- 
 ment of the King's Bench, so honourable to the law and 
 constitution of this country, that a slave cannot touch 
 our soil, but immediately his chains fall away. This 
 is that famous case of Somerset the Negro, which has 
 for ever fixed the great principle of personal liberty, by 
 promoting which Granville Sharp did more than had 
 ever before been done towards bringing Slavery into 
 an odious conflict with the spirit of British jurispru- 
 dence. He stopped not here, however, but continued 
 a zealous and useful coadjutor through the long period 
 of his after life, in all that related to the extinction of 
 the African traffic, and the Slavery of the Colonies. 
 
 He was soon after followed in his bright course by 
 Thomas Clarkson, of whom it has been justly said, nor 
 can higher praise be earned by man, that to the great and 
 good qualities of Las Casas, his benevolence, his 
 unwearied perseverance, his inflexible determination 
 of purpose, piety which would honour a saint, cour- 
 age which would accomplish a martyr, he added the 
 sound judgment and strict sense of justice which were 
 wanting in the otherwise perfect character of the Spa- 
 nish philanthropist. While pursuing his studies at 
 Cambridge, he made the Slave Trade the subject of 
 an Essay, which gained one of the university prizes, and 
 this accident having called his especial attention to the 
 iniquity of that execrable commerce, he devoted his life 
 to waging an implacable hostility with it. The evidence
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 which he collected and brought before a committee 
 formed to obtain its abolition, drew the attention of 
 Mr. Wilberforce, and secured at once the services of 
 that great man as the leader in the cause. 
 
 Few persons have ever either reached a higher and 
 more enviable place in the esteem of their fellow crea- 
 tures, or have better deserved the place they had 
 gained, than William Wilberforce. He was naturally 
 a person of great quickness and even subtilty of mind, 
 with a lively imagination, approaching to playfulness of 
 fancy ; and hence he had wit in an unmeasured abun- 
 dance, and in all its varieties ; for he was endowed with 
 an exquisite sense of the ludicrous in character, the 
 foundation of humour, as well as the perception of re- 
 mote resemblances, the essence of wit. These quali- 
 ties, however, he had so far disciplined his faculties 
 as to keep in habitual restraint, lest he should ever 
 offend against strict decorum, by introducing light 
 matter into serious discussion, or be betrayed into 
 personal remarks too poignant for the feelings of indi- 
 viduals. For his nature was mild and amiable beyond 
 that of most men ; fearful of giving the least pain in 
 any quarter, even while heated with the zeal of con- 
 troversy on questions that roused all his passions ; and 
 more anxious, if it were possible, to gain over rather 
 than to overpower an adversary; disarming him by kind- 
 ness, or the force of reason, or awakening appeals to 
 his feelings, rather than defeating him by hostile attack. 
 His natural talents were cultivated, and his taste re- 
 lined by all the resources of a complete Cambridge edu- 
 cation, in which, while the classics were sedulously 
 studied, the mathematics were not neglected ; and he 
 enjoyed in the society of his intimate friends, Mr.
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Pitt and Dean Milner, the additional benefit of foreign 
 travel, having passed nearly a year in France, after 
 the dissolution of Lord Shelburn's administration had 
 removed Mr. Pitt from office. Having entered Par- 
 liament as member for Hull, where his family were 
 the principal commercial men of the place, he soon 
 afterwards, upon the ill-fated coalition destroying all 
 confidence in the Whig party, succeeded Mr. Fol- 
 jambe as member for Yorkshire, which he continued 
 to represent as long as his health permitted him, having 
 only retired to a less laborious seat in the year 1812. 
 Although generally attached to the Pitt ministry, he 
 pursued his course wholly unfettered by party con- 
 nection, steadily refused all office through his whole 
 life, nor would he lay himself under any obligations by 
 accepting a share of patronage; and he differed with his 
 illustrious friend upon the two most critical emergen- 
 cies of his life, the question of peace with France in 
 1795 and the impeachment of Lord Melville ten years 
 later. 
 
 His eloquence was of the highest order. It was 
 persuasive and pathetic in an eminent degree ; but it 
 was occasionally bold and impassioned, animated with 
 the inspiration which deep feeling alone can breathe 
 into spoken thought, chastened by a pure taste, varied 
 by extensive information, enriched by classical allusion, 
 sometimes elevated by the more sublime topics of 
 holy writ the thoughts 
 
 " That wrapt Isaiah's hallowed soul in fire." 
 
 Few passages can be cited in the oratory of modern 
 times of a more electrical effect than the singularly 
 felicitous and striking allusion to Mr. Pitt's resisting
 
 INTRODUCTION. .' 
 
 the torrent of Jacobin principles : " He stood be- 
 tween the living and the dead, and the plague was 
 staid." The singular kindness, the extreme gentle- 
 ness of his disposition, wholly free from gall, from 
 vanity, or any selfish feeling, kept him from indulg- 
 ing in any of the vituperative branches of rhetoric ; 
 but a memorable instance showed that it was any thing 
 rather than the want of force which held him off from 
 the use of the weapons so often in almost all other 
 men's hands. When a well known popular member 
 thought fit to designate him repeatedly, and very irre- 
 gularly, as the " Honourable and religious gentleman? 
 not because he was ashamed of the cross he gloried 
 in, but because he felt indignant at any one in the 
 British senate deeming piety a matter of imputation, 
 he poured out a strain of sarcasm which none who 
 heard it. can ever forget. A common friend of the 
 parties having remarked to Sir Samuel Romilly beside 
 whom he sat, that this greatly outmatched Pitt him- 
 self, the great master of sarcasm, the reply of that 
 great man, and just observer, was worthy to be re- 
 marked, " Yes," said he, " it is the most striking thing 
 I almost ever heard ; but I look upon it as a more 
 singular proof of Wilberforce's virtue than of his ge- 
 nius, for who but he ever was possessed of such a for- 
 midable weapon, and never used it ?" Against all these 
 accomplishments of a finished orator there was little 
 to set on the other side. A feeble constitution, which 
 made him say, all his life, that he never was either 
 well or ill ; a voice sweetly musical beyond that of 
 most men, and of great compass also, but sometimes 
 degenerating into a whine; a figure exceedingly undig- 
 nified and ungraceful, though the features of the face
 
 10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 were singularly expressive ; and a want of condensa- 
 tion, in the latter years of his life especially, lapsing 
 into digression, and ill calculated for a very business- 
 like audience like the House of Commons; may be 
 noted as the only draw-backs which kept him out of 
 the very first place among the first speakers of his 
 age, whom, in pathos, and also in graceful and easy 
 and perfectly elegant diction, as well as harmonious 
 periods, he unquestionably excelled. The influence 
 which the member for Yorkshire always commanded 
 in the old Parliament the great weight which the 
 head, indeed, the founder, of a powerful religious sect, 
 possessed in the country would have given extraordi- 
 nary authority in the senate to one of far inferior per- 
 sonal endowments. But when these partly accidental 
 circumstances w r ere added to his powers, and when the 
 whole were used and applied with the habits of indus- 
 try which naturally belonged to one of his extreme 
 temperance in every respect, it is difficult to imagine 
 any one bringing a greater force to any cause which 
 he might espouse. 
 
 Wherefore, when he stood forward as the leader of 
 the abolition, vowed implacable war against Slavery and 
 the Slave Trade, and consecrated his life to the accom- 
 plishment of its destruction, there was every advantage 
 conferred upon this great cause, and the rather that 
 he held himself aloof from party connection. A few 
 personal friends, united with him by similarity of reli- 
 gious opinions, might be said to form a small party, 
 and they generally acted in concert, especially in all 
 matters relating to the Slave question. Of these, 
 Henry Thornton was the most eminent in every re- 
 spect. He was a man of strong understanding, great
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 powers of reasoning and of investigation, an accurate 
 and a curious observer, but who neither had cultivated 
 oratory at all, nor had received a refined education, 
 nor had extended his reading beyond the subjects 
 connected with moral, political, and theological learn- 
 ing. The trade of a banker, which he followed, en- 
 grossed much of his time ; and his exertions, both in 
 Parliament and through the press, were chiefly con- 
 fined to the celebrated controversy upon the currency, 
 in which his well known work led the way, and to a 
 bill for restricting the Slave Trade to part of the 
 African coast, which he introduced when the aboli- 
 tionists were wearied out with their repeated failures, 
 and had well-nigh abandoned all hopes of carrying the 
 great measure itself. That measure was fated to un- 
 dergo much vexatious delay, nor is there any great 
 question of justice and policy, the history of which is 
 less creditable to the British Parliament, or, indeed, 
 to some of the statesmen of this country, although, 
 upon it mainly rests the fame of others. 
 
 When Mr. Wilberforce, following in Mr. Clark- 
 son's track, had, with matchless powers of eloquence, 
 sustained by a body of the clearest evidence, unveiled 
 all the horrors of a traffic, which, had it been attended 
 with neither fraud nor cruelty of any kind, was, con- 
 fessedly, from beginning to end, not a commerce, but 
 a crime, he was defeated by large majorities, year 
 after year. When at length, for the first time, in 
 1804, he carried the Abolition Bill through the Com- 
 mons, the Lords immediately threw it out ; and the 
 next year it was again lost in the Commons. All this 
 happened while the opinion of the country was, with the 
 single exception of persons having West India connec-
 
 12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tions, unanimous in favour of the measure. At different 
 times there was the strongest and most general ex- 
 pression of public feeling upon the subject, and it was 
 a question upon which no two men endowed with 
 reason, could possibly differ, because, admitting what- 
 ever could be alleged about the profits of the traffic, 
 it was not denied that their gain proceeded from pil- 
 lage or murder. Add to all this, that the enormous 
 evil continued to disgrace the country and its legis- 
 lature for twenty years, although the voice of every 
 statesman of any eminence, Mr. Windham alone ex- 
 cepted, was strenuously lifted against it, although, 
 upon this very question, Pitt, Fox, and Burke, heartily 
 agreed, although by far the finest of all Mr. Pitt's 
 speeches were those which he pronounced against it, 
 and although every press and every pulpit in the 
 island habitually cried it down. How are we, then, 
 to account for the extreme tenacity of life which the 
 hateful reptile showed ? How to explain the fact that 
 all those powerful hands fell paralized, and could not 
 bring it to death ? If little honour redounds to the 
 Parliament from this passage in our history, and if 
 it is thus plainly shown that the unreformed House 
 of Commons but ill represented the country ; it 
 must also be confessed that Mr. Pitt's conduct gains 
 as little glory from the retrospect. How could he 
 who never suffered any of his coadjutors, much less 
 his underlings in office, to thwart his will even in 
 trivial matters he who would have cleared any of 
 the departments of half their occupants, had they pre- 
 sumed to have an opinion of their own upon a single 
 item of any budget, or an article in the year's estimates 
 how could he, after shaking the walls of the Senate
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 with the thunders of his majestic eloquence, exerted 
 with a zeal which set at defiance all suspicions of his 
 entire sincerity, quietly suffer, that the object, just 
 before declared the dearest to his heart, should be 
 ravished from him when within his sight, nay, within 
 his reach, by the votes of the secretaries and underse- 
 cretaries, the puisne lords and the other fry of mere 
 placemen, the pawns of his boards ? It is a question 
 often anxiously put by the friends of the abolition, never 
 satisfactorily answered by those of the minister ; and if 
 any additional comment were wanting on the darkest 
 passage of his life, it is supplied by the ease with which 
 he cut off the Slave traffic of the conquered colonies, 
 an importation of thirty thousand yearly, which he had 
 so long suffered to exist, though an order in Council 
 could any day have extinguished it. This he never 
 thought of till 1805, and then, of course, the instant 
 he chose, he destroyed it for ever with a stroke of his 
 pen. Again, when the Whigs were in power, they found 
 the total abolition of the traffic so easy, that the measure 
 in pursuing which Mr. Pitt had for so many long years 
 allowed himself to be baffled, was carried by them with 
 only sixteen dissentient voices in a house of 250 mem- 
 bers. There can then, unhappily, be but one answer 
 to the question regarding Mr. Pitt's conduct on this 
 great measure. He was, no doubt, quite sincere, but 
 he was not so zealous as to risk any thing, to sacrifice 
 any thing, or even to give himself any extraordinary 
 trouble for the accomplishment of his purpose. The 
 Court was decidedly against abolition ; George III. 
 always regarded the question with abhorrence, as 
 savouring of innovation, and innovation in a part of 
 his empire, connected with his earliest and most rooted
 
 U INTRODUCTION. 
 
 prejudices, the colonies. The courtiers took, as is 
 their wont, the colour of their sentiments from him. 
 The Peers were of the same opinion. Mr. Pitt had 
 not the enthusiasm for right and justice, to risk in 
 their behalf the friendship of the mammon of unright- 
 eousness, and he left to his rivals, when they became 
 his successors, the glory of that sacred triumph in the 
 cause of humanity, which should have illustrated his 
 name, who, in its defence, had raised all the strains of 
 his eloquence to their very highest pitch. 
 
 Notwithstanding the act of 1807 had made the 
 Slave Trade illegal after the 1st of January 1808, by 
 whomsoever carried on in the British dominions, and by 
 British subjects wheresoever carried on ; yet, as forfei- 
 tures and penalties of a pecuniary kind were the only 
 consequences of violating the law, the temptations of 
 high profit induced many, both capitalists and adven- 
 turers, to defy the prohibitions of the statute, and the 
 clearest proofs were soon furnished of British subjects 
 being employed in the Slave Trade under the most flimsy 
 disguises. It became necessary at length to treat this 
 traffic as a crime, and no longer to deal with the crimi- 
 nals as smugglers only, who have broken some pro- 
 visions of the revenue law. Mr. Brougham taking this 
 view of the subject, broached it in the House of Com- 
 mons on 14th June 1810, in the following Speech; and 
 following up the resolution and address, then adopted 
 unanimously by the Commons, he next session brought 
 in and carried without a dissenting voice, through both 
 Houses of Parliament, the bill declaring Slave-trading a 
 Felony, ancj punishing it with fourteen years transporta- 
 tion or imprisonment for five years. In 1824, this pu- 
 nishment was deemed insufficient; the offence was made
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 capital, and so continued until the acts for mitigating the 
 rigour of the criminal law in 1837, made Slave-trading 
 punishable with transportation for life. There is every 
 reason to think that no British subjects are now or have 
 for many years been directly engaged in this execra- 
 ble traffic, with the exception of those belonging to the 
 Mauritius. In that island it is certain, that with the 
 connivance, if not under the direct encouragement of 
 the higher authorities of the colony, Slave-trading to 
 an enormous extent, was for some years openly car- 
 ried on. A Colonial Secretary of State admitted that 
 above 25,000 Negroes had been brought over from 
 the African Coast, in other words, 25,000 capital 
 felonies committed under the eye, if not with the en- 
 couragement, of the government. It is an unenviable 
 reflection which is left to us, that for all those human 
 beings, illegally held in bondage, and in not one of whom 
 could there by law be any kind of property claimed, 
 full compensation, at the rate of 53 each, has been 
 allowed by the Commissioners, and paid by the people 
 of this country and that besides this sum of at least 
 a million and a half being so squandered upon the 
 vile and sordid wrongdoers, those felons and accompli- 
 ces of felons are still suffered to claim the labour of 
 the Africans, under the name of Indentured Appren- 
 tices. With the flagrant exception of the Mauritius, 
 there is no reason to believe that any British subjects 
 have since the Felony act of 1811 came into operation, 
 been directly concerned in the traffic ; but there is too 
 much reason to suspect that British capital has pretty 
 freely found its way into that corrupt channel.
 
 SPEECH 
 
 ox 
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 JUNE 14, 1810. 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 SIR, I rise, pursuant to notice, to call the atten- 
 tion of the House to the state of the Slave Trade, a 
 subject of the first importance; and, although it is 
 neither a personal question, nor a party one ; although 
 its discussion involves neither the pursuit nor the de- 
 fence of place ; although, indeed, it touches matters 
 of no higher concernment than the honour of the 
 House and the country, and the interests of humanity 
 at large ; I trust that it will, nevertheless, receive the 
 same favourable consideration which it has so often 
 experienced upon former occasions. The question I 
 purpose to submit to the House is, Whether any, and 
 what measures can be adopted, in order to watch over 
 the execution of the sentence of condemnation which 
 Parliament has, with a singular unanimity, pronounced 
 upon the African Slave Trade? It is now four years 
 since Mr. Fox made his last motion in this House, and, 
 I believe, his last speech here, in favour of the Aboli- 
 tion. He then proposed a Resolution, pledging the 
 House to the Abolition of the traffic, and moved an Ad- 
 dress to the crown, beseeching his Majesty to use all 
 his endeavours for obtaining the concurrence of other 
 powers in the pursuit of this great object. An Ad- 
 dress to the same effect was voted by the other House,
 
 20 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 with equal unanimity ; and, early in the next year, two 
 noble friends of mine,* who were second only to my 
 honourable friend,f prevented by indisposition from at- 
 tending this day, in their services to the cause, and will 
 yield not even to him in their zeal for its success, gave 
 the Parliament an opportunity of redeeming its pledge, 
 by introducing the Abolition Bills in the two Houses. 
 That measure, which had formerly met so many ob- 
 stacles, whether, as some are willing to believe, from 
 the slowness with which truth works its way, or, as 
 others were prone to suspect, from the want of zeal in 
 its official supporters, now experienced none of the 
 impediments that had hitherto retarded its progress. 
 Far from encountering any formidable difficulties, it 
 passed through Parliament almost without opposition; 
 and one of the greatest and most disputed of measures, 
 was at length carried by larger majorities, perhaps, 
 than were ever known to divide upon any contested 
 question. The friends of the Abolition, however, 
 never expected that any legislative measure would at 
 once destroy the Slave Trade : they were aware how 
 obstinately such a trade would cling to the soil where 
 it had taken root ; they anticipated the difficulties of 
 extirpating a traffic which had entwined itself with so 
 many interests, prejudices, and passions. But I must 
 admit, that although they had foreseen, they had con- 
 siderably underrated, those difficulties. They had not 
 made sufficient allowance for the resistance which the 
 real interests of those directly engaged in the trade, 
 and the supposed interests of the colonists, would op- 
 pose to the execution of the acts : they had underrated 
 the wickedness of the Slave Trader, and the infatua- 
 tion of the planter. While on the one hand it ap- 
 
 Lords Grenville and Grey. t Mr. Wilberforce.
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 21 
 
 pears, from the documents I formerly moved for, that 
 nothing has been done to circumscribe the foreign 
 Slave Trade, it is now found, that this abominable 
 commerce has not completely ceased, even in this 
 country ! I hope the House will favour me with its 
 attention, while, from the papers on the table, and 
 from such other information as I have been enabled 
 to obtain, I lay before it a statement, which will, in 
 some measure, enable it to appreciate the extent of 
 the evil, and to apply the proper remedies. 
 
 I shall now proceed to call the attention of the 
 House to the state of the Slave Trade in foreign coun- 
 tries. In these it exists variously. In America it 
 is contraband, as in England, having been prohibited by 
 law, but it is still carried on, illegally, for the supply of 
 the American as well as of foreign plantations : while, 
 in the colonies of Portugal and Spain, it is still sanc- 
 tioned by the laws, and even receives peculiar encou- 
 ragement from the government. The extent of the 
 Spanish Slave Trade I cannot state very accurately ; 
 but, from returns at the custom-house at Cadiz, to 
 which I have had access, and from the well-known 
 increase of the sugar culture in Cuba, the importation 
 of Negroes appears to be very great. The average 
 annual importation into that island, during thirteen 
 years, from 1789 to 1803, was 5840 ; and it is evi- 
 dently upon the increase, for the average of the last 
 four years of the period was 8600 : the total number 
 imported during the period exceeded 76,000 slaves. 
 This statement, among other things, proves how much 
 the American flag is used in covering the foreign 
 Slave Trade ; for, after the commencement of hostili- 
 ties between Spain and this country, the trade could 
 only have been carried on to a very limited extent in 
 Spanish bottoms ; and yet, instead of being checked 
 by the war, it has greatly increased since 1795. The
 
 22 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 culture of sugar has likewise increased at Porto Rico, 
 and on the Main, and with it, of course, the importa- 
 tion of slaves. The precise amount of this I cannot 
 speak to ; but I have every reason to suppose it very 
 inconsiderable, when compared with the traffic in Cuba. 
 The annual importation of Mexico does not exceed 
 1 00 Negroes, and that of the settlements on the South 
 Sea is only 500. The other colonies obtain their sup- 
 plies principally through the Brazils. 
 
 With regard to the Portuguese Slave Trade, I can- 
 not speak with more precision. During my residence 
 at Lisbon, in the King's service, I had official commu- 
 nication with the Portuguese minister, and also with 
 a person of high rank, who had been governor of the 
 northern provinces of Brazil, and was then going out 
 as governor of Angola and Benguela, upon the African 
 coast. It appeared, from the returns of a Capitation- 
 tax on Negroes exported from Africa, (which gentle- 
 men will perceive must give the lowest amount of the 
 exportation), that there were annually sent to the 
 Brazils, from that part of Africa alone, above 15,000 
 Negroes ; and this was reckoned only one-half of the 
 total number exported from all parts of the Portu- 
 guese settlements. From another quarter, of high 
 authority, I learned that this, if estimated at 30,000, 
 would not be overrated. But the branch of the trade 
 which it is the most important to attend to at present, 
 is that carried on by American vessels, in open viola- 
 tion of the laws of the United States. I firmly be- 
 lieve, as I have before stated when the matter was 
 questioned by the right honourable gentleman oppo- 
 site,* that the American government has all along acted 
 in regard to the Slave Trade, with the most perfect sin- 
 
 * Mr. Canning.
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 23 
 
 cerity and good faith. They had, indeed, set us the 
 example of abolishing- it. All the States, except two, 
 Georgia and South Carolina, had early abolished it by 
 acts of their separate legislatures, before the period 
 arrived when the Constitution gave Congress a right 
 to pass such a law for the whole Union ; and, as 
 soon as that period arrived, viz. at the beginning of 
 the year 1808, the traffic was finally prohibited by an 
 act of Congress. But it is one thing to pass a law, 
 and another to carry it into execution, as we have our- 
 selves found on this side of the water, I am sorry to 
 think ; and, although the American legislature and 
 the Government have done all that lies in their power, 
 it requires much greater naval means than they 
 possess to suppress effectually their contraband Slave 
 Trade. They may, in a great measure, by their 
 police, prevent the importation of Negroes into the 
 United States ; and this they have done : but the bulk 
 of their contraband Slave Trade is carried on between 
 Africa and the islands, or Africa and South America ; 
 and, to check this, a very different navy is wanted 
 from any that the Americans (happily for this country, 
 in every point of view, except the one now in question), 
 are likely, for a long series of years, to possess. By 
 such a contraband trade, the Spanish and Portuguese 
 colonies, and not only they, but our own settlements, 
 are supplied with slaves ; and in this manner it is that 
 the foreign Slave Trade interferes with our own Abo- 
 lition. 
 
 What I intend to propose is, that the executive 
 government shall be exhorted to take such further 
 steps as may be conducive to the object of the joint 
 Address of both branches of the legislature. Unless 
 the American flag can, by some means or other, be 
 excluded from its large share in this abominable com- 
 merce ; and unless the Spanish and Portuguese govern-
 
 24 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 ments can be brought to some concurrent arrangement; 
 the trade must still be carried on to an enormous ex- 
 tent ; and it is in vain to talk even of abolishing it 
 entirely in our own colonies. Our largest island is 
 within a day's, I should rather say, a night's sail, of 
 the largest slave colony of Spain. Our other old 
 colonies lie in the very track both of the Spanish and 
 American slave-ships. When the vast plantations of 
 Trinidad and Guiana are in such want of Negroes to 
 clear their waste lands, and are situated almost 
 within sight of the Spanish slave market, where the 
 law still sanctions that infernal traffic, how can it be 
 expected that the British abolition should be effectual ? 
 A gentleman of the profession to which I have the 
 honour of belonging, having lately returned from Ber- 
 bice, informs me of the manner in which our planters 
 carry on this contraband intercourse. The Oroonoko 
 falls into the sea between Trinidad and Guiana. The 
 Spanish slave-ships take their station near its mouth, 
 and our planters send large boats along the coast to 
 the station of the ships, from whence they are supplied 
 with cargoes of sixty or seventy Negroes by trans-ship- 
 ment at sea, and these cargoes they land on their re- 
 turn, in the various creeks of the settlements, so as to 
 elude the utmost vigilance of the colonial officers. 
 Does not this single fact evince the necessity of form- 
 ing some arrangement with the Spanish government, 
 while the friendly relations between the two govern- 
 ments subsist ? The great obstacle which I always 
 find opposed to such a proposition is, What can we 
 do ? Those nations, it is pretended, are wedded to 
 their own prejudices ; they have views of their own, 
 and we cannot interfere. Of this argument, I enter- 
 tain very great suspicion, and for one plain reason, that 
 it is on the single subject of the Abolition that I ever 
 hear it used ; it is here alone that any want of activity
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 25 
 
 is ever observed in our Government, or that we ever 
 hear of our want of influence in the councils of our neigh- 
 bours. On all other measures, some of suspicious, some 
 of doubtful policy in matters indifferent, or repugnant 
 to humanity we are ready enough to intrigue, to 
 fight, to pay. It is only when the interests of huma- 
 nity are concerned, and ends the most justifiable, as 
 well as expedient, are in view, that we not only all at 
 once lose our activity and influence, but become quite 
 forward in protesting 1 that we have no power to inter- 
 fere. From one end of Europe to the other our 
 weight is felt, and in general it is no very popular 
 thing to call it in question. At all times we are 
 ready enough to use it, as well as to magnify it ; but 
 on this one occasion we become both weak and diffi- 
 dent, and while we refuse to act, must needs make a 
 boast of our impotency. Why, we never failed at all 
 when the object was to obtain new colonies, and 
 extend the Slave Trade ! Then we could both conquer 
 and treat ; we had force enough to seize whole pro- 
 vinces where the Slave Trade might be planted, and 
 skill enough to retain them by negotiation, in order to 
 retain with them the additional commerce in slaves, 
 which their cultivation required. It is natural, 
 therefore, for me to view with some suspicion our 
 uniform failure, when the object is to abolish or 
 limit this same Slave Trade. I suspect it may arise 
 from there being some similarity between our exer- 
 tions in the cause and those of some of its official 
 advocates in this House ; that we have been very 
 sincere, no doubt, but rather cold without a particle 
 of ill-will towards the Abolition, but without one 
 spark of zeal in its favour. 
 
 I shall now answer the question of, " What can we 
 do to stop the foreign Slave Trade?" by putting 
 another question ; and I would ask, " How have we
 
 26 THE SLAVE TRADE. , 
 
 contrived to promote the Slave Trade when that was 
 our object ?" I would only desire one tentli part of 
 the influence to be exerted in favour of the Abolition, 
 which we have with such fatal success exerted in 
 augmenting the Slave traffic; when, by our campaigns 
 and our treaties, we acquired the dominion of bound- 
 less and desert regions, and then laid waste the villages 
 and the fields of Africa, that our new forests might 
 be cleared. 
 
 But if I be asked to what objects our influence 
 should be directed, I have no hesitation in pointing 
 them out : And, first, I should say, the Spanish and 
 Portuguese governments. Happily, in those quarters 
 where most is to be attempted, our influence is the 
 greatest at the present moment; for both countries we 
 have done much, and having lavished our blood and 
 our treasure in defending them from cruelty, injustice, 
 and every form of ordinary oppression, it is certainly 
 not asking too much to require that they should give 
 over a course of iniquity towards nations as innocent 
 as they, and infinitely more injured by them. Every 
 thing favours some arrangement with Spain on this 
 point. The only Spanish colonies where the sugar 
 cane is extensively cultivated are the islands, and of 
 these principally Cuba. To that settlement the bulk 
 of the Slave Trade is confined. On the main land 
 there is little demand for slaves; about 1400 are 
 annually sent to Buenos Ayres, 500 to Peru and 
 Chili, and only 100 to Mexico, while Cuba receives 
 8,600 a-year. This then is the only Spanish colony 
 which can suffer materially ; and it is reasonable to 
 expect that the Spanish Government would not refuse 
 this inconsiderable sacrifice. At any rate, some 
 arrangement might be made both with Portugal and 
 Spain, to prevent their flags from being used for the 
 purposes of the foreign Slave Trade.
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 27 
 
 Adverting next to the means which we have of in- 
 ducing the American government to make some ar- 
 rangement, I admit that our influence in that quarter is 
 not so powerful; but I would throw out one or two 
 remarks for the consideration of Ministers. First, an 
 attempt ought to be made to supply the deficiency of 
 naval resources in America, by lending the assistance 
 of our own ; and I should suggest the necessity of the 
 two Governments coming to some understanding, that 
 the cruisers of each may capture the contraband 
 slave ships of the other country. From communica- 
 tions which I have held with persons of high rank in 
 the service of the United States, I have reason to 
 think, that such an arrangement would not be greatly 
 objected to in America. An opening for a proposal 
 of this nature is certainly afforded by the correspond- 
 ence which has taken place between Mr. Erskine and 
 the American Government relative to the orders in 
 Council, and Non-Intercourse laws ; for an assurance 
 is there given, that if a British cruiser capture an 
 American found acting contrary to the American 
 municipal law, the Government of the United States 
 will never notice the capture ; and though there is an 
 objection to recognising by treaty the right of capture 
 on the ground of the Non-Intercourse law, it by no 
 means follows, that a similar recognition could not be 
 obtained in the present instance. The right thus 
 given must no doubt be mutual, but so is every right 
 which this country claims under the law of nations ; 
 and it should be remembered, that the two parties 
 are very differently affected by it ; for while the 
 Americans could scarcely search or detain half a 
 dozen of our slave vessels in a year, we should be en- 
 abled to stop hundreds of theirs. The advantage of 
 such an arrangement to our own planters would also 
 be great : for if rival foreigners carry on the Slave
 
 28 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Trade, while it is prohibited in our settlements, our 
 planters are, for a certain time at least, liable to be 
 undersold in the sugar market, and subjected to a 
 temporary pressure. Another circumstance with re- 
 gard to American ships, I throw out for the consider- 
 ation of merchants and cruisers. It appears to me, 
 that even without any such arrangement between the 
 two Governments, the experiment of capturing Ame- 
 rican slave ships might safely be made. I have every 
 reason to believe, that no reclamation whatever would 
 be made by the American Government if such vessels 
 were detained, however great their numbers might be. 
 A claim might no doubt be entered by individual 
 owners, when the vessels were brought in for condem- 
 nation, and the courts of prize have been in the prac- 
 tice of saying, that they cannot take notice of the 
 municipal laws of other countries. But, beside the 
 great risk to which American owners expose them- 
 selves by making such claims, (the risk of the penal- 
 ties which they thereby prove themselves to have in- 
 curred under the Abolition Acts of America), it is to 
 be observed, that the courts require a proof of pro- 
 perty in the claimants ; and I wish to see whether 
 courts sitting and judging by the law of nations are 
 prepared to admit of a property in human flesh.* I 
 
 * This opinion has since been fully confirmed by the decision of 
 the Lords of Prize Appeal in the case of the Amedie, as appears by the 
 following Report of the Judgment of the Lords Commissioners of 
 Prize Appeals, at the Privy Council, Saturday, July 28, 1810. 
 
 Case of the Amedie ; James Johnson, master. This was a vessel 
 under American colours, with slaves from Africa, captured in Decem- 
 ber, 1 807, in the West Indies, and carried into Tortola. The claim- 
 ant pretended that she was bound to Charlestown, South Carolina, 
 where the importation of slaves continued to be lawful to the end of 
 that year ; but that, having been detained on the coast, and there 
 being no prospect of reaching Charlestown before the 1st of January
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. - 2y 
 
 wish to know in what part of that law any such 
 principle is recognised. I desire to be informed 
 where the decision or where the dictum is, which 
 allows a person to bring forward a claim in a court of 
 
 1808, the period appointed for the cessation of the Slave Trade in 
 every part of the United States, by a law of the general Congress, the 
 Master of necessity bore away for the island of Cuba, there to wait 
 directions from his owners. It was contended, on the other hand, 
 by the captor, that this statement was a mere pretence, and that, in 
 truth, the original plan of the voyage was a destination to Cuba, 
 which was unlawful under the American laws, long previous to their 
 general abolition of the Slave Trade. Admitting, however, the case 
 to be so, it was strenuously contended for the claimant, that a 
 British court of prize had no right to take any cognizance of Ameri- 
 can municipal law, and that, as no belligerent right of this country 
 had been violated, the property ought to be restored to the neutral 
 owner. A series of precedents seemed to support this doctrine. 
 The ship was condemned at Tortola, and the enslaved Africans were, 
 according to the Abolition Act, restored to their freedom ; but the 
 claimant appealed, and the liberty of the Africans, as well as the 
 property of the ship, depended on the issue of this appeal. The 
 case was solemnly argued in March last, and as, in the opinion of the 
 court, it turned on the new question of the effect of the American 
 and British Abolition Acts on this species of contraband commerce, 
 when brought before a court of prize, the case, on account of its im- 
 portance, has since stood over for judgment. Several other cases of 
 American slave ships have also stood over, as depending on the same 
 general question. The judgment of the court was delivered by Sir 
 William Grant, the Master of the Rolls, nearly in the following 
 terms : " This ship must be considered as being employed, at the 
 time of capture, in carrying slaves from the coast of Africa to a 
 Spanish colony. We think that this was evidently the original plan 
 and purpose of the voyage, notwithstanding the pretence set up to 
 veil the true intention. The claimant, however, who is an Ameri- 
 can, complains of the capture, and demands from us the restitution 
 of property, of which he alleges that he has been unjustly dispos- 
 sessed. In all the former cases of this kind, which have come before 
 this court, the Slave Trade was liable to considerations very different 
 from those which belong to it now. It had at that time been pro- 
 hibited (as far as respected carrying slaves to the colonies of foreign
 
 30 . THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the law of nations, for the bodies of human beings 
 forcibly and fraudulently obtained, or at all events 
 carried away from their homes against their will, and 
 by violence confined, and compelled to labour and 
 suffer? What I am anxious to see is, how such a 
 claim can be stated with common decency in such 
 courts : I have no great fears as to the reception it 
 would meet with : it is repugnant to the whole law 
 of nature, and any knowledge of the law of nations 
 which I possess affords me no authority for it. I 
 earnestly hope some persons connected with privateers 
 and cruisers may soon try the question. They could 
 
 nations) by America, but by our own laws it was still allowed. It 
 appeared to us, therefore, difficult to consider the prohibitory law of 
 America in any other light than as one of those municipal regulations 
 of a foreign state, of which this court could not take any cognizance. 
 But by the alteration which has since taken place the question stands 
 on different grounds, and is open to the application of very different 
 principles. The Slave Trade has since been totally abolished in this 
 country, and our legislature has pronounced it to be contrary to the 
 principles of justice and humanity. Whatever we might think as in- 
 dividuals before, we could not, sitting as judges in a British court of 
 justice, regard the trade in that light, while our own laws permitted 
 it. But we can now assert, that this trade cannot, abstractedly speak- 
 ing, have a legitimate existence. When I say abstractedly speaking, 
 I mean this country has no right to control any foreign legislature that 
 may think fit to dissent from this doctrine, and to permit to its own 
 subjects the prosecution of this trade ; but we have now a right, to 
 affirm, that prima facie the trade is illegal, and thus to throw on 
 claimants the burden of proof that in respect of them, by the autho~ 
 rity of their own laws, it is otherwise. As the case now stands, we 
 think we are entitled to say, that a claimant can have no right, upon 
 principles of universal law, to claim the restitution in a prize court, of 
 human beings carried as his slaves. He must show some right that 
 has been violated by the capture, some property of which he has been 
 dispossessed, and to which he ought to be restored. In this case, the 
 laws of the claimant's country allow of no right of property of such 
 as he claims. There can therefore be no right to restitution. The 
 consequence is, that the judgment must be affirmed."
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 31 
 
 run no risk, I venture to assert on my own authority, 
 and still more confidently on that of professional 
 friends who frequent the prize courts, that no risk 
 whatever of being condemned in costs could possibly 
 be incurred, even if the vessels were restored. With- 
 out running any risk, much good may thus be done ; 
 and I should feel satisfied that I have more than an- 
 nounced the ends I had in view when I began this dis- 
 cussion, if I could persuade myself that what I now say 
 may lead any one to make this important trial. 
 
 Having hitherto only spoken of the foreign Slave 
 Trade, it is with great mortification that I now feel 
 myself obliged to call the attention of the House to 
 the evasions of the Abolition Acts in this country. For 
 accomplishing this detestable purpose, all the various 
 expedients have been adopted which the perverse in- 
 genuity of unprincipled avarice can suggest. Vessels 
 are fitted out at Liverpool, as if for innocent com- 
 merce with Africa. The ships, and even the cargoes, 
 are, for the most part, the same as those used in the 
 trade of gold-dust, grains, and ivory. The goods pe- 
 culiarly used in the Slave Trade are carefully concealed, 
 so as to elude the reach of the port officers. The plat- 
 forms and bulk-heads which distinguish slave ships are 
 not fitted and fixed until the vessel gets to sea, and 
 clears the channel, when the carpenters set to work 
 and adapt her for the reception of slaves. For better 
 concealment, some of the sailors, and not unfrequently 
 the Master himself, are Portuguese. But it is remark- 
 able, that, lurking in some dark corner of the ship, is 
 almost always to be found a hoary slave trader an 
 experienced captain, who, having been trained up in 
 the slave business from his early years, now accompanies 
 the vessel as a kind of supercargo, and helps her,, by 
 his wiles, both to escape detection and to push her ini- 
 quitous adventures. This is not a fanciful description.
 
 32 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 I hold in my hand the record of a court of justice, which 
 throws so much light on the subject, that I moved, 
 on a former night, to have it laid on the table. It 
 appears from thence, that, but a few months ago, in 
 the very river which washes the walls of this house, 
 not two miles from the spot where we now sit, persons 
 daring to call themselves English merchants have been 
 detected in the act of fitting out a vessel of great bulk 
 for the purpose of tearing seven or eight hundred 
 wretched beings from Africa, and carrying them 
 through the unspeakable horrors of the middle pas- 
 sage to endless bondage and misery, and toil which 
 knows no limits, nor is broken by any rest, in the 
 sands and swamps of Brazil. This detection has been 
 made by the zeal and knowledge of a much loved and 
 respected friend of mine,* who was only enabled to 
 pursue so difficult an investigation by that perfect ac- 
 quaintance with the subject, which he has acquired by 
 his residence in Africa as governor of Sierra Leone, and 
 by having even submitted to the pain of a slave voyage 
 for the purpose of better learning the nature of the 
 traffic. 
 
 I shall here read several extracts from the record 
 of condemnation of the Comercio de Rio, in the 
 Court of Exchequer last Hilary term. It appears, 
 that besides an enormous stock of provisions, water- 
 casks, mess-kits, &c. there were found on board fifty- 
 five dozen of padlocks, ninety-three pair of hand-cuffs, 
 a hundred and ninety-seven iron shackles for the feet, 
 thirteen hundred-weight three quarters of iron chains, 
 one box of religious implements, and, that the bodily 
 as well as the spiritual health of this human cargo 
 might not be neglected, the slave merchants, out of 
 their rare humanity which one must really have 
 
 Mr. Z. Macaulay.
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 33 
 
 known a good deal of the sort of character, easily to 
 believe allowed, for the medical wants of eight hun- 
 dred negroes, of all ages, crammed into a loathsome 
 cage, and carried through new and perilous climates 
 during a voyage of weeks, or even months one little 
 medicine chest, value 5. This is not the only in- 
 stance of the kind, nor even the latest one, I grieve 
 to say, recent though it be. I mentioned on a former 
 night, that at one port of this country, six vessels have 
 only just been fitted out, by a similar course of base 
 fraud, for the same trade, or rather let me call it, the 
 same series of detestable crimes. 
 
 It is now three years since that abominable traffic 
 has ceased to be sanctioned by the law of the land ; 
 and, I thank God, I may therefore now indulge in 
 expressing feelings towards it, which delicacy rather 
 to the law than the traffic, might, before that period, 
 have rendered it proper to suppress. After a long and 
 most unaccountable silence of the law on, this head, 
 which seemed to protect, by permitting, or at least by 
 not prohibiting the traffic, it has now spoken out, and 
 the veil which it has appeared to interpose being now 
 withdrawn, it is fit to let our indignation fall on those 
 who still dare to trade in human flesh, not merely for 
 the frauds of common smugglers, but for engaging in 
 crimes of the deepest dye ; in crimes always most ini- 
 quitous, even when not illegal ; but which now are 
 as contrary to law as they have ever been to honesty 
 and justice. I must protest loudly against the abuse 
 of language, which allows such men to call themselves 
 traders or merchants. It is not commerce, but crime, 
 that they are driving. I too well know, and too 
 highly respect, that most honourable and useful pur- 
 suit, that commerce whose province it is to humanize 
 and pacify the world so alien in its nature to violence 
 and fraud so formed to flourish in peace and in 
 
 VOL. ii. c
 
 34 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 honesty so inseparably connected with freedom, and 
 good will, and fair dealing, I deem too highly of it to 
 endure that its name should, by a strange perversion, 
 be prostituted to the use of men who live by treachery, 
 rapine, torture, and murder, and are habitually prac- 
 tising the worst of crimes for the basest of purposes. 
 When I say murder, I speak literally and advisedly. 
 I mean to use no figurative phrase ; and I know I 
 am guilty of no exaggeration. I am speaking of 
 the worst form of that crime. For ordinary murders 
 there may even be some excuse. Revenge may have 
 arisen from the excess of feelings honourable in them- 
 selves. A murder of hatred, or cruelty, or mere blood- 
 thirstiness, can only be imputed to a deprivation of 
 reason. But here we have to do with cool, deliberate, 
 mercenary murder, nay, worse than this; for the 
 ruffians who go on the highway, or the pirates who 
 infest the seas, at least expose their persons, and, 
 by their courage, throw a kind of false glare over their 
 crimes. But these wretches dare not do this. They 
 employ others as base as themselves, only that they 
 are less cowardly ; they set on men to rob and kill, 
 in whose spoils they are willing to share, though not 
 in their dangers. Traders, or merchants, do they 
 presume to call themselves ! and in cities like London 
 and Liverpool, the very creations of honest trade? 
 I will give them the right name, at length, and call 
 them cowardly suborners of piracy and mercenary 
 murder ! Seeing this determination, on the part of 
 these infamous persons, to elude the Abolition Act, it 
 is natural for me to ask, before I conclude, whether 
 any means can be devised for its more effectual ex- 
 ecution. I would suggest the propriety of obtaining 
 from the Portuguese government, either in perpetuity, 
 or for a term of years, the island of Bissao, situated on 
 the African coast, and the only foreign settlement in
 
 THE SLAVK THAUl-). 3.^ 
 
 that quarter where our commerce chiefly lies. This 
 cession would leave us a coast of five hundred miles' ex- 
 tent, wholly uninterrupted, and greatly facilitating the 
 destruction of the Slave Traffic in that part of Africa. 
 I would next remark, that the number of cruisers 
 employed on the African coast is too scanty. It is 
 thither, and not to America, that vessels intended to 
 detect slave traders should be sent ; because a slave- 
 ship must remain for some weeks on the coast to get 
 in her cargo, whereas she could run into her port of des- 
 tination in the West Indies in a night, and thus escape 
 detection ; yet, to watch a coast so extensive as the 
 African, we had never above two, and now have only 
 one cruiser. I would recommend, that the ships thus 
 employed should be of a light construction and small 
 draught of water, that they may cross the bars of the 
 harbours, in order to follow the slave-ships into the 
 shallows and creeks, and up the mouths of rivers, and 
 also that they should be well manned, and provided 
 with boats, for the same purpose. It would be im- 
 possible to employ six or seven light ships better than 
 on such a service. It is even more economical to em- 
 ploy a sufficient number ; the occasion for them would, 
 by this means, speedily cease. Once root out the 
 trade, and there is little fear of its again springing up. 
 The industry and capital required by it will find out 
 other vents. The labour and ingenuity of the persons 
 engaged in it will seek the different channels which 
 will continue open. Some of them will naturally 
 go on the highway, while others will betake them- 
 selves to piracy, and the law might, in due time, dis- 
 pose of them. 
 
 But I should not do justice either to my own sen- 
 timents, or to the great cause which I am maintain- 
 ing, were I to stop here. All the measures I have 
 mentioned are mere expedients mere makeshifts and
 
 36 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 \ 
 palliatives, compared with the real and effectual 
 
 remedy for this grand evil, which I have no hesitation 
 in saying it is now full time to apply. I should, 
 indeed, have been inclined to call the idea of stopping 
 such a traffic by pecuniary penalties, an absurdity and 
 inconsistency, had it not been adopted by Parliament, 
 and were I not also persuaded, that in such cases it 
 is necessary to go on by steps, and often to do what 
 we can, rather than attempt what we wish. Never- 
 theless, I must say, after the trial that has been given 
 to the Abolition law, I am now prepared to go much 
 further, and to declare that the Slave trade should at 
 once be made felony. When I consider how easily 
 laws are passed, declaring those acts even capital 
 offences, which have heretofore been either permitted, 
 or slightly punished ; when scarce a Session ends with- 
 out some such extension of the criminal code ; when 
 even capital offences are among the most numerous 
 progenies of our legislative labours ; when I see the 
 difficulty experienced by an honourable and learned 
 friend of mine,* in doing away the capital part of 
 the offence of stealing five shillings : \vhcn it is 
 remembered that Lord Ellenborough, by one act 
 created somewhere about a dozen capital felonies ; 
 when, in short, so many comparatively trivial of- 
 fences are so severely visited ; can one, who knows 
 what Slave Trading means, hesitate in admitting 
 that it ought at length to be punished as a crime? 
 Adverting, again, to the record before mentioned, 
 I find that the vessel, ready fitted out for the slave 
 coast, has sold for about 11,000, including guns, 
 tackle, cargo, and all ; but making allowance for 
 seamen's wages, wear, and tear, &c. I calculate 
 
 Sir Samuel Romilly.
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. ,3? 
 
 the whole expense of carrying 800 slaves over to 
 America, at 20,000, and as they will sell for 100 
 a-head, the net profits would bo near 60,000. Is 
 this to be stopped by a pecuniary penalty ? If one 
 such speculation, in four or five, succeed, they are 
 safe : there is even a temptation to engage in many 
 speculations, because the adventurer thus insures 
 against the risk of capture, and becomes his own 
 underwriter against the chance of detection, which he 
 could in no other way insure against. If an inhuman 
 being of this class fit out ten or twelve such ships, 
 and escape with three or four, his vile profits are 
 enormous; but it should be recollected, that all his 
 vessels, those which escape as well as those which 
 are taken, spread devastation over the African con- 
 tinent ; and even a single cargo is the utter ruin of 
 whole villages. To this case, more than to any other 
 that can be fancied, pecuniary checks are pecu- 
 liarly inapplicable. While you levy your pence, the 
 wholesale dealers in blood and torture pocket their 
 pounds, and laugh at your twopenny penalty. 
 
 I shall next advert to the 10th of Geo. II. for regu- 
 lating watermen between Gravesend and Chelsea. If 
 a person of this description carry above a certain 
 number of persons, although no accident happen, he 
 forfeits the use of the river ; and if by accident any 
 one be drowned, the boatman who so overloads is 
 transported for seven years as a felon. How do we 
 treat those who overload their vessels with miser- 
 able negroes, so as knowingly and wilfully to ensure 
 the death of many, and the torments of all ? Why, 
 the Slave carrying bill, which is somewhat similar to 
 the statute of George II. in its object, does not even 
 deprive such offenders of the use of the sea, which 
 they have so perverted and polluted by their crimes ; 
 far less does it transport for seven years, even where
 
 38 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the deaths of hundreds on board of such vessels hap- 
 pen not by accident, but as a necessary consequence 
 of the overloading. I make no reflection on the 
 statute of George II. but its provisions appear some- 
 what more applicable to the slave-trader, than to the 
 boatman. What has the Divine Legislator said on this 
 subject ? There is a most false and unfounded 
 notion, that the sacred writings are silent upon it ; 
 I shall prove the contrary. " Whosoever, " (says 
 the Scripture) " stealeth a man, and selleth him, or in 
 whose hands he shall be found, shall surely be put to 
 death." And what is our gloss or application of this 
 divine text ? " Whosoever," (says the English law) 
 " stealeth a man, and tortureth him, and killeth him, 
 or selleth him into slavery for all the days of his life, 
 shall surely pay twenty pounds!" I trust that this grie- 
 vous incongruity will at length be done away, and I now 
 pledge myself to bring in a bill to that effect early in 
 the ensuing session ; but I earnestly hope, that in the 
 meantime the House will leave nothing unattempt- 
 ed which may tend to diminish the great evils com- 
 plained of, and give effect to one of the most holy of 
 our laws. 
 
 I move, " That an humble Address be presented to 
 his Majesty, representing to his Majesty, that this 
 House has taken into its serious consideration the 
 papers which his Majesty was graciously pleased to 
 cause to be laid before this House upon the subject of 
 the African Slave Trade. That while this House 
 acknowledges with gratitude the endeavours which 
 his Majesty has been pleased to use, in compliance with 
 the wishes of Parliament, to induce foreign nations to 
 concur in relinquishing that disgraceful commerce, 
 this House has to express its deep regret that those 
 efforts have been attended with so little success. 
 That this House does most earnestly beseech his
 
 THE SLAVK TRADE. ;39 
 
 Majesty to persevere in those measures which may 
 tend to induce his allies, and such other foreign states 
 as he may be able to negotiate with, to co-operate 
 with this country in a general Abolition of the Slave 
 Trade, and to concur in the adoption of such measures 
 as may assist in the effectual execution of the laws 
 already passed for that purpose. That this House has 
 learnt with the greatest surprise and indignation, that 
 certain persons in this country have not scrupled to 
 continue in a clandestine and fraudulent manner the 
 detestable traffic in slaves. And that this House does 
 most humbly pray his Majesty that he will be gra- 
 ciously pleased to cause to be given to the commanders 
 of his Majesty's ships and vessels of war, the officers 
 of his Majesty's customs, and the other persons in his 
 Majesty's service, whose situation enables them to 
 detect and suppress these abuses, such orders as may 
 effectually check practices ecpially contemptuous to 
 the authority of parliament, and derogatory to the 
 interests and the honour of the countrv."
 
 CASE 
 
 OK THE 
 
 REV. JOHN SMITH. 
 
 MISSIONARY IN DEMERARA,
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 OPPRESSION OF THE MISSIONARIES MOTION OF CEN- 
 SURE ON THE DEMERARA GOVERNMENT EFFECT OF 
 
 THE DISCUSSION UPON PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 THERE never has been any case of Colonial oppression 
 attended with such important consequences, and sel- 
 dom any that excited so lively an interest as that of 
 the Missionary Smith, in 1823. This venerable per- 
 son belonged to the sect of Independents, a class of 
 men famous in all ages for their tolerant principles, as 
 well as for their love of liberty, and to whom this 
 country owes a lasting debt of gratitude, for their 
 strenuous exertions in the troubles of the seventeenth 
 century, those troubles in which the cradle of English 
 liberty was rocked. He had been sent to Demcrara by 
 the London Missionary Society, and its worthy head 
 the truly respectable Mr. Alers Hankey. An insur- 
 rection of the Negroes having broken out, in the fever 
 of alarm which generally attends such events, among
 
 44 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a set of men justly conscious like the planters, both of 
 the Negro's continued wrongs, and of their own im- 
 minent dangers, it was fancied that Mr. Smith had in 
 some way contributed to the movement. That such 
 a rumour once propagated should have gained ground 
 among the multitude, was perhaps not to be wondered 
 at. But, that the constituted authorities should have 
 been so far moved by it as to put the party on his 
 trial, without the most careful previous investigation 
 of all the circumstances, seems hardly credible, when 
 we reflect on the extreme delicacy of the questions 
 thus certain to be raised, and upon the religious feel- 
 ing, still stronger than the political, sure to be excited. 
 There were, however, stranger things yet to be wit- 
 nessed in the progress of this important affair. The po- 
 pular agitation (if we may so call the excitement among 
 the handful of Whites thinly scattered among the real 
 bulk of the people) extended itself to the court, before 
 whom the Missionary was tried ; and the judges, par- 
 taking of the violence which inspired the planters and 
 other slave-dealers, committed a series of errors so 
 gross as to mock belief, and of oppressions which are 
 unexampled in the dispensation of English justice. 
 Among these acts, whether of matchless ignorance or 
 of gross injustice, the most striking but not the only 
 ones, were, the constant admission of manifestly illegal 
 evidence, and the condemning to death a person only 
 accused of misprision, a crime plainly not capital. The 
 Missionary was cast into a small and loathsome dun- 
 geon, in a state of health which made any imprison- 
 ment dangerous. There, after some weeks of the most 
 severe suffering, he yielded up his pious spirit, expia- 
 ting with his guiltless blood the sin of which there is
 
 INTRODUCTION. 4,5 
 
 no remission in the West Indies, the sin of having 
 taught the slaves the religion of peace, and consoled 
 them for the cruel lot inflicted by the crimes of this 
 world, with the hopes of mercy in another. 
 
 The arrival of this intelligence in England, speedily 
 produced all the feelings which might well have been 
 expected. Pity for the victim ; sympathy with his 
 unhappy widow ; fellow feeling for his bereaved flock ; 
 alarm at the sight of religious persecution ; contempt 
 for the ignorance of the legal, and the pusillanimity 
 of the political authorities ; indignation at the injus- 
 tice of the Courts were the sentiments that strove for 
 mastery among the great body of the British people ; 
 and all were finally concentrated in one single, univer- 
 sal, and implacable feeling of revenge against that 
 execrable system, which, contrary to the law of God, 
 pretends to vest in man a property in his fellow-crea- 
 tures, as fatal to the character of the oppressor as to 
 the happiness of his victim.. 
 
 After maturely deliberating upon the course most 
 fit to be taken, both with a view to attain the ends 
 of justice, and to make the blow most effectual, which 
 this question enabled him to level at Negro Slavery 
 and colonial misgovernment, Mr. Brougham, on the 
 1st of June, brought forward his motion of censure 
 upon the Demerara Government, and the Court, its 
 instrument and accomplice in oppression. A debate 
 of surpassing interest ensued. The most distinguished 
 speakers for the motion were Mr. Williams,* Mr. 
 Denman,f and Dr. Lushington. On the other side, the 
 
 * Now a judge in the Court of Queen's Bench. 
 
 + Now Lord Chief Justice, who has recently shown his habitual love of liberty 
 by declaring Slavery to be unlawful.
 
 40 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 majority inclined at first to resist the motion, and the 
 Colonial Under Secretary,* met it with a direct nega- 
 tive ; but finding they were in peril of a defeat, Mr. 
 Canning, who did not very creditably distinguish him- 
 self on this occasion, concluded by moving the previous 
 question, upon which the division was taken. Mr. 
 Tindal,f made on this occasion his first parliamentary 
 speech, with distinguished ability ; and Mr. Scarlett, $ 
 ably argued on the same side; Lord Palmerston and 
 Messrs. Lamb and Grant, voted in the ministerial 
 majority, thus giving to the country an early pledge 
 of those principles so hostile to Colonial liberty, on 
 which they have since acted. The motion was lost by 
 146 to 193 votes, after an adjourned debate. 
 
 But the effect produced by this great discussion was 
 extreme and powerful. The minds of men were turned 
 to the real state of Negro bondage ; the abuses and op- 
 pressions committed in the Colonies were fully exa- 
 mined ; the impossibility of carrying the acts now every 
 where loudly complained of, unless by destroying so un- 
 natural a system, was generally recognised. " The Mis- 
 sionary Smith's Case" became a watch- word and a 
 rallying cry with all the friends of religious liberty, 
 as well as the enemies of West Indian Slavery. The 
 votes of those who had sided with the Government in 
 resisting the motion were carefully recorded, for the pur- 
 pose of preventing them from ever again being returned 
 to Parliament. The measures of the abolitionists all 
 over the country became more bold and decided, as their 
 principles commanded a more general and warmer 
 
 * Mr. W. Horton. -|- Now Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. 
 
 * Now Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Now Lords Melbourne and Glenelg.
 
 INTRODUCTION. -J7 
 
 concurrence ; and all men now saw that the warning- 
 given in the peroration of the latter of these two 
 speeches, though sounded in vain across the Atlantic 
 Ocean, was echoing with a loudness redoubled at each 
 repetition through the British Isles, that it had rung 
 the knell of the system, and that at the fetters of the 
 slave a blow was at length struck which must, if fol- 
 lowed up, make them fall off his limbs for ever. The 
 cause of Negro Emancipation has owed more to this 
 case of individual oppression, mixed with religious 
 persecution, than to all the other enormities of which 
 Slavery has ever been convicted.
 
 SPEECH 
 
 IN THE CASE OF THE 
 
 REV. JOHN SMITH, 
 
 THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 JUNE 1, 1824. 
 
 VOL. ir.
 
 SPEECH, 
 
 MR. SPEAKER, I confess, that in bringing before this 
 House the question on which I now rise to address you, 
 I feel not a little disheartened by the very intense inte- 
 rest^excited in the country, and the contrast presented 
 to those feelings by the coldness which prevails within 
 these walls. I cannot conceal from myself, that, even 
 in quarters where one would least have expected it, a 
 considerable degree of disinclination exists to enter 
 into the discussion, or candidly to examine the details 
 of the subject. Many persons who have, upon all 
 other occasions, been remarkable for their manly hos- 
 tility to acts of official oppression, who have been alive 
 to every violation of the rights of the subject, and 
 who have uniformly and most honourably viewed with 
 peculiar jealousy every infraction of the law, strange 
 to say, on the question of Mr. Smith's treatment, 
 evince a backwardness to discuss, or even listen to 
 it. Nay, they would fain fasten upon any excuse to 
 get rid of the subject. What signifies inquiring, say 
 they, into a transaction which has occurred in a re- 
 mote portion of the world ? As if distance or climate 
 made any difference in an outrage upon law or justice. 
 One would rather have expected that the very idea of 
 that distance the circumstance of the event having
 
 52 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 taken place beyond the immediate scope of our laws, 
 and out of the view of the people of this country in 
 possessions where none of the inhabitants have repre- 
 sentatives in this House, and the bulk of them have 
 no representatives at all, one might have thought, I 
 say, that, in place of forming a ground of objection, 
 their remote and unprotected situation would have 
 strengthened the claims of the oppressed to the inter- 
 position of the British Legislature. Then, says another, 
 too indolent to inquire, slow to hear, but prompt enough 
 to decide, " It is true there have been a great number 
 of petitions presented on the subject ; but then every 
 body knows how those petitions are procured, by 
 what descriptions of persons they are signed, and 
 what are the motives which influence a few misguid- 
 ed, enthusiastic men, in preparing them, and the great 
 crowd in signing them. And, after all, it is merely 
 about a poor missionary !" I have now to learn, for 
 the first time, that the weakness of the sufferer 
 his unprotected situation his being left single and 
 alone to contend against power exercised with vio- 
 lence, constitutes a reason for this House shutting its 
 ears against all complaints of such proceedings, and 
 refusing to investigate the treatment of the injured 
 individual. But it is not enough that he was a mis- 
 sionary ; to make the subject still more unpalatable, 
 for 1 will come to the point, and at once use the 
 hateful word, he must needs also be a Methodist. I 
 hasten to this objection, with a view at once to dis- 
 pose of it. Suppose Mr, Smith had been a Methodist 
 - what then ? Does his connection with that class of 
 religious people, because, on some points essential in 
 their conscientious belief, they are separated from the 
 National Church, alter or lessen his claims to the protec- 
 tion of the law? AreBritish subjects to be treated more 
 or less favourably in courts of law are they to have
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 5.'J 
 
 a larger or a smaller share in the security of life and 
 limb, in the justice dealt out by the Government- 
 according to the religious opinions which they may 
 happen to hold ? Had he belonged to the society of 
 the Methodists, and been employed by the members 
 of that communion, I should have thought no worse 
 of him or his mission, and felt nothing the less 
 strongly for his wrongs. But it does so happen, 
 that neither the one nor the other of these assump- 
 tions is true ; neither the Missionary Society, nor 
 their servants, are of the Methodist persuasion. The 
 Society is composed indifferently of Churchmen and 
 Dissenters : Mr. Smith is, or, as I unhappily must now 
 say, was, a minister a faithful and pious minister 
 of the Independents, that body much to be respected 
 indeed for their numbers, but far more to be held in 
 lasting veneration for the unshaken fortitude with 
 which in all times, they have maintained their attach- 
 ment to civil and religious liberty, and, holding fast 
 by their own principles, have carried to its uttermost 
 pitch the great doctrine of absolute toleration ; men 
 to whose ancestors this country will ever acknowledge 
 a boundless debt of gratitude, as long as freedom is 
 prized among us : for they, I fearlessly proclaim it 
 they, with whatever ridicule some may visit their ex- 
 cesses, or with whatever blame others they, with the 
 zeal of martyrs, the purity of the early Christians, the 
 skill and the courage of the most renowned warriors, 
 gloriously suffered, and fought, and conquered for 
 England the free constitution which she now enjoys ! 
 True to the generous principles in Church and State 
 which won those immortal triumphs, their descendants 
 still are seen clothed with the same amiable peculiarity 
 of standing forward among all religious denominations, 
 pre-eminent in toleration ; so that although, in the 
 progress of knowledge, other classes of Dissenters
 
 54 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 may be approaching fast to overtake them, they still 
 are foremost in this proud distinction. All, then, I 
 ask of those who feel indisposed to this discussion is, 
 that they will not allow their prepossessions, or I 
 would rather say their indolence (for, disguise it as 
 they will, indolence is at the bottom of this indispo- 
 sition), to prevent them from entering calmly and 
 fully into the discussion of the question. It is im- 
 possible that they can overlook the unexampled 
 solicitude which it has excited in every class of the 
 people out of doors. That consideration should naturally 
 induce the House of Commons to lend its ear to the 
 inquiry, which, however, is fully entitled, on its own 
 merits, to command undivided attention. 
 
 It will be my duty to examine the charge preferred 
 against the late Mr. Smith, and the whole of the 
 proceedings founded on that charge. And in so 
 doing, I have no hesitation in saying, that from the 
 beginning of those proceedings to their fatal termi- 
 nation, there has been committed more of illegality, 
 more of the violation of justice violation of justice, 
 in substance as well as form than, in the whole 
 history of modern times, I venture to assert, was 
 ever before witnessed in any inquiry that could be 
 called a judicial proceeding. I have tried the ex- 
 periment upon every person with whom I have had 
 an opportunity of conversing on the subject of these 
 proceedings at Demerara, as well members of the 
 profession to which I have the honour of belonging, 
 as others acquainted with the state of affairs in our 
 Colonies, and I have never met with one w r ho did not 
 declare to me, that the more the question was looked 
 into, the greater attention was given to its details, the 
 more fully the whole mass was sifted the more com- 
 plete was his assent to the conviction that there 
 was never exhibited a greater breach of the law, a
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 55 
 
 more daring violation of justice, a more flagrant con- 
 tempt of all those forms by which law and justice were 
 wont to be administered, and under which the perpe- 
 trators of ordinary acts of judicial oppression are wont 
 to hide the nakedness of their crimes. 
 
 It is now necessary to call the attention of the 
 House to that unhappy state of things which ex- 
 isted in Demerara during the course of the past year. 
 Certain Instructions had been forwarded from this 
 country to those Slave Colonies which are more under 
 the control of the Government than the other West- 
 India Islands. Whether the Instructions were the 
 best calculated to fulfil the intentions of those who 
 issued them whether the directions had not in some 
 points gone too far, at least in prematurely intro- 
 ducing the object that they had most properly in 
 view and whether, in other points, they did not 
 stop short of their purpose whether, in a country 
 where the symbol of authority was the constantly 
 manifested lash of the driver, it was expedient at 
 once to withdraw that dreadful title of ownership, I 
 shall not now stop to inquire. Suffice it to say, that 
 those instructions arrived at Demerara on the 7th 
 of last July, and great alarm and feverish anxiety ap- 
 pear to have been excited by them amongst the White 
 part of the population. That the existence of this 
 alarm so generally felt by the proprietors, and the ar- 
 rival of some new and beneficial regulations, were 
 marked and understood by the domestic Slaves, there 
 cannot be a doubt. By them the intelligence was speedi- 
 ly communicated to the field Negroes. All this time 
 there was no official communication of the Instructions 
 from the Colonial Government. A meeting had been 
 convened of the Court of Policy, but nothing had been 
 made public in consequence of its assembling. A 
 second meeting was held, and it was understood that
 
 56 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 a difference of opinion prevailed among the members, 
 after a discussion, which, though not fierce, was still 
 animated. The only means which the circumstances of 
 the case naturally suggested do not appear to have been 
 adopted by those at the head of affairs in Demerara. I 
 do not impute to them any intentional disregard of duty. 
 It is very possible that the true remedy for the mischief 
 may have escaped them in the moment of excited ap- 
 prehension in the prevalence of general alarm, ren- 
 dered more intense by the inquisitive anxiety of the 
 Slave population, an alarm and anxiety continued 
 by the state of ignorance in which the Slaves were kept 
 as to the real purport of the Instructions from England. 
 But most certainly, whatever was the cause, the 
 authorities at Demerara overlooked that course of 
 proceeding best calculated to allay at least the in- 
 quisitive anxiety of the Slaves ; namely, promulgating 
 in the colony what it really was that had been directed 
 by the Instructions of the King's Ministers, even if 
 they were not disposed at once to declare whether 
 they would or would not carry those Instructions into 
 execution. Unhappily they did not take that plain 
 course. Week after week was suffered to elapse ; 
 and up to the period when the lamentable occurrence 
 took place, which led to these proceedings, no authen- 
 tic, or, at least authoritative communication, either of 
 what had arrived from England, or of what was the 
 intention of the authorities at Demerara, was made to 
 the Slaves. This state of suspense occupied an inter- 
 val of nearly seven weeks. The revolt broke out on 
 the 18th of August. During the whole of that inter- 
 val the agitation in the colony was considerable ; it 
 was of a two-fold character. There was on one side the 
 alarm of the Planters, as to the consequences of the new 
 Instructions received from his Majesty's Government ; 
 and on the other the naturally increasing anxiety of the
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 57 
 
 Negro as to the precise purport and extent of those 
 Instructions. There existed the general impression, 
 that some extension of grace and bounty had been 
 made to the Slaves. In the ignorance which was so stu- 
 diously maintained as to the nature of it, their hopes 
 were proportionably excited ; they knew that something 
 had been done, and they were inquisitive to learn what 
 it was. The general conversation amongst them was, 
 " Has not our freedom come out ? Is not the King of 
 Great Britain our friend ?" Various speculations occu- 
 pied them; reports of particular circumstances agitated 
 them. Each believed in the detail as his fancy or 
 credulity led him ; but to one point all their hopes 
 pointed ; " Freedom ! freedom !" was the sound un- 
 ceasingly heard ; and it continually raised the vision 
 on which their fancy loved to repose. 
 
 And now, allow me to take the opportunity of re- 
 asserting the opinion which, with respect to that most 
 important subject of Emancipation, I have uniformly 
 maintained, not only since I have had the honour of 
 a seat in this House, but long before, with no other 
 difference, save, perhaps, in the manner of the expres- 
 sion, correcting that manner by the experience and 
 knowledge which a more extended intercourse with 
 human life must naturally have bestowed. My opinion 
 ever has been, that it is alike necessary to the security 
 of our White brethren, and just, and even merciful to 
 the Negroes those victims of a long-continued sys- 
 tem of cruelty, impolicy, and injustice to maintain 
 firmly the legal authorities, and with that view, to 
 avoid, in our relations with the Slaves, a wavering 
 uncertain policy, or keep them in a condition of doubt 
 and solicitude, calculated to work their own dis- 
 comfort, and the disquiet of their masters. Jus- 
 tice to the Whites, mercy to the Blacks, command 
 us to protect the first from the effect of such alarms,
 
 58 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 and the last from the expectation, that, in the hap- 
 less condition in which they are placed, their eman- 
 cipation can be obtained meaning thereby their 
 sudden, unprepared emancipation, by violent mea- 
 sures, or with an unjustifiable haste, and without 
 previous instruction. The realization of such a hope, 
 though carrying the name of a boon, would inflict 
 the severest misery on these beings, whose con- 
 dition is already too wretched to require, or indeed to 
 bear, any increase of calamity. It is for the sake of 
 the Blacks themselves, as subsidiary to their own 
 improvement, that the present state of things must 
 for a time be maintained. It is because to them, the 
 bulk of our fellow-subjects in the Colonies, liberty, if 
 suddenly given, and, still more, if violently obtained 
 by men yet unprepared to receive it, would be a curse, 
 and not a blessing; that emancipation must be the 
 work of time, and, above all, must not be wrested 
 forcibly from their masters. Reverting to the occur- 
 rences at Demerara, it is undeniable that a great and 
 unnecessary delay took place. This inevitably, there- 
 fore, gave rise to those fatal proceedings, w T hich all of 
 us, however we may differ as to the causes from which 
 they originated, must unfeignedly deplore. 
 
 It appears that Mr. Smith had officiated as a minister 
 of religion in the colony of Demerara for seven years. 
 He had maintained during his whole life a character of 
 the most unimpeachable moral purity, which had not 
 only won the love and veneration of his own immediate 
 flock, but had procured him the respect and considera- 
 tion of all who resided in his neighbourhood. In- 
 deed, there is not a duty of his ministry that he had 
 not discharged with fidelity and zeal. That this was 
 his character is evident even from the papers laid upon 
 the table of this House. These documents, however, 
 disclose but a part of the truth on this point. Before
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 59 
 
 I sit clown I shall have occasion to advert to other 
 sources of information, which show that the character 
 of Mr. Smith was such as I have described it ; and 
 that those who are best qualified to form an opinion, 
 have borne the highest testimony to his virtuous and 
 meritorious labours. Yet this Christian Minister, thus 
 usefully employed, thus generally revered and beloved, 
 was dragged from his house, three days after the re- 
 volt began, and when it had been substantially quell- 
 ed, with an indecent haste that allowed not the 
 accommodation even of those clothes which, in all 
 climates, are necessary to human comfort, but which, 
 in a tropical climate, are absolutely essential to 
 health. He was dragged, too, from his home and 
 his family at a time when his life was attacked by a 
 disease which, in all probability, would in any circum- 
 stances have ended in his dissolution ; but which the 
 treatment he then received powerfully accelerated 
 in its fatal progress. He was first imprisoned in 
 that sultry climate, in an unwholesome fetid room, 
 exposed to the heat of the tropical sun. This situa- 
 tion was afterwards changed, and he was conveyed 
 to a place only suited to the purposes of torture 
 a kind of damp dungeon, where the crazy floor was 
 laid loosely over stagnant water, visible through the 
 wide crevices of its boards. When Mr. Smith was 
 about to be seized, he was first approached with the 
 hollow demand of the officer who apprehended him, 
 commanding him to join the militia of the district. 
 To this he pleaded his inability to serve in that capa- 
 city, as well as an exemption founded on the rights of 
 his clerical character. Under the pretext of this refu- 
 sal, his person was arrested, and his papers were 
 demanded, and taken possession of. Amongst them 
 was his private journal a part of which was written 
 with the intention of being communicated to his
 
 GO THE iMISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 employers alone, while the remaining part was intend- 
 ed for no human eye but his own. In this state of 
 imprisonment he was detained, although the revolt 
 was then entirely quelled. That it was so quelled, is 
 ascertained from the dispatches of General Murray to 
 Earl Bathurst, dated the 26th of August. At least 
 the dispatch of that date admits that the public 
 tranquillity was nearly restored ; and, at all events, 
 by subsequent dispatches, of the 30th and 31st, it 
 appears that no further disturbance had taken place ; 
 nor was there from that time any insurrectionary 
 movement whatever. At that period the colony was 
 in the enjoyment of its accustomed tranquillity, barr- 
 ing always those chances of relapse, which, in such a 
 state of public feeling, and in such a structure of 
 society, must be supposed always to exist, and to make 
 the recurrence of irritation and tumult more or less 
 probable. Martial law, it will be recollected, was 
 proclaimed on the 1 5th of August, and was continued 
 to the 15th of January following- five calendar 
 months although there is the most unquestionable 
 proof, that the revolt had subsided, and indeed that 
 all appearance of insubordination had vanished. 
 
 In a prison such as I have described, Mr. Smith 
 remained until the 14th day of October. Then, w r hen 
 every pretence of real and immediate danger was over ; 
 when every thing like apprehension, save from the state 
 of colonial society, was removed ; it was thought fit to 
 bring to trial, by a military court-martial, this Minis- 
 ter of the Gospel ! I shall now view the outside of 
 that court-martial : it is fit that we look at its exter- 
 nal appearance, examine the foundations on w r hich it 
 rests, and the structures connected with it, before we 
 enter and survey the things perpetrated within its 
 walls. I know that the general answer to all which 
 has been hitherto alleged on this subject is, that mar-
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. (,-] 
 
 tial law had been proclaimed in Demerara. But, Sir, 
 I do not profess to understand, as a lawyer, martial 
 law of such a description : it is entirely unknown to 
 the law of England I do not mean to say in the bad 
 times of our history, but in that more recent period 
 which is called Constitutional. It is very true, that 
 formerly the Crown sometimes issued proclamations, 
 by virtue of which civil offences were tried before 
 military tribunals. The most remarkable instance 
 of that description, and the nearest precedent to 
 the case under our consideration, was the well known 
 proclamation of that august, pious, and humane pair, 
 Philip and Mary, of happy memory, stigmatizing as 
 rebellion, and as an act which should subject the 
 offender to be tried by a court-martial, the having 
 heretical, that is so say, Protestant books in one's 
 possession, and not giving them up without pre- 
 viously reading them. Similar proclamations, al- 
 though not so extravagant in their character, were 
 issued by Elizabeth, by James the First, and (of 
 a less violent nature) by Charles the First ; until at 
 length the evil became so unbearable, that there arose 
 from it the celebrated Petition of Right, one of the 
 best legacies left to his country by that illustrious 
 lawyer, Lord Coke, to whom every man that loves the 
 Constitution owes a debt of gratitude which unceasing 
 veneration for his memory can never pay. The Peti- 
 tion provides that all such proceedings shall thence- 
 forward be put down : it declares, " that no man shall 
 be fore-judged of life or limb against the form of the 
 Great Charter ;" " that no man ought to be adjudged 
 to death but by the laws established in this realm, 
 either by the custom of the realm, or by Acts of Par- 
 liament ;" and " that the commissions for proceeding 
 by martial law should be revoked and annulled, lest, 
 by colour of them, any of his Majesty's subjects be
 
 62 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 destroyed or put to death, contrary to the laws and 
 franchise of the land." Since that time, no such 
 thing as martial law has been recognised in this coun- 
 try ; and courts founded on proclamations of martial 
 law have been wholly unknown. And here I beg to 
 observe, that the particular grievances at which the 
 Petition of Right was levelled, were only the trials 
 under martial law of military persons, or of individuals 
 accompanying, or in some manner connected with, 
 military persons. On the abolition of martial law, 
 what was substituted ? In those days, a standing army 
 in time of peace was considered a solecism in the Con- 
 stitution. Accordingly, the whole course of our legis- 
 lation proceeded on the principle, that no such esta- 
 blishment was recognised. Afterwards came the an- 
 nual Mutiny Acts, and Courts Martial which were 
 held only under those acts. These courts were re- 
 stricted to the trial of soldiers for military offences ; 
 and the extent of their powers was pointed out and 
 limited by law. But I will not go further into the con- 
 sideration of this delicate constitutional question; for the 
 present case does not rest on any niceties it depends 
 not on any fine-spun decisions with respect to the law. 
 If it should be said, that, in the conquered colonies, the 
 law of the foreign state may be allowed to prevail over 
 that of England ; I reply, that the Crown has no right to 
 conquer a colony, and then import into its constitution 
 all manner of strange and monstrous usages. If the 
 contrary were admitted, the Crown would only have 
 to resort first to one coast of Africa and then to an- 
 other, and afterwards to the shores of the Pacific, and im- 
 port the various customs of the barbarous people whom 
 it might subdue ; torture from one ; the scalping knife 
 and tomahawk from another ; from a third, the regal 
 prerogative of paving the palace courts with the skulls 
 of the subject. All the prodigious and unutterable
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 03 
 
 practices of the most savage nations might thus be 
 naturalized by an act of the Crown, without the con- 
 currence of Parliament, and to the detriment of all 
 British subjects born, or resident, or settling for a 
 season, in those new dominions. Nothing, however, 
 is more clear, than that no practice inconsistent with 
 the fundamental principles of the constitution such, 
 for instance, as the recourse to torture for the purpose 
 of obtaining evidence can ever be imported into a 
 colony by any act of conquest. But all considera- 
 tions of this nature are unnecessary on the present oc- 
 casion : for this court was an English court-martial. 
 The title by which it claimed to sit was the Mutiny 
 Act, and the law of England. The members of the 
 court are estopped from pleading the Dutch law, as 
 that on which their proceedings were founded. They 
 are estopped, because they relied for their right to sit 
 on our own Mutiny Act, which they time after time 
 refer to ; and they cannot now pretend that they pro- 
 ceeded on any other ground. 
 
 Let us now look for a few moments at the opera- 
 tions which preceded the trial of this poor Missionary. 
 He was, as I have just stated, tried by a court-mar- 
 tial ; and we are told by General Murray, in his 
 dispatch of October 21, that it was all the better for 
 him, for that, if he had been tried in any other 
 manner, he might have found a more prejudiced tri- 
 bunal. Now, Sir, I have no hesitation in saying, that 
 if I had been the party accused, or of counsel for the 
 party accused, I would at once have preferred a civil 
 jurisdiction to the very anomalous proceeding that 
 took place. First of all, I should have gained delay, 
 which in most cases is a great advantage to the ac- 
 cused. In this particular case it must have proved 
 of inestimable benefit to him, as the fever of party 
 rage and personal hostility would have been suffered
 
 64 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 gradually to subside. By proceeding under the civil 
 jurisdiction, the addition of the Roman law to that of 
 the common law necessarily occasioned great prolixity 
 in the trial. Months must have elapsed during those 
 proceedings, and at every step the accused would have 
 had a chance of escape. All this would have been of 
 incalculable value ; and all this was lost to the accused, 
 by his being summarily brought before a military 
 tribunal. The evidence of Slaves was admitted by 
 the court without doubt or contest ; a point, how- 
 ever, on which I do not much rely ; for I understand 
 that in Demerara the usage in this respect differs from 
 the usage of some other colonies, and that the evidence 
 of Negroes against Whites is considered admissible, 
 although it is not frequently resorted to. Still, how- 
 ever, there is this difference as respects such evidence 
 between a civil and a military court ; in the latter, it 
 is received at once, without hesitation ; whereas, if 
 the matter is brought before a civil jurisdiction, a pre- 
 liminary proceeding must take place respecting the 
 admissibility of each witness. His evidence is com- 
 pared with the evidence of other witnesses, or parts 
 of his evidence are compared with other parts, and on 
 the occurrence of any considerable discrepancy the 
 evidence of that witness is finally refused. There are 
 also previous proceedings, had the subject been brought 
 before a civil jurisdiction, which might have had this 
 effect : a discussion takes place before the Chief Jus- 
 tice and two assistants, on the admissibility of wit- 
 nesses, who are not admitted as evidence in the cause 
 until after a preliminary examination ; and I under- 
 stand, that the circumstance of a witness beino- a 
 
 o 
 
 Slave whose evidence is to be adduced against a 
 White man, in cases of doubt, always weighs in the 
 balance against his admissibility. But I pass all this 
 over. I rest the case only on that which is clear, un-
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASK. j 
 
 deniable, unquestioned. By tlie course of the civil 
 law, two witnesses are indispensably required to sub- 
 stantiate any charge against the accused. Let any one 
 read the evidence on this trial, and say, how greatly 
 the observance of such a rule would have improved 
 the condition of the prisoner. Last of all, if the ac- 
 cused had been tried at common law, lie would have 
 had the advantage of a learned person presiding over 
 the court, as the Chief Justice, who must have been 
 individually and professionally responsible for his con- 
 duct ; who would have acted in the face of the whole 
 bar of the colony ; who would also have acted in 
 the face of that renowned English bar to which he 
 once belonged, to which he might return, and whose 
 judgment, therefore, even when removed from them 
 by the breadth of the Atlantic, he would not have 
 disregarded, while he retained the feelings of a. man, 
 and the character of an English advocate. lie would 
 have acted in the face of the whole world as an indi- 
 vidual, doubtless not without assistance, but still with 
 the assistance of laymen only, who could not have divi- 
 ded the responsibility with him. lie would, in every 
 essential particular, have stood forth single and su- 
 preme, in the eyes of the rest of mankind, as the Judge 
 who tried the prisoner. In such circumstances, he 
 must have conducted himself with an entire regard to 
 his professional character, to his responsibility as a 
 judge, to his credit as a lawyer. 
 
 Now, Sir, let us look at the constitution of the court 
 before which Mr. Smith was actually tried. Upon a 
 reference to the individuals of whom it was composed, I 
 find, what certainly appears most strange, the president 
 of the civil court taking upon himself the functions of 
 a member of the court martial, under the name of an 
 officer of the militia staff. It appears to be the fact, 
 that this learned individual was invested with the rank 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 66 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 and degree of lieutenant-colonel of the militia, a few 
 days before the assembling of the court martial, in 
 order that he, a lawyer and a civil judge, might sit as 
 a military judge and a soldier ! Sir, he must have 
 done this by compulsion. Martial law was established 
 in the colony by the power to which he owed obe- 
 dience. He could not resist the mandate of the Go- 
 vernor. He was bound, in compliance with that man- 
 date, to hide his civic garb, to cover his forensic robe 
 under martial armour. As the aid-de-camp of the 
 Governor, he was compelled to act a mixed character 
 part lawyer, part soldier. He was the only lawyer in 
 a court where a majority of the soldiery overwhelmed 
 him. Having no responsibility, he abandoned or was 
 compelled to sit helpless and unresisting, and see 
 others abandoning principles and forms which he 
 could not, which he would not, which he durst not, 
 have abandoned, had he been sitting alone in his own 
 court, in his ermined robe, administering the civil law. 
 After this strange fact respecting the higher members 
 of the court, it is not surprising that one as strange 
 should appear with regard to its subordinate officers. The 
 Judge-Advocate of a court martial, although certainly 
 sometimes standing in the situation of a prosecutor, 
 nevertheless, in all well regulated courts martial, never 
 forgets that he also stands between the prisoner and 
 the bench. He is rather, indeed, in the character of 
 an assessor to the court. On this point, I might ap- 
 peal to the highest authority present. By you, Sir, 
 these important functions were long, and correctly, 
 and constitutionally performed ; and in a manner 
 equally beneficial to the army and to the country. 
 But I may appeal to another authority, from which no 
 one will be inclined to dissent. A revered judge, Mr. 
 Justice Bathurst, in the middle of the last century, 
 laid it down as clear and indisputable, that the office
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 67 
 
 of a Judge- Advocate was to lay the proof on both 
 sides before the court ; and that whenever the evi- 
 dence was at all doubtful, it was his duty to incline 
 towards the prisoner. No such disposition, however, 
 appears in this Judge- Advocate, I should rather say 
 in these Judge-Advocates ; for, one not being con- 
 sidered enough, two deputies were appointed to assist 
 him. These individuals exercised all their address, 
 their caution, and their subtlety, against the unfortu- 
 nate prisoner, with a degree of zeal bordering upon 
 acrimony. Indeed, the vehemence of the prosecution 
 was unexampled. I never met with any thing equal 
 to it ; and I am persuaded, that if any such warmth 
 had been exhibited before a civil judge by a prosecut- 
 ing counsel, he would have frowned it down with 
 sudden indignation. 
 
 In the first instance, the Judge-Advocate concealed 
 the precise nature of the accusation. The charges 
 were drawn up so artfully, as to give no notice to 
 the prisoner of the specific accusation against him. 
 They were drawn up shortly, vaguely, and obscurely ; 
 but short, vague, and obscure as they were, they were 
 far from being as short, as vague, and as obscure as the 
 opening speech of the prosecutor. That speech occupies 
 about half a page in the minutes of the trial, which yet 
 give it verbatim. But scarcely had the prisoner closed his 
 defence, than a speech was pronounced, on the part of 
 the prosecution, which eighteen pages of the minutes 
 scarcely contain. In this reply the utmost subtlety is 
 exhibited. Topic is urged after topic with the great- 
 est art and contrivance. Every thing is twisted for the 
 purpose of obtaining a conviction ; and, which is the 
 most monstrous thing of all, when the prisoner can 
 no longer reply, new facts are detailed, new dates 
 specified, and new persons introduced, which were 
 never mentioned, or even hinted at, on any one of the
 
 68 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 twenty-seven preceding days of the trial ! Again, Sir, 
 I say, that had I been the accused person, or his coun- 
 sel, I would rather a thousand-fold have been tried by 
 the ordinary course of the civil law, than by such a 
 court. To return, however, to its composition I re- 
 joice to observe, that the President of the supreme civil 
 judicature, although he was so unwise as to allow his 
 name to be placed on the list of the members, or so 
 unfortunate as to be compelled to do so, refused to 
 preside over the deliberations of this court. Although 
 he was the person of the highest rank next to the 
 Governor, and although in a judicial inquiry he must 
 naturally have been more skilful and experienced than 
 any man in the colony, nevertheless there he is in the 
 list among the ordinary members of the court ; and as 
 he must have been appointed to preside, but for his 
 own repugnance to the office, I am entitled to con- 
 clude that he refused it with a firmness not to be over- 
 come. Against the other members I have nothing 
 whatever to say. The president of the court, however, 
 was Lieutenant-Colonel Goodman. Now, that gal- 
 lant officer, than whom I believe no man bears a higher 
 character, unfortunately, beside bearing his Majesty's 
 commission, holds an office in the colony of Demerara, 
 which rendered him the last man in the world who 
 ought to have been selected as President of such a judi- 
 cature. Let the House, Sir, observe, that the reason 
 assigned by Governor Murray for subjecting Mr. 
 Smith to a trial before such a tribunal, was not only 
 that he might have in reality a fair trial, but that he 
 might not even appear to be the victim of local pre- 
 judice, which it seems would have been surmised, had 
 his case been submitted to a jury, or a court, of planters. 
 How is it, then, that with this feeling the Governor 
 could name Lieutenant-Colonel Goodman to be presi- 
 dent of the court ? For that gallant officer does, in
 
 THE MISSIONARY'* CASE. (>'9 
 
 point of fact, happen to hold the situation of Vendue- 
 mastcr in the colony of Demerara, without profit to 
 whom not a single slave can be sold by any sale car- 
 ried on under the authority of the courts of justice. 
 Accordingly, it did so turn out, that a few days before 
 the breaking out of the revolt, there were advertised 
 great sales of Negroes by auction, which most natu- 
 rally excited sorrow and discontent among many of the 
 Slaves. There was one sale of fifty-six of those hap- 
 less beings, who were to be torn from the place of their 
 birth and residence, and perhaps separated for ever 
 from their nearest and dearest connections. I hold in 
 my hand a Colonial Gazette, containing many adver- 
 tisements of such sales, and to every one of them I 
 find attached the signature " S. A. Goodman." One 
 of the advertisements, that, I think, for the sale of 
 fifty-six Negroes, states, that among the number there 
 are many " valuable carpenters, boat-builders, &c., well 
 worthy the attention of the public." Another speaks 
 of " several prime single men." One party of slaves 
 consists of a woman and her three children. Another 
 advertisement offers a young female slave who is preg- 
 nant. Upon the whole, there appear to have been 
 seventy or eighty slaves advertised to be sold by 
 auction in this single gazette, in whose sale Lieuten- 
 ant-Colonel Goodman, from the nature of his office, 
 had a direct interest. I do not for a moment affirm 
 that this circumstance was likely to warp his judg- 
 ment. Probably, indeed, he was not personally aware 
 of it at the time. But I repeat, that, if this proceed- 
 ing were intended to be free from all suspicion, Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel Goodman was one of the last men to 
 select as the President of the court. That, however, 
 is nothing compared to the appointment of the Chief- 
 Justice of the colony as one of its members. He, the 
 civil judge of the colony, to be forced to sit as member
 
 70 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 of a court martial, and under the disguise of a militia 
 officer by way of a qualification ! He to whom an 
 appeal lay against any abuse of which that court mar- 
 tial might be guilty ! From whom but from him could 
 Mr. Smith have obtained redress for any violation of the 
 law committed in his person ? Yet, as if for the express 
 purpose of shutting the door against the possibility of 
 justice, he is taken by the Governor and compelled to 
 be a member of the Court. That this tribunal might 
 at once be clothed with the authority of the laws which 
 it was about to break, and exempted from all risk of an- 
 swering to those laws for breaking them, the only magi- 
 strate who could vindicate or enforce them is identified 
 with the court, and at the same time so outnumbered by 
 military associates, as to be incapable of controverting, 
 or even influencing, its decision, while his presence 
 gives them the semblance of lawful authority, and 
 places them beyond the reach of legal revision. 
 
 Sir, one word more, before I advert to the proceed- 
 ings of the court, on the nature of its jurisdiction. 
 Suppose I were ready to admit, that on the pressure 
 of a great emergency, such as invasion or rebellion, 
 when there is no time for the slow and cumbrous pro- 
 ceedings of the civil law, a proclamation may justifia- 
 bly be issued for excluding the ordinary tribunals, and 
 directing that offences should be tried by a military 
 court such a proceeding might be justified by neces- 
 sity ; but it could rest on that alone. Created by 
 necessity, necessity must limit its continuance. It 
 would be the worst of all conceivable grievances it 
 would be a calamity unspeakable if the whole law 
 and constitution of England were suspended one hour 
 longer than the most imperious necessity demanded. 
 And yet martial law was continued in Demerara for 
 five months. In the midst of tranquillity, that offence 
 against the constitution was perpetrated for months,
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 71 
 
 which nothing but the most urgent necessity could 
 warrant for an hour. An individual in civil life, a 
 subject of his Majesty, a clergyman, was tried at a 
 moment of perfect peace, as if rebellion raged in the 
 country. He was tried as if he had been a soldier. 
 I know that the proclamation of martial law renders 
 every man liable to be treated as a soldier. But the 
 instant the necessity ceases, that instant the state of 
 soldiership ought to cease, and the rights, with the 
 relations, of civil life to be restored. Only sec the 
 consequences which might have followed the course 
 that was adopted. Only mark the dilemma in which 
 the Governor might have found himself placed by his 
 own acts. The only justification of the court martial 
 was his proclamation. Had that court sat at the mo- 
 ment of danger, there would have been less ground for 
 complaint against it. But it did not assemble until 
 the emergency had ceased ; and it then sat for eight- 
 and-twenty days. Suppose a necessity had existed at 
 the commencement of the trial, but that in the course 
 of the eight-and-twenty days it had ceased ; suppose 
 a necessity had existed in the first week, who could 
 predict that it would not cease before the second ? If 
 it had ceased with the first week of the trial, what 
 would have been the situation of the Governor ? The 
 sitting of the court martial at all, could be justified 
 only by the proclamation of martial law ; yet it be- 
 came the duty of the Governor to revoke that procla- 
 mation. Either, therefore, the court martial must be 
 continued without any warrant or colour of law, or 
 the proclamation of martial law must be continued 
 only to legalise the prolonged existence of the court 
 martial. If, at any moment before its proceedings 
 were brought to a close, the urgent pressure had ceased 
 which alone justified their being instituted, according 
 to the assumption I am making in favour of the court,
 
 72 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 and for argument's sake ; then to continue martial law 
 an hour longer would have been the most grievous 
 oppression, the plainest violation of all law ; and to 
 abrogate martial law would have been fatal to the 
 continuance of the trial. But the truth is, that the 
 court has no right even to this assumption, little bene- 
 ficial as it proves ; for long before the proceedings 
 commenced, all the pressure, if it ever existed, was 
 entirely at an end. 
 
 I now, Sir, beg the House will look with me, for a 
 moment, at the course of proceeding which the Court, 
 constituted in the manner and in the circumstances 
 that I have described, thought fit to adopt, If I have 
 shewn that they had no authority, and that they tried 
 this clergyman illegally, not having any jurisdiction, I 
 think I can prove as satisfactorily that their proceed- 
 ings were not founded on any grounds of justice, or 
 principles of law, as I have proved that the Court 
 itself was without a proper jurisdiction. And here, I 
 beg leave to observe, that the minutes of the proceed- 
 ings on the table of the House are by no means full, 
 although I do not say they are false. They do not per- 
 haps misrepresent what occurred, but they are very far 
 indeed, from telling all that, did occur ; and the omis- 
 sions are of a material description. For instance, 
 there is a class of questions which it is not usual to 
 permit in courts of justice, called leading questions ; 
 the object of which is to put into the witness's mouth 
 the answers which the examiner desires he should 
 make. This is in itself objectionable ; but the objec- 
 tion is doubled, if, in a report of the examination, the 
 questions are omitted, and the answers are represented 
 as flowing spontaneously from the witness, and as being 
 the result of his own recollection of the fact, instead 
 of the suggestions of another person. I will illustrate 
 what I mean by an example. On the fifth day of the
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. ?:J 
 
 trial, Bristol, one of the witnesses, has this question 
 put to him : " You stated, that, after the service was 
 over, you stayed near the chapel, and that Quamina 
 was there : did you hear Quamina tell the people what 
 they were to do?" To that the answer is, ' No, Sir." 
 The next question but one is, " Did you hear Quamina 
 tell the other Negroes, that on the next Monday they 
 were all to lay down their tools and not work ?" To 
 which the witness (notwithstanding his former nega- 
 tive) says, " Yes, I heard Quamina say so a week be- 
 fore the revolt broke out." Now, in the minutes of 
 evidence laid on the table of the House, both the 
 questions and the answer to the first are omitted, and 
 the witness is described as saying without any previous 
 prompting, "A week before this revolt broke out, 1 
 heard Quamina tell the Negroes that they were to lay 
 down their tools and not work." 
 
 The next instance which I shall adduce, of the im- 
 propriety of the proceedings of the Court, is very 
 remarkable, comprehending, as it does, almost all that 
 I can conceive of gross unfairness and irregularity : I 
 mean the way in which the Court attended to that 
 which, for want of a better word, I shall call hearsay 
 evidence ; although it is so much worse in its nature 
 than anything which, in the civil and even the military 
 courts of this country we are accustomed to stigma- 
 tize and reject under this title, that I feel I am 
 calumniating the latter by the assimilation. In the 
 proceedings before this Court at Dcmerara, the hear- 
 say is three or four deep. One witness is asked what he 
 has heard another person say was imputed to a third. 
 Such evidence as that is freely admitted by the Court 
 in a part of its proceedings. But before I shew where 
 the line was drawn in this respect, I must quote a 
 specimen or two of what I have just been adverting to. 
 In the same page from which I derived my last quota-
 
 74 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 tion, the following questions and answers occur: "How 
 long was it that Quamina remained there? Three 
 days : they said some of the people had gone down to 
 speak to Mr. Edmonstone ; that Jack had gone with 
 them." " Do you know what has become of him 
 (Quamina) ? After I came here, / Jieard he was shot 
 by the bucks, and gibbeted about Success middle 
 path." And this, Sir, is the more material, as the 
 whole charge against Mr. Smith rested on Quamina's 
 being an insurgent, and Mr. Smith's knowing it. So 
 that we are here not on the mere outworks, but in the 
 very centre and heart of the case. And this charge, 
 be it observed, was made against Mr. Smith after 
 Quamina was shot. It would appear, indeed, that in 
 these colonies it was sufficient evidence of a man's 
 being a revolter that he was first shot and afterwards 
 gibbeted. In one part of the examination, a witness 
 is asked, "Do you know that Quamina was a revolter?" 
 The witness answers in the affirmative. The next 
 question is, " How do you know it?" Now, mark, the 
 witness is asked, not as to any rumour, but as to his 
 own knowledge ; his answer is, " I know it, because I 
 heard they took him up before the revolt began !" 
 This evidence is to be found in pages twenty-four and 
 twenty-five of the London Missionary Society's Report 
 of the Proceedings. In page thirty-five of the same 
 publication, I find the following questions and answers 
 in the evidence of Mr. M'Turk: Where were you 
 on that day (the 18th of August)? On plantation 
 Felicity, until five o'clock in the afternoon." "Did 
 anything particular occur on that day? I was in- 
 formed, (mark informed,} I was informed by a coloured 
 man, about four o'clock, that the Negroes intended 
 revolting that evening ; and he gave me the names of 
 two, said to be ringleaders, viz. Cato and Quamina, of 
 plantation Success." Here, Sir, we have a specimen
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 75 
 
 of the nature of the evidence adduced upon this most 
 extraordinary trial. In pages 101 and 102 of the 
 Missionary Society's Report, I find the following pas- 
 sage in the evidence of John Stewart, the manager of 
 plantation Success ; and be it in the recollection of 
 the House, that the questions were put by the Court 
 itself before which this unfortunate man was tried : 
 
 " Did Quamina, Jack, Bethney, Britton, Dick, 
 Frank, Hamilton, Jessamine, Quaco, Ralph, and 
 Windsor, belong to plantation Success at the time of 
 the revolt? Yes. 
 
 " Did any of these attend the chapel ? The whole 
 of these, except Ralph. 
 
 " Have the whole, or any of these, except Quamina, 
 been tried by a court martial, and proved to have been 
 actually engaged in the rebellion ? I have been pre- 
 sent at the trial of Ralph and Jack ; and I have seen 
 Ralph, Jack, Jessamine, Bethney, and Dick, but have 
 heard only of the others." 
 
 " Who," again asks the Court, " was the most ac- 
 tive of the insurgents in the revolt on plantation Suc- 
 cess ? Richard was the most desperate and resolute ; 
 Bethney and Jessamine were very active, and all those 
 mentioned, except Quamina and Jack, whom I did not 
 see do any harm ; they were keeping the rest back, 
 and preventing them doing any injury to me." 
 
 The Court goes on to ask, " Was not Quamina a 
 reputed leader (I beg the House to mark the word re- 
 puted, and in a question put by the Court) in the revolt? 
 I heard him to be such; but I did not see him." 
 
 Here, then, we have hearsay evidence with a ven- 
 geance ; reputation proved by rumour ; what a man is 
 reputed to be which would be no evidence of his be- 
 ing so if you had it at first hand proved by what ano- 
 ther has heard unknown persons say, which would be 
 no evidence of his being reputed so, if reputation were
 
 76 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 proof. There are here at least two stages distance from 
 any tiling like evidence; but there maybe a great many 
 more. The witness had heard that Quamina had been 
 a reputed leader ; but how many removes there were 
 in this reputed charge we are unable to learn. I next 
 come to the evidence of the Rev. William Austin; 
 and I find, in page 112, that on the cross-examination 
 by the Judge- Advocate, ample provision is made for 
 letting in this evidence of reputation and hearsay. The 
 Judge-Advocate says, 
 
 " Did any of these Negroes ever insinuate that 
 their misfortunes were occasioned by the prisoner's 
 influence on them, or the doctrines he taught them ? 
 I have been sitting for some time as a member of 
 the Committee of Inquiry ; the idea occurs to me 
 that circumstances have been detailed there against 
 the prisoner, but never to myself individually in my 
 ministerial capacity." 
 
 This line of examination is too promising, too likely 
 to be fruitful in irregularity, for the Court to pass 
 over : they instantly take it up, and, very unnecessa- 
 rily distrusting the zeal of the Judge-Advocate, pur- 
 sue it themselves. 
 
 By the Court. " Can you take upon yourself to swear 
 that you do not recollect any insinuations of that sort 
 at the Board of Evidence ?" 
 
 The witness here objected to the question ; because 
 he did not conceive himself at liberty to divulge what 
 had passed before the Board of Inquiry, but particu- 
 larly to the form or wording of the question, which he 
 considered highly injurious to him. The President 
 insisted (for it was too much to expect that even the 
 chaplain of the government should find favour before 
 that tribunal) upon the Reverend witness's answering 
 the question ; observing, that the Court was the best 
 judge of its propriety. The witness then respectfully
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 77 
 
 requested the opinion of the Court, and it was clear- 
 ed. Upon re-entering, the Assistant Judge-Advocate 
 said, " The Court is of opinion that you are bound to 
 answer questions put by the Court, even though they 
 relate to matters stated before the Board of Evidence." 
 And, again, the opportunity is eagerly seized of letting 
 in reputation and hearsay evidence. The Court itself 
 asks 
 
 " Did you hear before the Board of Evidence, any 
 Negro imputing the cause of the revolt to the prisoner ?" 
 Yes, I have." 
 
 I shall now state to the House some facts with 
 which they are, perhaps, unacquainted, as it was not 
 until late on Saturday that the papers were delivered. 
 Among the many strange things which took place, 
 not the least singular was, that the prisoner had no 
 counsel allowed, until it was too late to protect him 
 against the jurisdiction of the court. Most faithfully 
 and most ably did that learned person perform his 
 duty when he was appointed ; but had he acted from 
 the beginning, he, doubtless, would have objected at 
 once to the power of the court, as I should have done, 
 had I been the Missionary's defender. I should have 
 protested against the manner in which the court was 
 constituted ; I should have objected, that the men 
 who sat in judgment in that case had previously sat 
 upon many other cases, where the same evidence, 
 mixed with different matter not now produced, but 
 all confounded together in their recollection, had been 
 repeated over and over for the conviction of other 
 persons. I ask this House whether it was probable 
 that the persons who formed that court, should have 
 come to the present inquiry with pure, unprejudiced, 
 and impartial judgments, or even with their memories 
 tolerably clear and distinct ? I say it was impossible ; 
 and, therefore, that they ought not to have sat in judg-
 
 78 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 ment upon this poor Missionary at all. But is this 
 the only grievance? Have I not also to complain of 
 the manner in which the Judge-Advocate and the 
 Court allowed hearsay evidence to be offered to the 
 third, the fourth, aye, even to the fifth degree ? Look, 
 Sir, to what was done with respect to the confession, 
 as they called it, of the Negro Paris. I do not wish 
 to trouble the House by reading that confession, as I 
 have already trespassed at some length upon their at- 
 tention. It will be sufficient to state, that finding his 
 conviction certain, and perhaps judging but too truly 
 from the spirit of the Court, that his best chance of 
 safety lay in impeaching Mr. Smith, he at once avows 
 his guilt, makes what is called a full confession, and 
 throws himself upon the mercy of the court. This 
 done, he goes on with one of I will say not merely 
 the falsest but one of the wildest and most impossi- 
 ble tales that ever entered into the mind of man, or 
 that could be put to the credulity even of this court 
 of soldiers. And yet, upon the trial of Mr. Smith, 
 the confession of this man was kept back by the pro- 
 secutors ; that is to say, it was not allowed to be di- 
 rectly introduced, but was introduced by means of 
 the questions I have last read, as matter of hearsay, 
 which had reached different persons through various 
 and indirect channels. In that confession, Paris 
 falsely says, that Mr. Smith administered the sacra- 
 ment to them (the form of which he describes) on the 
 day preceding the revolt ; and that he then exhorted 
 them to be of good heart, and exert themselves to re- 
 gain their freedom ; for if they failed then, they would 
 never succeed in obtaining it. He says, in another 
 place, that Mr. Smith asked him whether, if the Ne- 
 groes conquered the colony, they would do any harm 
 to him ? to which Paris replied in the negative. Now, 
 Sir, only mark the inconsistency of this man's confes-
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. ?0 
 
 sion. In one place, Mr. Smith is represented as anx- 
 ious for his personal safety, and yet, in almost the 
 same breath, it is said that this very Mr. Smith was 
 the ringleader of the revolt the adviser and planner 
 of the insurrection the man \vho joined Mr. Hamil- 
 ton in recommending that the Negroes should destroy 
 the bridges, to prevent the Whites from bringing up 
 cannon to attack them. This Negro is made to swear, 
 " I heard Mr. Hamilton say, that the President's wife 
 should be his in a few days ; then Jack said the Go- 
 vernor's wife was to be his father's wife ; and that if 
 any young ladies were living with her, or she had a 
 sister, he would take one for his wife." Mr. Smith is 
 pointed out as the future emperor ; Mr. Hamilton 
 was to be a general, and several others were to hold 
 high offices of different descriptions. Again ; Mr. 
 Smith is made to state, that, unless the Negroes fought 
 for their liberty upon that occasion, their children's chil- 
 dren would never attain it. Now, I ask, is this story 
 probable ? Is there any thing like the shadow of truth 
 in it ? I said just now, that there was no direct men- 
 tion of Paris's evidence on the trial : it was found too 
 gross a fabrication to be produced. There were seve- 
 ral others who, before the Board of Evidence, had 
 given testimony similar to this, though somewhat less 
 glaringly improbable ; but their testimony also was 
 kept back ; and they themselves were sent to speedy 
 execution. The evidence of Sandy was not quite so 
 strong ; but he, as well as Paris, was suddenly put 
 out of the way. The tales of these witnesses bear 
 palpable and extravagant perjury upon the face of 
 them ; they were therefore not brought forward ; but 
 the prosecutors, or rather the Court, did that by insi- 
 nuation and side-wind, which they dared not openly to 
 attempt. 
 
 I say that the Court did this; the Court, well knowing
 
 80 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 that no such witnesses as Paris and Sandy could be brough t 
 forward men, the excesses of whose falsehoods utterly 
 counteracted the effect of their statements contrived 
 to obtain the whole benefit of those statements, tmex- 
 posed to the risk of detection, by the notable device 
 of asking one who had heard them, a general question 
 as to their substance ; the prisoner against whom this 
 evidence was given, having no knowledge of the parti- 
 culars, and no means of showing the falsehood of what 
 was told, by questioning upon the part which was 
 suppressed, " Did you hear any Negro, before the 
 Board of Evidence, impute the cause of the revolt to 
 the prisoner?" When, compelled to answer this 
 monstrous question, the witness could only say, Yes; 
 he had heard Negroes impute the cause to the pri- 
 soner ; but they were the Negroes Paris and Sandy 
 (and those who put this unheard-of question knew it 
 but he against whom the answer was levelled knew it 
 not) Paris and Sandy, whose whole tale was such a 
 tissue of enormous falsehoods as only required to be 
 heard to be rejected in an instant ; and whose evi- 
 dence for that reason had been carefully suppressed. 
 
 Having said so much with respect to the nature of 
 the evidence offered against the prisoner, and having had 
 occasion to speak of the confessions, I shall now call 
 the attention of the House to a letter which has been 
 received from a gentleman of the highest respect- 
 ability, and entitled to the most implicit credit, but 
 whose name I omit to mention because he is still re- 
 sident in the colony. If, however, any doubt should 
 attach to his statement, I shall at once remove it, by 
 mentioning the name of a gentleman to whom refer- 
 ence can be made on the subject I mean the Rev. 
 Mr. Austin. He is a man who had no prejudices 
 or prepossessions on the subject : he is a clergyman 
 of the Church of England, chaplain of the colony,
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 81 
 
 and I believe the curate of the only English Es- 
 tablished Church to which 77,000 Slaves can have 
 recourse for religious instruction. I mention this 
 in passing, only for the purpose of shewing, that if 
 the Slaves are to receive instruction at all, they must 
 receive it in a great degree from members of the 
 Missionary Society. [Mr. Brougham here read a let- 
 ter, in which it was stated that the Rev. Mr. Austin 
 had received the last confession of Paris, who stated 
 that Mr. Smith was innocent, and he (Paris) prayed 
 
 that God would forgive him the lies that Mr. 
 
 had prevailed upon him to tell.] I shall not men- 
 tion the name of the person alluded to by Paris as 
 having put the lies into his mouth : it is sufficient 
 at present to say, that he took a most active part 
 in getting up the prosecution against this poor Mis- 
 sionary. The letter goes on to state, that similar 
 confessions had been made by Jack and Sandy. 
 The latter had been arrested and sent along the coast 
 to be executed, without Mr. Austin's knowledge (as it 
 appeared, from a wish to prevent him from receiving 
 the confession) ; but that gentleman, hearing of the 
 circumstance, proceeded with all speed to the spot, and 
 received his confession to the above effect. He also 
 went to see Jack, who informed him that Mr. Smith 
 was innocent, and that he (Jack) had said nothing 
 against him but what he had been told by others. Now 
 I beg the House to attend to what Jack, at his trial, 
 said against Mr. Smith ; giving a statement which had 
 been put into his mouth by persons who wished to in- 
 jure Mr. Smith, and bring the character of Missionaries 
 generally into disrepute. This poor wretch said that 
 he had lived thirty years on Success estate, and that 
 he would not have acted as he had done, if he had not 
 been told that the Negroes were entitled to their free- 
 dom, but that their masters kept it from them. He 
 
 VOL. II. F
 
 82 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 went on to say, that not only the deacons belonging to 
 Bethel Chapel, but even Mr. Smith himself, had 
 affirmed this, and were acquainted with the fact of the 
 intended revolt ; and this he stated as if, instead of 
 being on his own trial, he was a witness against Mr. 
 Smith. He also threw himself on the mercy of the 
 Court. Now what did the Court do ? They imme- 
 diately examined a Mr. Herbert, and another gentle- 
 man, as to this confession. The former stated, that 
 he took the substance of the confession down in the 
 Negro's own language to a certain point ; the rest 
 was taken down by a gentleman whom I refrain 
 from naming, but who, I am bound to say, deserves 
 no great credit for the part which he acted in this 
 unhappy scene. Jack, in this defence, thus pre- 
 pared and thus anxiously certified, says, or is made 
 to say, " I am satisfied I have had a fair trial. I 
 have seen the anxiety with which every member of 
 this court martial has attended to the evidence, and 
 the patience with which they have listened to my 
 cross-examination of the witnesses. From the hour 
 I was made prisoner by Captain M'Turk up to this 
 time, I have received the most humane treatment 
 from all the Whites ; nor have I had a single insult- 
 ing expression from a White man, either in prison or 
 anywhere else. Before this Court, I solemnly avow 
 that many of the lessons and discourses taught, and 
 the parts of Scripture selected for us in Chapel, tended 
 to make us dissatisfied with our situation as Slaves; and, 
 had there been no Methodists on the east coast, there 
 would have been no revolt, as you must have discovered 
 by the evidence before you : the deepest concerned in 
 the revolt were the Negroes most in Parson Smith's 
 confidence. The half sort of instruction we received 
 I now see was highly improper : it put those who could 
 read on examining the Bible, and selecting passages
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 83 
 
 applicable to our situation as Slaves ; and the pro- 
 mises held out therein were, as we imagined, fit to 
 be applied to our situation, and served to make us 
 dissatisfied and irritated against our owners, as we 
 were not always able to make out the real meaning 
 of these passages : for this I refer to my brother-in- 
 law, Bristol, if I am speaking the truth or not. I 
 would not have avowed this to you now, were I not 
 sensible that I ought to make every atonement for 
 my past conduct, and put you on your guard in future." 
 Wonderful indeed are the effects of prison discipline 
 within the tropics ! I would my Honourable Friend, 
 the Member for Shrewsbury, were here to witness 
 them. Little indeed does he dream of the sudden 
 change which a few weeks of a West-Indian dungeon 
 can effect upon a poor, rude, untutored African ! How 
 swiftly it transmutes him into a reasoning, speculating 
 creature ; calmly philosophizing upon the evils of half 
 education, and expressing himself in all but the words 
 of our poet, upon the dangers of a little learning ; yet 
 evincing by his own example, contrary to the poet's 
 maxim, how wholesome a shallow draught may prove 
 when followed by the repose of the gaol ! Sir, I defy 
 the most simple of mankind to be for an instant 
 deceived by this mean and clumsy fabrication. Every 
 line of it speaks its origin, and demonstrates the base 
 artifices to which the Missionary's enemies had re- 
 course, by putting charges against him into the mouth 
 of another prisoner, trembling upon his own trial, and 
 crouching beneath their remorseless power. 
 
 I have stated that, up to a certain point, the court 
 received hearsay evidence, and with unrestricted 
 liberality. But the time was soon to come when a 
 new light should break in the eyes of those just 
 judges be opened to the strict rules of evidence, and 
 every thing like hearsay be rejected. In page 116 I
 
 84. THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 find, that, when the prisoner was questioning Mr. 
 Elliott as to what another person, Mr. Hopkinson, 
 had said, an objection was taken, the court was cleared, 
 and, on its being re-opened, the Assistant Judge-Ad- 
 vocate thus addressed Mr. Smith : " The Court has 
 ordered me to say, that you must confine yourself to 
 the strict rules of evidence; and that hearsay evi- 
 dence will not IN FUTURE be received." Will not IN 
 FUTURE be received ! ! ! UP TO THAT PERIOD IT HAD 
 BEEN RECEIVED ; nay, the judges themselves had put 
 the very worst questions of that description. I say, 
 that great as had been the blame due to the Judge- 
 Advocate upon this occasion ; violent, partial, unjust, 
 and cruel as had been his conduct towards the pri- 
 soner; much as he had exceeded the limits of his 
 duty; flagrantly as he had throughout wronged the 
 prisoner in the discharge I was about to say in the 
 breach of his official duty ; and grievously culpable as 
 were some other persons to whom I have alluded, 
 their conduct was decorous in itself, and harmless in 
 its consequences, compared with the irregularity, the 
 gross injustice, of the judges who presided. Well, 
 then, when the prosecutor's case was closed, and suf- 
 ficient matter was supposed to have been obtained by 
 the most unblushing contempt of all rules, from the 
 cross-examination of the prisoner's witnesses, those 
 same judges suddenly clothed themselves with the 
 utmost respect for those same rules, in order to hamper 
 the prisoner in his defence, which they had systema- 
 tically violated in order to assist his prosecution. 
 After admitting all hearsay, however remote, after 
 labouring to overwhelm him with rumour, and repu- 
 tation, and reports of reputation, and insinuation at 
 second hand, they strictly prohibited every thing like 
 hearsay where it might avail him for his defence. Nay, 
 in their eagerness to adopt the new course of proceed-
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 85 
 
 ing, and strain the strict rules of law to the uttermost 
 against him, they actually excluded, under the name 
 of hearsay, that which was legitimate evidence. The 
 very next question put by Mr. Smith went to show 
 that he had not concealed the movements of the Slaves 
 from the manager of the estate ; the principal charge 
 against him being concealment from " the owners, 
 managers, and other authorities." Did any conversa- 
 tion pass on that occasion between Mr. Stewart, your- 
 self, and the prisoner, relative to Negroes ; and if so, 
 will you relate it ?" Rejected. " Did the prisoner 
 tell Mr. Stewart, that several of the Negroes had been 
 to inquire concerning their freedom, which they found 
 had come out for them ?" Rejected. These questions, 
 and several others, which referred to the very essence 
 of the charge against him, were rejected. How then 
 can any effrontery make men say that this poor 
 Missionary had an impartial trial? To crown so 
 glaring an act of injustice can any thing be want- 
 ing? But if it were, we have it here. The Court 
 resolved that its worst acts should not appear on the 
 minutes : it suppressed those questions ; and ex- 
 punged also the decision, forbidding hearsay evidence 
 FOR THE FUTURE ! But the rule having, to crush the 
 prisoner, been laid down, we might at least have ex- 
 pected that it would be adhered to. No such thing. 
 The moment that an occasion presents itself, when 
 the rule would hamper the prosecutor and the judges, 
 they abandon it, and recur to their favourite hearsay. 
 In the very next page, we find this question put by 
 the Court, " Previous to your going to chapel, were 
 you told that plenty of people were there on that day ?" 
 If hearsay evidence was thus received or rejected as 
 best suited the purpose of compassing the prisoner's 
 destruction, other violations of law, almost as flagrant, 
 were resorted to, with the same view. Conversations
 
 8G THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 with Mrs. Smith, in her husband's absence, were 
 allowed to be detailed : the sentences passed upon five 
 other persons, previously tried, were put in, and I 
 should suppose privately read by the Court, as I 
 find no allusion to them in the prisoner's most able 
 and minute defence, which touches on every other 
 particular of the case ; and all mention of those sen- 
 tences is suppressed in the minutes transmitted by 
 the Court. For the manifest purpose of blackening 
 him in the eyes of the people, and with no earthly 
 reference to the charges against him, a long examina- 
 tion is permitted into the supposed profits he made by 
 a sale of Bibles, Prayer and Psalm-books, and Cate- 
 chisms ; and into the donations he received from his 
 Negro flock, and the contributions he levied upon them 
 for church dues : every one tittle of which is satisfac- 
 torily answered and explained by the evidence, but 
 every one tittle of which was wholly beside the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 I find, Sir, that many material circumstances which 
 occurred on the trial are altogether omitted in the 
 House copy. I find that the evidence is garbled in 
 many places, and that passages of the prisoner's de- 
 fence are omitted ; some because they were stated to 
 be offensive to the Government, others because they 
 were said to be of a dangerous tendency, others, 
 again, because the Court entertained a different opi- 
 nion on certain points from the prisoner, or because 
 they might seem to reflect upon the Court itself. Mr. 
 Smith was charged with corrupting the minds of the 
 Slaves, and enticing them to a breach of their duty, 
 and of the law of the land, because he recommended 
 to them not to violate the Sabbath. It was objected 
 against him also by some, that he selected passages 
 from the Old Testament ; and by others, that he did 
 not, as he ought, confine himself to certain parts of
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 8? 
 
 the New Testament : others, again, found fault with 
 him for teaching the Negroes to read the Bible. And 
 when, in answer to these charges, he cited passages 
 from the Bible in his defence, he was told that he 
 must not quote Scripture, as it was supposed that 
 every member of the Court was perfectly acquainted 
 with the Sacred Writings a supposition which cer- 
 tainly does not occur to one on reading their proceed- 
 ings. By others, again, this poor man was held up as 
 an enthusiast, who performed his functions in a wild 
 and irregular manner. It was said that his doctrines 
 were of a nature to be highly injurious in any situa- 
 tion, but peculiarly so amongst a Slave population. 
 In proof of this assertion, it was stated, that the day 
 before the revolt he preached from Luke xix. 41, 42 
 " And when He was come near, He beheld the city, 
 and wept over it ; saying, If thou hadst known, even 
 thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 
 peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes." Thus 
 was this passage, which has been truly described by 
 the Rev. Mr. Austin as a text of singular beauty, 
 turned into matter of accusation and reproach against 
 this unfortunate missionary. But if this text was 
 held to be so dangerous so productive of insubordi- 
 nation and rebellion what would be said of the clergy 
 of the Established Church, of whose doctrines no fear 
 was entertained ? The text chosen by Mr. Smith on 
 this occasion appeared, to the heated imagination of 
 his judges, to be one which endangered the peace of 
 a Slave community. Very different was the opinion 
 of Mr. Austin, the colonial chaplain, who could not 
 be considered as inflamed with any daring, enthusias- 
 tic, and perilous zeal. But what, I ask, might not the 
 same alarmists have said of Mr. Austin, who, on that 
 very day, the 17th of August, had to read, as indeed 
 he was by the rubric bound to do, perhaps in the pre-
 
 88 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 sence of a large body of black, white, and coloured 
 persons, such passages as the following, which occur 
 in one of the lessons of that daj, the 1 4th chapter of 
 Ezekiel. " When the land sinneth against me by tres- 
 passing grievously, then I will stretch out mine hand 
 upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, 
 and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and 
 beast from it." " Though these three men" (who might 
 easily be supposed to be typical of Mr. Austin Mr. 
 Smith, and Mr. Elliott), " were in it, they shall deliver 
 neither sons nor daughters : they only shall be deli- 
 vered, but the land shall be desolate. Or if I bring a 
 sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the 
 land, so that I cut off man and beast from it ; Though 
 these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord 
 God, they shall deliver neither sons or daughters ; but 
 they only shall be delivered themselves." Let me 
 ask any impartial man if this is not a text much 
 more likely to be mistaken than the other? And 
 yet every clergyman of the Established Church was 
 bound to read it on that day in that colony. 
 
 The charges against Mr. Smith are four. The first 
 states, that, long before the 1 8th of August, he had 
 promoted discontent and dissatisfaction amongst the 
 slaves against their lawful masters. This charge was 
 clearly beyond the jurisdiction of the court ; for it 
 refers to matters before martial law was proclaimed, 
 and consequently before Mr. Smith could be amenable 
 to that law. Supposing that, as a court martial, they 
 had a right to try a clergyman for a civil offence, 
 which I utterly deny, it could only be on the principle 
 of martial law having been proclaimed that they were 
 entitled to do so. The proclamation might place him, 
 and every other man in the colony, in the situation of 
 a soldier; but if he was to be considered as a soldier, 
 it could only be after the 19th of August. Admitting,
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE, 89 
 
 then, that the Rev. John Smith was a soldier, under 
 the proclamation, he was not such on the 18th, on the 
 17th, nor at any time before the transactions which 
 are called the revolt of Demerara ; and yet it was upon 
 such a charge that the court martial thought proper to try 
 him, and upon which alone it could try him, if it tried 
 him at all. But they had no more right, I contend, to 
 try him for things done before the 19th, in the character 
 of a soldier liable to martial law, than they would have 
 to try a man, who had enlisted to-day, for acts which 
 he had committed the day before yesterday, according 
 to the same code of military justice. The same rea- 
 soning applies to three of the four charges. There is 
 only one charge, that of communicating with Quamina 
 touching the revolt, which is in the least entitled to 
 consideration ; yet this very communication might 
 have been to discourage, and not to excite or advise 
 the revolt. In fact, it was clearly proved to have been 
 undertaken for that purpose, notwithstanding the pro- 
 mises of the Judge-Advocate to prove the contrary. 
 There are three things necessary to be established before 
 the guilt of this unfortunate man can be maintained 
 on this charge ; first, that Quamina was a revolter ; 
 secondly, that Mr. Smith knew him to be a revolter ; 
 and thirdly, that he had advised and encouraged him 
 in the revolt ; for the misprision, the mere conceal- 
 ment, must be abandoned by those who support the 
 sentence, inasmuch as misprision is not a capital 
 offence. But all the evidence shews that Quamina 
 did not appear in such a character that Mr. Smith 
 was ignorant of it even if he did and that his com- 
 munication was directed to discourage, and not to 
 advise any rash step into which the sufferings of the 
 slaves might lead them. As to his not having seized 
 on Quamina, which is also made a charge, the answer 
 which the poor man himself gave was a sufficient reply
 
 90 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 to any imputation of guilt that might be founded on 
 this omission. " Look," said he, " on these limbs, fee- 
 ble with disease, and say how was it possible for me to 
 seize a powerful robust man, like Quamina, inflamed 
 with the desire of liberty, as that slave must have been 
 if he were a revolter, even if I had been aware that he 
 was about to head a revolt." But, in truth, there is not 
 a tittle of evidence that Mr. Smith knew of the revolt ; 
 while there is abundant proof that he took especial mea- 
 sures and watchful care to tell all he did know to the 
 proper authorities, the managers of the estate. If, 
 again, the defenders of the court martial retreat from 
 this to the lower ground of mere concealment, and thus 
 admit the illegality of the sentence in order to shew 
 something like matter of blame in the conduct of the 
 accused, I meet them here as fearlessly upon the fact, 
 as I have already done upon the law of their case ; 
 and I affirm, that he went the full length of stating to 
 Mr. Stewart, the manager of the estate, his apprehen- 
 sions with respect to the impending danger ; that " the 
 lawful owners, proprietors, and managers" were put 
 upon their guard by him, and were indebted to his in- 
 telligence, instead of having a right to complain of his 
 remissness or disaffection ; that he told all he knew, 
 all he was entitled to consider as information (and no 
 man is bound to tell mere vague suspicions, which 
 cross his mind, and find no abiding place in it ;) and 
 that he only knew any thing precise respecting the in- 
 tentions of the insurgents from the letter delivered to 
 him half an hour before the Negroes were up in arms, 
 and long after the movement was known to every ma- 
 nager in the neighbourhood. The Court, then, having 
 no jurisdiction to sit at all in judgment upon this 
 preacher of the Gospel their own existence as a 
 court of justice being wholly without the colour of 
 lawful authority tried him for things which, had
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 91 
 
 they ever so lawful a title to try him, were wholly 
 beyond their commission ; and of those things no evi- 
 dence was produced upon which any man could even 
 suspect his guilt, if the jurisdiction had been ever so 
 unquestionable, and the accused had been undeniably 
 within its range. But in spite of all the facts in 
 spite of his well-known character and upright conduct 
 it was necessary that he should be made an exam- 
 ple for certain purposes ; it was necessary that the 
 missionaries should be taught in what an undertaking 
 they had embarked ; that they should be warned that 
 it was at their peril they preached the Gospel ; that 
 they should know it was at the hazard of their lives 
 that they opened the Bible to their flocks ; and there- 
 fore it was that the court-martial deemed it expedient 
 to convict Mr. Smith, and to sentence him to be 
 hanged by the neck until he was dead ! 
 
 But the Negroes, it seems, had grumbled at the re- 
 ports which went abroad respecting their liberation by 
 an act of his Majesty, and the opposition said to be 
 given to it by their proprietors. Who propagated 
 those reports ? Certainly not Mr. Smith. It is clear 
 that they originated, in one instance, from a servant 
 who attended at the Governor's table, and who profes- 
 sed to have heard them in the conversations which 
 took place between the Governor and his guests. 
 Another account was, that a kept woman had dis- 
 closed the secret, having learnt it from her keeper, Mr. 
 Hamilton. The Negroes naturally flocked together 
 to inquire whether the reports were true or not ; and 
 Mr. Smith immediately communicated to their mas- 
 ters his apprehensions of what he had always supposed 
 possible, seeing the oppression under which the slaves 
 laboured, and knowing that they were men. But it is 
 said, that at six o'clock on the Monday evening, one 
 half hour before the rebellion broke out, he did not
 
 92 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 disclose what he could not have known before, 
 namely, that a revolt was actually about to commence. 
 Now, taking this fact, for the sake of argument, to be 
 proved to its fullest extent, I say that a man convicted 
 of misprision cannot by the law be hanged. The 
 utmost possible vengeance of the law, according to the 
 wildest dream of the highest prerogative lawyer, could 
 not amount to any thing like a sanction of this. Such 
 I assert the law to be. I defy any man to contradict 
 my assertion, that up to the present hour, no English 
 lawyer ever heard of misprision of treason being 
 treated as a capital offence ; and that it would be just 
 as legal to hang a man for a common assault. But if it 
 be said that the punishment of death was awarded for 
 having aided the revolt, I say the Court did not, could 
 not, believe this ; and I produce the conduct of the 
 judges themselves to confirm what I assert. They 
 were bold enough in trying, and convicting, and con- 
 demning the victim whom they had lawlessly seized 
 upon ; but they trembled to execute a sentence so 
 prodigiously illegal and unjust ; and having declared 
 that, in their consciences and on their oaths, they 
 deemed him guilty of the worst of crimes, they all in 
 one voice add, that they also deem him deserving of 
 mercy in respect of his guilt ! Is it possible to draw 
 any other inference from this marvellous recommenda- 
 tion, than that they distrusted the sentence to which 
 it was attached? When I see them affrighted by 
 their own proceedings starting back at the sight of 
 what they had not scrupled to do can I give them 
 credit for any fear of doing injustice ; they who from 
 the beginning to the end of their course had done no- 
 thing else ? Can I believe that they paused upon the 
 consummation of their work from any motive but a 
 dread of its consequences to themselves ; a recollec- 
 tion tardy, indeed, but appalling, that " Whoso shed-
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 93 
 
 deth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed ?" 
 And not without reason, not without irrefragable rea- 
 son did they take the alarm ; for verily if they HAD 
 perpetrated the last act if they had DARED to take 
 this innocent man's life (one hair of whose head they 
 durst not touch), they must THEMSELVES have died the 
 death of the murderer ! Monstrous as the whole pro- 
 ceedings were, and horrid as the sentence that closed 
 them, there is nothing in the trial from first to last so 
 astounding as this recommendation to mercy, coming 
 from persons who affected to believe him guilty of 
 such enormous crimes. If he was proved to have 
 committed the offence of exciting the slaves to acts 
 of bloodshed if his judges believed him to have done 
 what their sentence alleged against him how un- 
 speakably aggravated was his guilt, compared with 
 that of the poor untutored slaves, whom he had mis- 
 led from their duty under the pretext of teaching 
 them religion ! How justly might all the blood that 
 was shed be laid upon his head ! How fitly, if mercy 
 was to prevail, might his deluded instruments be par- 
 doned, and himself alone singled out for vengeance, 
 as the author of their crimes ! Yet they are cut off 
 in hundreds by the hand of justice, and he is deemed 
 an object of compassion ! 
 
 How many victims were sacrificed we know not 
 with precision. Such of them as underwent a trial 
 before being put to death, were judged by this 
 court-martial. Let us hope that they had a fair 
 and impartial trial, more fair and more impartial 
 than the violence of political party and the zeal 
 of religious animosity granted to their ill-fated 
 pastor. But without nicely ascertaining how many 
 fell in the field, or by the hands of the executioner, I 
 fear w r e must admit that far more blood ,was thus 
 spilt than a wise and a just policy required. Making
 
 94 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 every allowance for the alarms of the planters, and 
 the necessity of strong measures to quell a revolt, it 
 must be admitted, that no more examples should have 
 been made than were absolutely necessary for this pur- 
 pose. Yet, making every allowance for the agitation 
 of men's minds at the moment of danger, and admit- 
 ting (which is more difficult) that it extended to the 
 colonial government, and did not subside when tran- 
 quillity was restored, no man can avoid suspecting, 
 that the measure of punishment inflicted considerably 
 surpassed the exigencies of the occasion. By the 
 Negroes, indeed, little blood had been shed at any 
 period of the revolt, and in its commencement none 
 at all : altogether only one person was killed by them. 
 In this remarkable circumstance, the insurrection 
 stands distinguished from every other movement of 
 this description in the history of colonial society. 
 The slaves, inflamed by false hopes of freedom, agi- 
 tated by rumours, and irritated by the suspense and 
 ignorance in which they were kept, exasperated by 
 ancient as well as more recent wrongs (for a sale 
 of fifty or sixty of them had just been announced, 
 and they were about to be violently separated and 
 dispersed), were satisfied with combining not to work ; 
 and thus making their managers repair to the town, 
 and ascertain the precise nature of the boon reported 
 to have arrived from England. The calumniated 
 minister had so far humanized his poor flock his 
 dangerous preaching had so enlightened them the 
 lessons of himself and his hated brethren had sunk 
 so deep in their minds, that, by the testimony of 
 the clergyman, and even of the overseers, the maxims 
 of the Gospel of peace were upon their lips in 
 the midst of rebellion, and restrained their hands 
 when no other force was present to resist them. " We 
 will take no life," said they ; " for our Pastors have
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 95 
 
 taught us not to take that which we cannot give ;" 
 a memorable peculiarity, to be found in no other pas- 
 sage of Negro warfare within the West-Indian seas, 
 and which drew from the truly pious minister of the 
 Established Church the exclamation, that " He shud- 
 dered to write that they were seeking the life of the 
 man whose teaching had saved theirs !" But it was 
 deemed fitting to make tremendous examples of those 
 unhappy creatures. Considerably above a hundred 
 fell in the field, where they did not succeed in putting 
 one soldier to death. A number of the prisoners also, 
 it is said, were hastily drawn out, at the close of the 
 affray, and instantly shot. How many, in the whole, 
 have since perished by sentences of the Court, docs 
 not appear ; but up to a day in September, as I learn 
 by the Gazette which I hold in my hand, forty-seven 
 had been executed. A more horrid tale of blood yet 
 remains to be told. Within the short space of a week, 
 as appears by the same document, ten had been torn 
 in pieces by the lash : some of these had been con- 
 demned to six or seven hundred lashes ; five to one 
 thousand each ; of which inhuman torture one had 
 received the whole, and two almost the whole at once. 
 In deploring this ill-judged severity, I speak far more 
 out of regard to the masters than the slaves. Yield- 
 ing thus unreservedly to the influence of alarm, they 
 have not only covered themselves with disgrace, but 
 they may, if cooler heads and steadier hands control 
 them not, place in jeopardy the life of every White 
 man in the Antilles. Look now to the incredible 
 inconsistency of the authorities by whom such retri- 
 bution was dealt out, while they recommend him to 
 mercy, whom in the same breath they pronounced a 
 thousand times more guilty than the Slaves. Can any 
 man doubt for an instant that they knew him to be 
 innocent, but were minded to condemn, stigmatise,
 
 96 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 and degrade him, because they durst not take his life, 
 and yet were resolved to make an example of him as 
 a preacher ? 
 
 The whole proceedings demonstrate the hatred of 
 his persecutors to be levelled at his calling and his 
 ministry. He is denounced for reading the Old Tes- 
 tament ; charged with dwelling upon parts of the 
 New ; accused of selling religious tracts ; blamed for 
 collecting his hearers to the sacrament and catechism ; 
 all under various pretences, as that the texts were ill 
 chosen the books sold too dear the communicants 
 made to pay high dues. Nay, for teaching obedience 
 to the law which commands to keep holy the Sabbath, 
 he is directly, and without any disguise, branded as 
 the sower of sedition. Upon this overt act of rebel- 
 lion against all law, human and divine, a large portion 
 of the prosecutor's invectives and of his evidence is 
 bestowed. What though the Reverend Defendant 
 shewed clearly, out of the mouths of his adversary's 
 witnesses, that he had uniformly taught the Negroes 
 to obey their masters, even if ordered by them to 
 break the rest of the Sabbath ; that he had expressly 
 inculcated the maxim, Nothing is wrong in you which 
 your master commands ; and nothing amiss in him 
 which necessity prescribes ? What though he re- 
 minded the Court, that the seventh day, which he was 
 charged with taking from the slaves, was not his to 
 give or to withhold ; that it had been hallowed by the 
 Divine Lawgiver to his own use, and exempted in 
 terms from the work of slave as well as master of 
 beast as well as man? He is arraigned as a promoter 
 of discontent, because he, the religious instructor of 
 the Negroes, enjoins them to keep the Sabbath holy, 
 when their owners allow them no other day for work- 
 ing ; because he, a Minister of the Gospel, preaches 
 a duty prescribed by the laws of religion and by the
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 07 
 
 laws of the land, while the planters live in the con- 
 tempt of it. In short, no man can cast his eye upon 
 this trial, without perceiving that it was intended to 
 bring on an issue between the System of the Slave-law 
 and the Instruction of the Negroes. The exemplar 
 which these misguided men seem to have set before 
 them is that of their French brethren in St. Domingo : 
 one of whom, exulting in the expulsion of the Jesuits, 
 enumerates the mischiefs occasioned by their labours. 
 " They preached," says he, " they assembled the Ne- 
 groes, made the masters relax in their exactions, cate- 
 chised the Slaves, sung psalms, and confessed them." 
 " Since their banishment," he adds, " marriages are 
 rare ; the Negroes no longer make houses for them- 
 selves apart : it is no longer allowable for two Slaves to 
 separate for ever their interest and safety from that of 
 the gang" (a curious circumlocutory form of speech to 
 express the married state.) " No more public wor- 
 ship !" he triumphantly exclaims, " no more meetings 
 in congregation ! no psalm-singing, nor sermons for 
 them !" " But they are still catechised ; and may, on 
 paying for it, have themselves baptized three or four 
 times" (upon the principle, I suppose, that, like inocu- 
 lation, it is safer to repeat it.) In the self-same spirit 
 the Demerara public meeting of the 24th of February 
 1824, resolved forthwith to petition the Court of 
 Policy " to expel all missionaries from the colony, and 
 to pass a law prohibiting their admission for the 
 future." Nor let it be said, that this determination 
 arose out of hatred towards sectaries, or was engen- 
 dered by the late occurrences. In 1808, the Royal 
 Gazette promulgated this doctrine, worthy of all at- 
 tention : " He that chooses to make Slaves Chris- 
 tians, let him give them their liberty. What will be 
 the consequence when to that class of men is given 
 the title of BELOVED BRETHREN as actually is done ? 
 VOL. ii. G
 
 08 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 Assembling Negroes in places of worship gives a mo- 
 mentary feeling of independence both of thinking and 
 acting, and by frequent meetings of this kind a spirit 
 of remark is generated ; neither of which are sensations 
 at all proper to be excited in the minds of Slaves." 
 Again, in 1823, says the Government paper, " To ad- 
 dress a promiscuous audience of black or coloured 
 people, bond and free, by the endearing appellation of 
 4 My brethren and sisters,' is what can no where be 
 heard except in Providence Chapel ;" a proof how 
 regularly this adversary of sectarian usages had at- 
 tended the service of the Church. And, in February 
 last, the same judicious authority, in discussing the 
 causes of the discontents, and the remedy to be ap- 
 plied, thus proceeds : " It is most unfortunate for 
 the cause of the planters, that they did not speak out 
 in time. They did not say, as they ought to have said, 
 to the first advocates of missions and education, We 
 shall not tolerate your plans till you prove to us that 
 they are safe and necessary ; we shall not suffer you to 
 enlighten our Slaves, who are by latv our property, 
 till you can demonstrate that when they are made 
 religious and knowing they will still continue to be 
 our Slaves." " In what a perplexing predicament do 
 the colonial proprietors now stand ! Can the march 
 of events be possibly arrested ! Shall they be allowed 
 to shut up the chapels, and banish the preachers and 
 schoolmasters, and keep the Slaves in ignorance ? This 
 would, indeed, be an effectual remedy ; but there is no 
 hope of its being applied !! T " The obvious conclu- 
 sion is this, Slavery must exist as it now is, or it will 
 not exist at all" " If we expect to create a community 
 of reading, ?noral, church-going Slaves, we are woefully 
 mistaken." Ignorant ! oh, profoundly ignorant, of the 
 things that belong to their PEACE ! may we truly say, 
 in the words of the missionary's beautiful text, to
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 90 
 
 that peace, the disturbance of which they deem the 
 last of evils. Were there not dangers enough beset- 
 ting them on every side without this ? The frame of 
 West Indian society, that monstrous birth of the 
 accursed Slave trade, is so feeble in itself, and, at the 
 same time, surrounded with such perils from without, 
 that barely to support it demands the most temperate 
 judgment, the steadiest and the most skilful hand ; 
 and, with all our discretion, and firmness, and dex- 
 terity, its continued existence seems little less than a 
 miracle. The necessary hazards, to which, by its very 
 constitution, it is hourly exposed, are sufficient, one 
 should think, to satiate the most greedy appetite for 
 difficulties to quench the most chivalrous passion for 
 dangers. Enough that a handful of Slave-owners are 
 scattered among myriads of Slaves enough, that in 
 their nearest neighbourhood a commonwealth of those 
 Slaves is now seated triumphant upon the ruined 
 tyranny of their slaughtered masters enough, that, 
 exposed to this frightful enemy from within and with- 
 out, the planters are cut off from all help by the ocean. 
 But to odds so fearful, these deluded men must needs 
 add new perils absolutely overwhelming ! By a bond, 
 which nature has drawn with her own hand, and both 
 hemispheres have witnessed, they find leagued against 
 them every shade of the African race, every descrip- 
 tion of those swarthy hordes, from the- peaceful Eboe 
 to the fiery Koromantyn. And they must now com- 
 bine in the same hatred the Christians of the Old 
 world with the Pagans of the New ! Barely able to 
 restrain the natural love of freedom, they must mingle 
 it with the enthusiasm of religion, vainly imagining 
 that spiritual thraldom will make personal subjection 
 more bearable ; wildly hoping to bridle the strongest 
 of the human passions, in union and in excess, the 
 desire of liberty irritated by despair, and the fervour
 
 100 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 of religious zeal by persecution exasperated to frenzy, 
 But I call upon Parliament to rescue the West Indies 
 from the horrors of such a policy; to deliver those 
 misguided men from their own hands. I call upon 
 you to interpose while it is yet time to save the West 
 Indies ; first of all, the Negroes, the most numerous 
 class of our fellow-subjects, and entitled beyond every 
 other to our care by a claim which honourable minds 
 will most readily admit, their countless wrongs, 
 borne with such forbearance, such meekness, while 
 the most dreadful retaliation was within their grasp ; 
 next, their masters, whose short-sighted violence is, 
 indeed, hurtful to their slaves, but to themselves is 
 fraught with fearful and speedy destruction, if you do 
 not at once make your voice heard and your authority 
 felt, where both have been so long despised. 
 
 I move you " That an Humble Address be pre- 
 sented to his Majesty, setting forth, that the House, 
 having taken into their most serious consideration the 
 proceedings which had taken place on the trial of 
 the Reverend John Smith, at Demerara, contemplated 
 with the most serious alarm the violation of Law and 
 Justice which had there been committed ; and they 
 did earnestly pray, that His Majesty would be most 
 graciously pleased to give orders for such an impartial 
 and humane administration of the law in that Colony 
 as may secure the rights not only of the Negroes, 
 but of the Planters themselves."
 
 SPEECH, 
 
 IN REPLY, 
 
 IN THE CASE OF THE 
 
 REV. JOHN SMITH, 
 
 THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 JUKE 11, 1824.
 
 REPLY 
 
 IN THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 I do assure the House, that I feel great regret at 
 having to address them again so late in the night ; but, 
 considering the importance of the case, I cannot be 
 satisfied to let it rest where it is, without trespassing 
 upon their patience for a short time and it shall be 
 for as short a time as possible : indeed, that I rise 
 at all is chiefly in consequence of the somewhat 
 new shape into which the proposition of the right 
 honourable gentleman opposite * has thrown the 
 question. For, Sir, as to the question itself, on the 
 merits of which I before presumed at such length on 
 the indulgence of the House, not only have I heard 
 nothing to shake the opinion which I originally ex- 
 pressed, or to meet the arguments which I feebly 
 endeavoured to advance in its support, but I am 
 seconded by the admissions of those who would resist 
 the motion : for, beside the powerful assistance I have 
 had the happiness of receiving from my honourable 
 and learned friends on the- benches around me, and 
 who, one after another, have distinguished themselves 
 in a manner never to be forgotten in this House, or by 
 
 * Mr. Canning.
 
 104 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 their country* men of all classes, and of all parties, 
 without regard to difference of political sentiments or 
 of religious persuasion, will hold them in lasting 
 remembrance, and pronounce their honoured names 
 with unceasing gratitude, for the invaluable service 
 which their brilliant talents and honest zeal have ren- 
 dered to the cause of truth and justice. Beside this, 
 what have I on the other side? Great ability, no 
 doubt, displayed much learning exhibited men of 
 known expertness and high official authority put in 
 requisition others for the first time brought forward 
 in debate an honourable and learned friend of mine, 
 for whom I have the most sincere esteem, and the best 
 grounded, because it rests on a long and intimate 
 knowledge of his worth, and of those talents and 
 accomplishments of which I did not for the first time 
 to-night witness the exhibition, although they have 
 now first met the universal admiration of this House ;f 
 yet with all those talents, and all that research from 
 him and from others who followed him, instead of an 
 answer, instead of any thing to controvert the positions 
 I set out with, I find support. I have an admission 
 for it amounts to nothing less than an admission a 
 confession a plea of guilty, with a recommendation 
 to mercy. 
 
 We have an argument in mitigation of the punish- 
 ment of this Court Martial, and of the government 
 who put their proceedings in motion nothing against 
 Mr. Smith, nothing on the merits or in favour of those 
 proceedings. An attempt, no doubt, was made, by 
 my honourable and learned friend the Attorney 
 General, f to go a little further than any other gentle- 
 
 * Mr. (now Lord Chief Justice) Denman ; Mr. (now Mr. Justice) Williams ; 
 Sir James Mackintosh and Dr. Lushington. The speeches of the two former 
 have already been mentioned. Dr. Lushington's was of the very highest merit. 
 Sir J. Mackintosh's was excellent also. 
 
 f- Mr. (now Lord Chief Justice) Tindal, who then first spoke in Parliament. 
 
 J Sir J . Copley, now Lord Lyndhurst, who spoke with his accustomed ability.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 105 
 
 man who has addressed the House. He would fain 
 have stept beyond the argument which alone has been 
 urged from all other quarters against this poor mis- 
 sionary, and would have attempted to show that there 
 was some foundation for the charge which makes him 
 an accomplice, as well as guilty of misprision : all 
 others, as well of the legal profession as laymen, and 
 particularly the Secretary of State,* who spoke last 
 but one, have at once abandoned, as utterly desperate, 
 each and every of the charges against Mr. Smith, 
 except that of misprision ; and even this they do not 
 venture very stoutly to assert. " It is something like 
 a misprision, says the right honourable Secretary ; 
 for the House will observe, that he would not take 
 upon himself to say that the party had been guilty of 
 misprision of treason, strictly so called. He would not 
 attempt to say there was any treason in existence, of 
 which a guilty concealment could take place ; still less 
 would he undertake to affirm (which is, however, 
 necessary, in order to make it misprision at all) that 
 Mr. Smith had known a treason to exist in a specific 
 and tangible shape, and that after this knowledge was 
 conveyed to him, he had sunk it in his own breast 
 instead of divulging it to the proper authorities. 
 
 All the charge was this in this it began, in this it 
 centered, in this it ended : " I cannot help thinking," 
 said the right honourable gentleman, " when I take 
 every thing into consideration, whatever may be the 
 facts as to the rest of the case I cannot get out of 
 my mind the impression, that, somehow or other, he 
 must have known that all was not right ; must have 
 suspected that there might be something wrong ; and 
 knowing, or suspecting, there was something wrong, he 
 did not communicate that something to the lawful 
 
 * Mr. Canning, who moved the previous question after Mr. (now Sir R.) 
 Wilmot Horton had met the motion with a negative.
 
 106 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 authorities !" My honourable and learned friend,* 
 indeed, went a little further : he felt, as a lawyer, 
 that this was not enough, and particularly when 
 we are talking, not merely of a crime, but of a 
 capital crime not merely of a charge of guilty, 
 and of ** something wrong" and of having a misgiving 
 in your mind that that " something wrong" was 
 known to him, and, being known to him, was con- 
 cealed by him ; but that on this something was to be 
 founded, not barely an accusation of wrong doing, but 
 a charge of criminality ; and not merely a charge, but 
 a conviction ; and not merely a conviction of guilt, 
 but a conviction of the highest guilt known to the 
 law of this or of any country ; and a sentence of death 
 following that capital conviction; and that ignominious 
 sentence standing unrepealed, though unexecuted ; 
 sanctioned, nay adopted, by the Government of this 
 country, because suffered to remain unrescinded ; and 
 carried into effect, as far as its authors durst them- 
 selves give it operation, by treating its object as a 
 criminal, and making him owe his escape to mercy, 
 who was entitled to absolute acquittal. Accordingly, 
 what says my honourable friend,f in order to shew 
 that there was some foundation for those proceed- 
 ings ? He feels that English law will not do ; that 
 is quite out of the question ; so does the Attorney 
 General. Therefore forth comes their Dutch code ; 
 and upon it they are fain, at least for a season, 
 to rely. They say, " True it is, all this would have 
 been too monstrous to be for one instant endured in 
 any court in England ; true, there is nothing like a 
 capital crime committed here ; certain it is, if treason 
 had been committed by some men conspiring the death 
 of the king ; if an overt act had been proved ; if the 
 very bond of the conspirators had been produced, with 
 
 * The Attorney General. * Mr. Tindal.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 10? 
 
 their seals, in court, to convict them of this treason ; 
 and if another man, namely, Smith, had been proved 
 to have known it, to have seen the bond with the 
 seals and the names of the conspirators upon it, 
 had been the confidential depositary of their secret 
 treasons, and had done all but make himself their 
 accomplice, he might have known it, he might have 
 seen its details in black and white, he might have had 
 it communicated to him by word or by writing, he might 
 have had as accurate knowledge of it as any man has of 
 his own household, and he might have buried the 
 secret in his own breast, so that no one should learn 
 it until the design, well matured, was at length carried 
 openly into execution ; and yet that knowledge and 
 concealment, that misprision of treason, could not by 
 possibility have subjected him to capital punishment 
 in any English court of justice !" 
 
 This they .know, and this they admit ; and the 
 question being, What shall we do, and how shall we 
 express our opinion on the conduct of a Court Martial, 
 which, having no jurisdiction with respect to the 
 offence, even if the person of the prisoner had been 
 under their authority, chose to try him over whom 
 they had no jurisdiction of whatever offence he might 
 be accused ; and, moreover, to try him capitally for 
 an offence for which no capital sentence could be 
 passed, even if the party had been amenable to their 
 jurisdiction, and if, when put upon his trial, he had at 
 once pleaded guilty, and confessed that he had com- 
 mitted all he was accused of a hundred times over 
 this being the question before the House, my honour- 
 able and learned friends being called upon to say how 
 we shall deal with those who first arrogate to them- 
 selves an authority utterly unlawful, and then sentence 
 a man, whom they had no pretence for trying, to be 
 hanged for that which he never did, but which, had he 
 done it, is not a capital crime: such being the question,
 
 108 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 the gentlemen on the other side, feeling the pinch of it, 
 and aware that there is no warrant for such a sentence 
 in the English law, betake themselves to the Dutch, 
 contending that it punishes misprision with death ! 
 
 But here my honourable friend* gets into a diffi- 
 culty, which all his acuteness only enables him to 
 see the more clearly that there is no struggling 
 against, and from which the whole resources of his 
 learning have no power to extricate him. Nay I 
 speak it with the most sincere respect for him I was 
 not the only person who felt, as he was going on, that 
 in this part of his progress he seemed oppressed with 
 the nature of his task, and, far from getting over the 
 ground with as easy a pace and as firm a footstep as 
 usual, he hesitated and even stumbled ; as if unaware 
 beforehand of the slipperiness of the path, and only 
 sensible of the kind of work he had undertaken when 
 already in the midst of it. The difficulty, the insur- 
 mountable difficulty, is this: You must choose 
 between jurisdiction to try at all, and power to punish 
 misprision capitally ; both you cannot have by the 
 same law. If the Dutch law make the crime capital, 
 which the English does not, the Dutch law gives you 
 no right to try by a military tribunal. The English 
 law it was that alone could make the Court Martial 
 legal ; so, at least, the court and the prosecutor say. 
 " Necessity," they assert, " has no law proclaim 
 martial law, every man is a soldier, and amenable to a 
 military court," They may be right in this position, 
 or they may be wrong; but it is their only defence 
 of the jurisdiction which they assumed. By the law 
 of England, then, not of Holland, was the court 
 assembled. According to English forms it sate ; to 
 English law-principles it affected to square its modes 
 of proceeding ; to authorities of English law it con- 
 
 * Mr. Tindal.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 109 
 
 stantly appealed. Here indeed, tins night, we have 
 heard Dutch jurists cited in ample profusion ; the 
 erudite Van Schooten, the weighty Voetius, the 
 luminous Huber, ornaments of the Batavian school 
 and Dommat, who is neither Dutch nor English, but 
 merely French, and therefore has as much to do with 
 the question, in any conceivable view, as if he were a 
 Mogul doctor ; yet his name too is brandished before 
 us, as if to shew the exuberance and variety of the 
 stores at the command of my honourable and learned 
 friends. 
 
 But was any whisper of all this Hollandish learning 
 ever heard in the court itself ? Was it o n those 
 worthies that the parties themselves relied, for whom 
 the fertile and lettered invention of the gentlemen 
 opposite is now so nimbly forging excuses ? No such 
 thing. They appealed to the Institutes of that far- 
 famed counsellor of justice, Blackstone ; the edict of 
 the States-General, commonly called the " Mutiny 
 Act ;" the Crown Law of that elaborate commentator 
 of Rotterdam, Hawkins; and the more modern tractate 
 upon Evidence of my excellent friend, the very learned 
 professor Phillips of Leyden. It is to these authorities 
 that the Judge Advocate, or rather the many Judge 
 Advocates who were let loose upon the prisoner, con- 
 stantly make their appeal ; with quotations from these 
 laws and these text-writers that they garnish their 
 arguments ; and Voet, and Van Schooten, and Huber, 
 are no more mentioned than if they had never existed, 
 or Guiana had never been a colony of the Dutch. Thus, 
 then, in order to get jurisdiction, without which you 
 cannot proceed one step, because the whole is wrong 
 from the beginning if you have it not, you must 
 abandon your Dutch authors, leave your foreign codes, 
 and be content with that rude, old-fashioned system, 
 part written, part traditional, the half-Norman half- 
 Saxon code, which we are wont (and no man more than
 
 110 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 my honourable and learned friend, himself one of its 
 choicest expounders) to respect, under the name of 
 the old every-day law of England. Without that you 
 cannot stir one step. Having gotten your foot on 
 that, you have something like a jurisdiction, or at 
 least a claim to a jurisdiction, for the Court Martial. 
 But, then, what becomes of your capital punishment ? 
 Where is your power of putting to death for mis- 
 prision? Because, the instant you abandon the 
 Dutch law, away goes capital punishment for 
 misprison ; and if you acquit this Court Martial of 
 the monstrous solecism (I purposely avoid giving it 
 a worse name) of having pronounced sentence of 
 death for a clergyable offence, you can only do so by 
 having recourse to the Dutch law, and then #way 
 goes the jurisdiction : so that the one law takes 
 from you the jurisdiction the authority to try at all ; 
 and the other takes away the right to punish as you 
 have punished. Between the horns of this dilemma 
 I leave my honourable and learned friend, as I must 
 of necessity leave him where he has chosen to plant 
 himself; suspended in such a fashion that he can 
 never, by any possibility, quit the one point, without 
 instantly being transfixed upon the other. 
 
 Now, this is no immaterial part of the argument ; 
 on the contrary, it lies at the foundation of the whole ; 
 and I cannot help thinking, that the practised under- 
 standing of my other learned friend* perceived its great 
 importance, and had some misgivings that it must prove 
 decisive of the question ; for he applied himself to 
 strengthen the weak part, to find some way by which he 
 might steer out of the dilemma some middle course, 
 which might enable him to obtain the jurisdiction from 
 one law, and the capital punishment from the other. 
 Thus, according to him, you must neither proceed 
 
 * The Attorney-General.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. ill 
 
 entirely by the Dutch, nor yet entirely by the Eng- 
 lish law, but just take from each what suits your 
 immediate purpose, pursuing it no further than the 
 necessities of your case require, and the flaws in 
 that case render safe. The English law gives you 
 jurisdiction : use it then to open the doors : but, 
 having them thus flung open, allow not to enter 
 the gracious figure of English justice, with those 
 forms, the handmaids that attend her. Make way 
 for the body of Dutch jurisprudence, and enthrone 
 her, surrounded with her ministers, the Hubers, and 
 Voets, and Van Schootens. Now this mode of treating 
 a difficulty is one of the most ordinary, and among the 
 least excusable, of all sophisms ; it is that by which, 
 in order to get rid of an absurdity inherent in any 
 proposition, we arbitrarily and gratuitously alter its 
 terms, as soon as we perceive the contradictory results 
 to which it necessarily leads ; carving and moulding our 
 data at pleasure ; not before the argument begins, but 
 after the consequences are perceived. The alteration 
 suddenly made arises, not out of the argument, or the 
 facts, or the nature of things ; but is made violently, 
 and because there is no doing without it ; and it is 
 never thought of till this necessity is discovered. 
 Thus, no one ever dreamt of calling in the Dutch 
 code, till better lawyers than the Court Martial found 
 that the English law condemned half their pro- 
 ceedings ; and then the English was abandoned, 
 until it was perceived that the other half stood con- 
 demned by the Dutch. Therefore a third expedient 
 is resorted to, that of a party-coloured code ; the 
 law under which they claim their justification is to 
 be part Dutch, when that will suit; part English, 
 when they can't get on without it ; something com- 
 pounded of both, and very little like either; showing 
 to demonstration that they acted without any law, or 
 only set about discovering by what law they acted
 
 112 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 after their conduct was impeached ; and then were 
 forced to fabricate a new law to suit their proceedings, 
 instead of having squared those proceedings to any 
 known rule of any existing law on the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 To put all such arbitrary assumptions at once to 
 flight, I need only remind the House how the jurists 
 of Demerara treated the Dutch law. Admitting, for 
 argument's sake, that the doors of the court were opened 
 by the English law giving them jurisdiction, then that 
 by violence the Dutch law was forced through the 
 door, and made to preside, of course we shall find 
 all appeal to English statutes, and forms, and common 
 law, cease from the instant that they have served 
 their purpose of giving jurisdiction, and every thing 
 will be conducted upon Dutch principles. Was it so? 
 Was any mention made, from beginning to end, of 
 Dutch rules or Dutch forms ? Was there a word 
 quoted of those works now so glibly referred to ? 
 Was there a single name pronounced of those autho- 
 rities, for the first time cited in this House to-night ? 
 Nothing of the kind. All was English, from first to 
 last : all the laws appealed to on either side, all the 
 writers quoted, all the principles laid down, without a 
 single exception, were the same that would have been 
 resorted to in any court sitting in this country ; and 
 the Court Martial were content to rest their proceed- 
 ings upon our own law, and to be an English judica- 
 ture, or to be nothing at all. 
 
 Sir, I rejoice (well knowing that a legal argument, 
 whether Dutch or English, or, like the doctrine I 
 have been combating, made up of both, is at all 
 times very little of a favourite with this House, 
 and less than ever at the hour of the morning to 
 which we are now approaching,) I rejoice greatly 
 that what I have said, coupled with the far more 
 luminous and cogent reasons which have been urged
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 113 
 
 by my honourable and learned friends around me, 
 may suffice to settle the point of law, and relieve me 
 from the necessity of detaining you longer upon so 
 dry a part of the question. My only excuse for 
 having gone so far into it, is its intimate connexion 
 with the defence of the court martial, of whose case 
 it indeed forms the very corner-stone. And now, in 
 passing to the merits of the inquiry, before that court, 
 I have to wish that my honourable and learned 
 friend, the member for Peterborough* was here 
 in his place ; that, after the example of others who 
 have gone before me, I too might in my turn have 
 taken the opportunity of paying my respects to him. 
 But, if he has gone himself, he has left a worthy 
 representative in the honourable Under Secretary for 
 Colonial Affairs,f by whom, in the quality for which his 
 very remarkable speech the other night shone con- 
 spicuous I mean, an entire ignorance of the facts of 
 the case he is, I will not say out-done, because that 
 may safely be pronounced to be beyond the power of 
 any man, but almost, if not altogether, equalled. There 
 was, however, this difference between the two, that the 
 honourable Under Secretary, with a gravity quite im- 
 posing, described the great pains lie had taken to 
 master the details of the subject, whereas my honour- 
 able friend avowed that he considered it as a matter 
 which any one might take up at an odd moment 
 during the debate ; that, accordingly, he had come 
 down to the house perfectly ignorant of the whole 
 question, and been content to pick up what he could, 
 while the discussion went on, partly by listening, 
 partly by reading. I would most readily have taken 
 his word for this, as I would for any thing else he 
 chose to assert ; but if that had not been sufficient, 
 
 * Mr. Scarlett. f Mr. (now Sir R.) Wilmot Horton. 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 114 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 his speech would have proved it to demonstration. 
 If, as he says, he came down in a state of entire ig- 
 norance, assuredly he had not mended his condition 
 by the sort of attention he might have given to the 
 question in his place, unless a man can be said to 
 change his ignorance for the better, by gaining a kind 
 of half-blind, left-handed knowledge, which is worse 
 than ignorance, as it is safer to be uninformed than 
 misinformed. 
 
 In this respect, too, the right honourable Secre- 
 tary of State* is his worthy successor ; for the pains 
 which he has taken to inform himself, seem but to 
 have led him the more widely astray. I protest I never 
 in my life witnessed such an elaborate neglect of the 
 evidence as pervaded the latter part of his speech, 
 which affected to discuss it. He appeared to have got 
 as far wrong, without the same bias, as my honourable 
 and learned friend was led by the jaundiced eye with 
 which he naturally enough views such questions, from 
 his West Indian connections, and the recollections 
 associated with the place of his birth and the scene 
 of his earliest years. Without any such excuse from 
 nature, the right honourable Secretary labours to be 
 in the wrong, and is eminently successful. His argu- 
 ment against Mr. Smith rests upon the assumption 
 that he had an accurate knowledge of a plot, which 
 the right honourable Secretary by another assump- 
 tion supposes to have been proved ; and he assumes 
 that Mr. Smith had this knowledge twenty-four hours 
 before he could possibly have known any thing of the 
 matter. Every tiling turns upon this ; and whoever 
 has read the evidence with attention, is perfectly 
 aware that this is the fact. Tell me not of Jacky 
 Reed's letter, which was communicated to him on 
 Monday evening at six o'clock, or later ! Talk not to 
 
 * Mr. Canning.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. ll.l 
 
 me of going to the constituted authorities as soon as 
 he knew of a revolt ! If he had known it the night 
 before; if he had been aware of the design before the 
 insurrection broke out *then, indeed, there might have 
 been some ground for speaking about concealment. 
 If he had obtained any previous intelligence, though 
 nothing had been confided to him, by a figure of speech 
 we might have talked of concealment hardly of rnis- 
 prision. But when did the note reach him ? The only 
 discrepancy in the evidence is, that one witness says it 
 was delivered at six o'clock, and he was the bearer of 
 it; while another, ascertaining the time by circum- 
 stances, which are much less likely to deceive than the 
 vague recollection of an hour, fixes the moment, by 
 saying that it was at night-fall, half an hour later. 
 But take it at the earliest period, and let it be six 
 o'clock. When did the revolt break out ? I hear it 
 said, at half-past six. No such thing : it broke out at 
 half-past three : aye, and earlier. Look at the fifteenth 
 page of the evidence, and you will find one witness 
 speaking to what happened at half-past three, and 
 another at half-past four. A most important step had 
 then been taken. Quamina and Jack, the two alleged 
 ringleaders one of them, Jack, unquestionably was 
 the contriver of the whole movement, or resolution to 
 strike work, or call it what you will ; and Quamina 
 was suspected and I believe the suspicion to have 
 been utterly groundless ; nor have I yet heard, 
 throughout the whole proceedings, a word to confirm 
 it but both these men, the real and the supposed 
 ringleader, had been actually in custody for the revolt, 
 nay, had been both arrested for the revolt and rescued 
 by the revolters, two or three hours before the letter 
 came into Mr. Smith's hands ! It is for not disclosing 
 this, which all the world knew better than himself for 
 not telling them at night what they knew in the after- 
 noon that he is to be blamed ! Why go and com-
 
 lie THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 municate to a man that the sun is shining at twelve 
 o'clock in the day ? Why tell this House that these 
 candles are burning ; that we are sitting in a great 
 crowd, in no very pleasant atmosphere, and listening 
 to a tedious speech ? Why state things which were 
 as plain as the day-light, and which every one knew 
 better and earlier than Mr. Smith himself? He was 
 walking with his wife under his arm, say the witnesses: 
 he should have walked away with her, or hired a horse 
 and rode to Georgetown, says the right honourable 
 Secretary. Why, this would have been, at the least, 
 only doing what was manifestly superfluous, and, be- 
 cause superfluous, ridiculous. But in the feeling 
 which then prevailed ; in the irritation of men's minds; 
 in the exasperation towards himself, which, I am sorry 
 to say, had been too plainly manifested ; I believe 
 such a folly would not have been considered as super- 
 fluous only : he would have been asked, * Why are 
 you meddling? what are you interfering about? keep 
 you quiet at your own house : if you are indeed a 
 peaceable missionary, don't enter into quarrels you 
 have no concern in, or busy yourself with other people's 
 matters." Answers of that kind he had received be- 
 fore : rebuffs had been given him of a kind which 
 might induce him to take an opposite course : not a 
 fortnight previous to that very night he had been so 
 treated. I, for one, am not the man to marvel that he 
 kept himself still at his house, instead of going forth 
 to tell tales which all the world knew, and to give 
 information, extremely unlike that which the evi- 
 dence would have communicated to the honourable 
 Under Secretary, if he had read it correctly ; and to 
 the Member for Peterborough, if he had read it at all. 
 It would have informed no one, because all knew it. 
 But, says the right honourable gentleman,* why 
 
 * Mr. Canning.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 117 
 
 did not this missionary, if lie would not fly to the 
 destruction of his friends upon some vague sur- 
 mise if he would not make haste to denounce 
 his flock upon rumour or suspicion if he would not 
 tell that which he did not know if he would not 
 communicate a treason which probably had no exis- 
 tence, which certainly did not to his knowledge exist 
 if he would not disclose secrets which no man 
 had entrusted to him if he would not betray a 
 confidence which no mortal had ever reposed in him 
 (for that is the state of the case up to the delivery 
 of Jacky Reed's letter ; that is the precise state of the 
 case at the time of receiving the letter); if he did 
 not please to do all these impossibilities, there was one 
 possibility, it seems, and that mentioned for the first 
 time to-night (I know not when it was discovered), 
 which he might do : Why did he not go forth into 
 the field, when the Negroes were all there, rebellious 
 and in arms some arrested and rescued, others taken 
 by the insurgents and carried back into the woods 
 why did he not proceed where he could not take a 
 step, according to the same authority that suggests 
 such an operation, without seeing multitudes of 
 martial slaves why not, in this favourable state of 
 things, at this very opportune moment, at a crisis so 
 auspicious for the exertions of a peaceful missionary 
 among his enraged flock why not greedily seize such 
 a moment, to reason with them, to open his Bible 
 to them, to exhort them, and instruct them, and 
 catechise them, and, in fine, take all those steps for 
 having pursued which, in a season of profound tran- 
 quillity, he was brought into peril of his life ! where- 
 fore not now renew that teaching and preaching to 
 them, for which, and for nothing else, he was condemned 
 to death, his exhausted frame subjected to lingering 
 torture, and his memory blighted with the name of 
 traitor and felon ! Why, he was wise in not doing this !
 
 118 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 If he had made any such unseasonable and wild at- 
 tempts, we might now think it only folly, and might be 
 disposed to laugh at the ridiculous project ; but at 
 that moment of excitement, when the exaspera- 
 tion of his enemies had waxed to such a height as 
 he knew it to have reached against him, and men's 
 minds were in a state of feverish alarm that made 
 each one deem every other he met his foe, and all 
 who were in any manner of way connected with 
 plantations fancied they saw the very head and ring- 
 leader of their common enemy in whatever bore 
 the shape of a Christian pastor (this Mr. Smith 
 knew, independent of his personal experience, inde- 
 pendent of experience the most recent experi- 
 ence within the last fortnight from the time when 
 such courses are pointed out as rational, nay, obvious 
 and necessary); but if, with only his own general 
 knowledge of the state of society, the recollection of 
 what had happened to him in former times, and the 
 impression which every page of his journal proves to 
 have been the genuine result of all he saw daily 
 passing before his eye's if, in such a crisis, and with 
 this knowledge, he had fared forth upon the hopeless 
 errand of preaching peace, when the cutlasses of the 
 insurgents were gleaming in his eyes, I say he would 
 not merely have exposed himself to the just imputation 
 of insanity from the candid and reflecting, but have 
 encountered, and for that reason encountered the 
 persecutions of those who now, with monstrous incon- 
 sistency, blame him for not employing his pastoral 
 authority to restrain a rebellious multitude, and who 
 pursued him to the death for teaching his flock the 
 lessons of forbearance and peace ! 
 
 Sir, I am told that it is unjust to censure the Court 
 Martial so vehemently as I propose doing in the 
 motion before you : and really to hear gentlemen talk 
 of it, one would imagine that it charged enormous
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 119 
 
 crimes in direct terms. Some have argued as if 
 murder were plainly imputed to the Court : They 
 have confounded together the different parts of the 
 argument urged in support of the motion, and then 
 imported into the motion itself that confusion, the 
 work of their own brains. But even if the accusa- 
 tions of which they complain had been preferred in the 
 speeches that introduced or supported the proposi- 
 tion, could anything be conceived more grossly absurd 
 than to decide as if you were called upon to adopt or 
 reject the speeches, and not the motion, which alone 
 is the subject of the vote ? Truly this would be a 
 mode of reasoning surpassing anything the most unfair 
 and illogical that I have ever heard attempted even 
 in this place, where I have certainly heard at times 
 reasonings not to be met with elsewhere. The motion 
 conveys a censure, I admit ; but in my humble opinion, 
 a temperate and a mitigated censure. The law has been 
 broken ; justice has been outraged. Whoso believes 
 not in this, let him not vote for the motion. But 
 whosoever believes that a gross breach of the law has 
 been committed ; that a flagrant violation of justice 
 has been perpetrated ; is it asking too much at the 
 hands of that man, to demand that he honestly speak 
 his mind, and record his sentiments by his vote ? In 
 former times, be it remembered, this House of Parlia- 
 ment has not scrupled to express, in words far more 
 stringent than any you are now required to adopt, its 
 sense of proceedings displaying the triumph of oppres- 
 sion over the law. When there came before the 
 legislature a case remarkable in itself; for its conse- 
 quences yet more momentous ; resembling the present 
 in many points ; to the very letter in some things 
 resembling it I mean, the trial of Sydney did our 
 illustrious predecessors within these walls shrink back 
 from the honest and manly declaration of their opinion 
 in words suited to the occasion, and screen themselves
 
 120 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 behind such tender phrases as are to-night resorted to, 
 " Don't be too violent pray be civil do be gentle 
 there has only been a man murdered, nothing more 
 a total breach of all law to be sure ; an utter con- 
 tempt, no doubt, of justice, and everything like it, in 
 form as well as in substance ; but that's all ; surely, 
 then, you will be meek, and patient, and forbearing, 
 as were the Demerara judges to this poor missionary ; 
 against whom, if somewhat was done, a great deal 
 more was meditated than they durst openly per- 
 petrate ; but who, being condemned to die in despite 
 of law and evidence, was only put to death by 
 slow and wanton severity !" In those days no such 
 language was holden. On that memorable occasion, 
 plain terms were not deemed too strong when severe 
 truth was to be recorded. The word " murder" was 
 used, because the deed of blood had been done. The 
 word "murder" was not reckoned too uncourtly in 
 a place where decorum is studied somewhat more 
 scrupulously than even here : on the journals of 
 the other House stands the appointment of Lords 
 Committees, "to inquire of the advisers and pro- 
 secutors of the murder of Lord Russell and Colonel 
 Sydney:" and their Lordships make a report, upon 
 which the statute is passed to reverse those exe- 
 crable attainders. I will not enter into any detailed 
 comparison of the two cases, which might be thought 
 fanciful ; but I would remind the House, that 
 no legal evidence was given of Mr. Smith's hand- 
 writing in his journal, any more than of Sydney's in 
 his manuscript Discourse on Government. Every 
 lawyer, who reads the trial, must at once perceive 
 this. The witness who swears to Mr. Smith's hand, 
 cannot say that he ever saw him write; and when 
 asked how he knows, the court say " that question is 
 unnecessary, because he has said he knows the hand !" 
 although all the ground of knowledge he had stated
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 121 
 
 was having received letters from him, without a 
 syllable of having afterwards seen him to ascertain 
 that they were his, or having written in answer to 
 them, or otherwise acted upon them. Now, in 
 Sydney's case there was an endorsement on bills of 
 exchange produced, and those bills had been paid ; 
 nevertheless, Parliament pronounced his conviction 
 murder, for this, among other reasons, that such evi- 
 dence had been received. The outrageous contempt 
 of the most established rules of evidence, to which I 
 am alluding, was indeed committed by a court of 
 fourteen military officers, ignorant of the law ; but, 
 that their own deficiences might be supplied, they had 
 joined with them the first legal authority of the 
 colony. Why then did they not avail themselves of 
 Mr President Wray's knowledge and experience? 
 Why did they over-rule by their numbers what he 
 MUST have laid down to them as the law ? I agree 
 entirely with my honourable and learned friend* 
 that the President must have protested strenuously 
 against such proceedings. I take for granted, as 
 a matter of course, that he resisted them, to the 
 utmost of his power. My honourable friend and 
 I have too good an opinion of that learned judge, and 
 are too well persuaded of his skill in our common 
 profession, to have a doubt in our minds of his being 
 as much astonished at those strange things as any man 
 who now hears of them ; and far more shocked, be- 
 cause they were done before his eyes ; and, though 
 really in spite of his efforts to prevent them, yet 
 clothed in outward appearance with the sanction of 
 his authority. 
 
 In Sydney's case, another ground of objection at 
 the trial and of reprobation ever afterwards, was the 
 seizure and production of his private manuscript, which 
 
 * Mr. Scarlett.
 
 122 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 he described, in eloquent and touching terms, as con- 
 taining "sacred truths and hints that came into his 
 mind, and were designed for the cultivation of his 
 understanding, nor intended to be as yet made public." 
 Recollect the seizure and production of the mission- 
 ary's journal; to which the same objection and the 
 same reprobation is applicable ; with this only differ- 
 ence, that Sydney avowed the intention of eventually 
 publishing his Discourse, while Mr. Smith's papers 
 were prepared to meet no mortal eye but his own. 
 In how many other particulars do these two memor- 
 able trials agree ! The Preamble of the Act rescinding 
 the attainder seems almost framed to describe the 
 proceedings of the court at Demerara. Admission of 
 hearsay evidence ; allowing matters to be law for one 
 party, and refusing to the other the benefit of the 
 same law ; wresting the evidence against the prisoner ; 
 permitting proof by comparison of hands all these 
 enormities are to be found in both causes. 
 
 But, Sir, the demeanour of the judges after the close 
 of the proceedings, I grieve to say it, completes the 
 parallel. The Chief Justice who presided, and whom a 
 profligate government made the instrument of Sydney's 
 destruction, it is stated in our most common books 
 Collins, and I believe also Rapin " when he allowed 
 the account of the trial to be published, carefully made 
 such alterations and suppressions as might shew his own 
 conduct in a more favourable light." That judge was 
 Jeffries, of immortal memory ! who will be known to 
 all ages as the chief not certainly of ignorant and 
 inexperienced men, for he was an accomplished lawyer, 
 and of undoubted capacity but as the chief and head 
 of unjust, and cruel, and corrupt judges ! There, in 
 that place, shall Jeffries stand hateful to all posterity, 
 while England stands ; but there he would not have 
 stood, and his name might have come down to us with 
 far other and less appropriate distinction, if our fore-
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 123 
 
 fathers, who sat in this House, had consented to fritter 
 away the expression of their honest indignation, to 
 mitigate the severity of that record which should carry 
 their hatred of injustice to their children's children 
 if, instead of deeming it their most sacred duty, 
 their highest glory, to speak the truth of privileged 
 oppressors, careless whom it might strike, or whom 
 offend, they had only studied how to give the least 
 annoyance, to choose the most courtly language, to 
 hold the kindest and most conciliating tone toAvards 
 men who showed not a gleam of kindness, conciliation, 
 courtesy, no, nor bare justice, nor any semblance or 
 form of justice, when they had their victim under their 
 dominion. Therefore it is that I cannot agree to this 
 previous question. Rather let me be met by a direct 
 negative: it is the manlier course. I could have 
 wished that the Government had still "screwed up 
 their courage to the sticking-place," where for a 
 moment it perched the first night of the debate, when 
 by the honourable gentleman from the Colonial 
 Department we were told that he could not consent 
 to meet this motion in any way but the most 
 triumphant a decided negative. 
 
 Mr. Wilmot Norton." No !" 
 
 Mr. Brougham. I beg the honourable Member's 
 pardon. I was not present at the time, but took my 
 account of what passed from others, and from the 
 usual channels of intelligence. I understood that he 
 had given the motion a direct negative. 
 
 Mr. Wilmot Horton. " I said no such thing ; I said 
 I should give my dissent to the motion without any 
 qualification." 
 
 Mr. Brougham. Sir, I was not bred up in the 
 Dutch schools, nor have practised in the Courts of 
 Demerara; and I confess my inability to draw the 
 nice distinction, so acutely taken by the honourable 
 gentleman, between a direct negative and a dissent
 
 124 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 without any qualification. In my plain judgment, 
 unqualified dissent is that frame of mind which begets 
 a direct negative. Well, then, call it which you will, 
 I prefer, as more intelligible and more consistent, the 
 direct negative, or unqualified dissent. What is the 
 meaning of this " previous question," which the right 
 honourable Secretary* has to-night substituted for it ? 
 Plainly this : there is much to blame on both sides ; 
 and, for fear of withholding justice from either party, 
 we must do injustice to both. That is exactly the 
 predicament in which the right honourable gentle- 
 man's proposition would place the Government and 
 the House, with respect to West-Indian interests. 
 
 But what can be the reason of all this extraordinary 
 tenderness towards the good men of Demerara ? Let 
 us only pause for a moment, and consider what it can 
 mean. How striking a contrast does this treatment 
 of those adversaries of his Majesty's Ministers afford 
 to the reception which we oftentimes meet with from 
 them here ! I have seen, in my short experience, 
 many motions opposed by the gentlemen opposite, 
 and rejected by the House, merely because they were 
 accompanied by speeches unpalatable to them and 
 their majorities. I have seen measures of the greatest 
 importance, and to which no other objection what- 
 ever was made, flung out, only because propounded 
 by Opposition men, and recommended by what were 
 called factious arguments. I remember myself once 
 moving certain resolutions upon the commercial 
 policy of the country, all of which have, I think, either 
 been since adopted by the Ministers (and I thank 
 them for it,) or are in the course of being incorporated 
 with the law of the state. At the time, there was no 
 objection urged to the propositions themselves in- 
 deed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer professed his 
 
 * Mr. Canning.
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 125 
 
 entire concurrence with my doctrines and as I then 
 said I had much rather sec his good works than hear 
 his profession of faith, I am now happy that he has 
 appealed to this test of his sincerity, and given me 
 what I asked, the best proof that the Government 
 entirely approved of the measures I recommended. 
 But, upon what grounds were they resisted at the 
 time? Why, nine parts in ten of the arguments I 
 was met by, consisted of complaints that I had intro- 
 duced them with a factious speech, intermixed them 
 with party topics, and combined with the commercial 
 part of the subject a censure upon the foreign policy 
 of the Government, which has since been, I think, 
 also well-nigh given up by themselves. Now, then, 
 how have the Demerara men entitled themselves to 
 the especial protection and favour of those same Mi- 
 nisters ? Have they shewn any signal friendship, or 
 courtesy, or decent respect, towards his Majesty's 
 Government ? Far enough from it. I believe the 
 gentlemen opposite have very seldom had to bear such 
 violence of attack from this side of the House, bad 
 though we be, as from their Guiana friends. I sus- 
 pect they have not in any quarter had to encounter so 
 much bitterness of opposition as from their new fa- 
 vourites, whom they are so fearful of displeasing. 
 Little tenderness, or indeed forbearance, have they 
 shown towards the Government which anxiously che- 
 rishes them. They have held public meetings to 
 threaten all but separation ; they have passed a vote 
 of censure upon one Minister by name ; and, that 
 none might escape, another upon the whole Adminis- 
 tration in a mass: and the latest accounts of their 
 proceedings left them contriving plans in the most 
 factious spirit, in the very teeth of the often-avowed 
 policy of the Government, for the purpose of prohibi- 
 ting all missions and expelling all missionaries from 
 the settlement. Sir, missions and missionaries may
 
 120 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 divide the opinions of men in any other part of our 
 dominions except the slave colonies, and the most op- 
 posite sentiments may honestly and conscientiously be 
 entertained upon their expediency ; but in those coun- 
 tries it is not the question, whether you will have 
 missionary teachers or no, but, whether you will have 
 teachers at all or no. The question is not, shall the 
 Negroes be taught by missionaries, but, shall they 
 be taught at all ? For it is the unvarying result 
 of all men's experience in those parts, members 
 of the Establishment as well as Dissenters nay, 
 the most absolute opinions on record, and the most 
 strongly expressed, have come from Churchmen 
 that there is but this one way practicable of at- 
 tempting the conversion of these poor heathens. With 
 what jealousy, then, ought we to regard any efforts, 
 but especially by the constituted authorities who bore 
 a part in those proceedings, to frustrate the positive 
 orders for the instruction of the slaves, not only given 
 by his Majesty's Government, but recommended by 
 this House, a far higher authority as it is, higher still 
 as it might be, if it but dared now and then to have a 
 will of its own, and, upon questions of paramount im- 
 portance, to exercise fearlessly an unbiassed judgment? 
 To obtain the interposition of this authority for the 
 protection of those who alone will, or can, teach the 
 Negroes, is one object of the motion upon which I 
 shall now take the sense of the House. The rest of 
 it relates to the case of the individual who has been 
 persecuted. The right honourable gentleman seems 
 much disposed to quarrel with the title of martyr, 
 which has been given him. For my own part, I have 
 no fault to find with it ; because I deem that man to 
 deserve the name, as in former times he would have 
 reaped the honours of martyrdom, who willingly suf- 
 fers for conscience. Whether I agree with him or 
 not in his tenets, I respect his sincerity, I admire his
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 127 
 
 zeal ; and when, through that zeal, a Christian minis- 
 ter has been brought to die the death, I would have 
 his name honoured and holden in everlasting remem- 
 brance. His blood cries from the ground but not for 
 vengeance ! He expired, not imprecating curses upon 
 his enemies, but praying for those who had brought 
 him to an untimely grave. It cries aloud for justice 
 to his memory, and for protection to those who shall 
 tread in his footsteps, and tempering their enthu- 
 siasm by discretion; uniting with their zeal knowledge; 
 forbearance with firmness ; patience to avoid giving 
 offence, with courage to meet oppression, and to resist 
 when the powers of endurance are exhausted shall 
 prove themselves worthy to follow him, and worthy of 
 the cause for which he suffered. If theirs is a holy 
 duty, it is ours to shield them, in discharging it, from 
 that injustice which has persecuted the living, and 
 has sought to blast the memory of the dead. 
 
 Sir, it behoves this House to give a memorable les- 
 son to the men who have so demeaned themselves. 
 Speeches in a debate will be of little avail. Arguments 
 on either side neutralize each other. Plain speaking 
 on the one part, met by ambiguous expressions half 
 censure, half acquittal, betraying the wish to give up, 
 but with an attempt at an equivocal defence will 
 carry out to the West Indies a motley aspect ; convey- 
 ing no definite or intelligible expression, incapable of 
 commanding respect, and leaving it extremely doubt- 
 ful whether those things, which all men are agreed in 
 reprobating, have actually been disapproved of or not, 
 Upon this occasion, most eminently, a discussion is no- 
 thing, unless followed up by a vote to promulgate with 
 authority what is admitted to be universally felt. That 
 vote is called for, in tenderness to the West Indians 
 themselves in fairness to those other colonies which 
 have not shared the guilt of Demerara. Out of a just 
 regard to the interests of the West Indian body, who, I
 
 128 THE MISSIONARY'S CASE. 
 
 rejoice to say, have kept aloof from this question, as 
 if desirous to escape the shame when they bore no 
 part in the crime, this lesson must now be taught by 
 the voice of Parliament, that the mother country 
 will at length make her authority respected ; that 
 the rights of property are sacred, but the rules of 
 justice paramount and inviolable ; that the claims of 
 the Slave owner are admitted, but the dominion of 
 Parliament indisputable ; that we are sovereign alike 
 over the White and the Black ; and though we may 
 for a season, and out of regard for the interests of 
 both, suffer men to hold property in their fellow- 
 creatures, we never, for even an instant of time, forget 
 that they are men, and the fellow-subjects of their 
 masters ; that, if those masters shall still hold the same 
 perverse course if, taught by no experience, warned 
 by no auguries, scared by no menaces from Parliament, 
 or from the Crown administering those powers which 
 Parliament invoked it to put forth but, blind alike 
 to the duties, the interests, and the perils of their 
 situation, they rush headlong through infamy to des- 
 truction ; breaking promise after promise made to 
 delude us; leaving pledge after pledge unredeemed, 
 extorted by the pressure of the passing occasion ; or 
 only, by laws passed to be a dead letter, for ever giving 
 such an elusory performance as adds mockery to breach 
 of faith ; yet a little delay ; yet a little longer of this 
 unbearable trifling with the commands of the parent 
 state, and she will stretch out her arm, in mercy, not 
 in anger, to those deluded men themselves ; exert 
 at last her undeniable authority; vindicate the just 
 rights, and restore the tarnished honour of the English 
 name !* 
 
 * It was in this memorable debate that Mr. Wilberforce spoke in Parliament 
 for the last time. His journals shew how intensely he felt on the subject. The 
 motion was lost, and the previous question carried by 193 to 146.
 
 SPEECH 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 JULY 13, 1830. 
 
 VOL II.
 
 The following Speech was delivered on the 13th of July 1830. It is 
 believed to have mainly contributed towards Mr. Brougham's 
 election as Member for the County of York, which took place a 
 few weeks after.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 SIR, In rising to bring before the House a subject 
 more momentous, in the eves both of this country and 
 of the world, than any that has occupied our atten- 
 tion during the whole of a long protracted Session, I 
 am aware that I owe some apology for entering upon 
 it at so late a day. I know, too, that I am blamed in 
 many quarters, for not postponing it till another sea- 
 son. But the apology \vhich I am about to offer is, not 
 for bringing it forward to-day, but for having delayed it 
 so long; and I feel that I should be indeed without 
 excuse, that I should stand convicted of a signal breach 
 of public duty, to the character and the honour of the 
 House, to the feelings and principles of the people, 
 nay, to the universal feelings of mankind at large, 
 by whatever names they may be called, into what- 
 ever families distributed, if I had not an ample de- 
 fence to urge for having so long put off the agitation 
 of this great question. The occurrences which hap- 
 pened at the commencement of the Session, and the 
 matters of pressing interest which have just attended 
 its close, must plead my justification. 
 
 Early in the year I had hoped that the Government 
 would redeem the pledges which they gave me last Ses- 
 sion, and which then stayed my steps. I had expected to
 
 132 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 have the satisfaction of secondingameasure propounded 
 by the Ministers of the Crown for improving the 
 administration of justice in the Colonies, and espe- 
 cially for amending the law which excludes the testi- 
 mony of slaves. That those expectations have been 
 frustrated, that those pledges remain unredeemed, I 
 may lament ; but in fairness I am bound to say I can- 
 not charge this as matter of severe blame on the Go- 
 vernment, because I know the obstacles of a financial 
 nature, which have stood in the way of intentions 
 sincerely entertained, to provide a pure and efficient 
 system of judicature for the West-India Islands. Until 
 I saw that no such reforms could be looked for in that 
 high quarter, I was precluded from undertaking the 
 subject, lest my efforts might mar the work in hands 
 far more able to execute it. 
 
 This is my defence for now addressing you at the 
 end of the parliamentary year. But to imagine that 
 I can hold my peace a moment longer, that I can 
 suffer the Parliament to be prorogued, and above all to 
 be dissolved, and the country to be assembled for 
 the choice of new Representatives, without calling on 
 the House for a solemn pledge, which may bind its 
 successors to do their duty by the most defenceless 
 and wretched portion of their fellow subjects, is so 
 manifestly out of the question, that I make no apo- 
 logy for the lateness of the day, and disregard even 
 the necessary absence of many fast friends of the 
 cause, and a general slackness of attendance, incident 
 to the season, as attested by the state of these benches, 
 which might well dissuade me from going on. And 
 now, after the question of Colonial Slavery has for so 
 many years been familiar to the House, and I fear still 
 more familiar to the country, I would fain hope that 
 I may dispense with the irksome task of dragging you 
 through its details, from their multiplicity so over-
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 133 
 
 whelming, from their miserable nature so al'dieting. 
 But I am aware that in the threshold of the scene, 
 and to scare me from entering upon it, there stands 
 the phantom of colonial independence, resisting par- 
 liamentary interference, fatiguing the ear with the 
 thrice-told tale of their ignorance who see from afar 
 off, and pointing to the fatal issue of the American 
 war. There needs but one steady glance; to brush 
 all such spectres away. That the colonial legisla- 
 tures have rights that their privileges are to be re- 
 spected that their province is not to be lightly invaded 
 that the Parliament of the mother country is not, 
 without necessity, to trench on their independence 
 no man more than myself is willing to allow. But 
 when those local assemblies utterly neglect their first 
 duties when we see them, from the circumstances of 
 their situation, prevented from acting struggling in 
 these trammels for an independent existence ex- 
 hausted in the effort to stand alone, and to move one 
 step wholly unable when at any rate we wait for 
 years, and perceive that they advance not by a hair's 
 breadth, either because they cannot, or because they 
 dare not, or because they will not then to contend 
 that we should not interfere that we should fail in 
 our duty because they do not do theirs nay, that we 
 have no right to act, because they have no power or 
 no inclination to obey us would be, not an argument, 
 but an abomination, a gross insult to Parliament, a 
 mockery of our privileges for I trust that we too 
 have some left a shameful abandonment of our duty, 
 and a portentous novelty in the history of the Parlia- 
 ment, the Plantations, and the Country. 
 
 Talk not of the American contest, and the triumph 
 of the colonists. Who that has read the sad history 
 of that event (and I believe among the patriarchs 
 of this cause whom I now address there are some \rlio
 
 134 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 can remember that disgrace of our councils and our 
 arms) will say, that either the Americans triumphed 
 or we quailed on one inch of the ground upon which 
 the present controversy stands ? Ignorance the most 
 gross, or inattention the most heedless, can alone 
 explain, but cannot at all justify, the use of such a 
 topic. Be it remembered and to set at rest the point 
 of right, I shall say no more let it not once be for- 
 gotten, that the supremacy of the mother country 
 never for an instant was surrendered at any period of 
 that calamitous struggle. Nay, in the whole course 
 of it, a question of her supremacy never once was 
 raised ; the whole dispute was rigorously confined to 
 the power of taxing. All that we gave up, as we said 
 voluntarily, as the Americans more truly said, by com- 
 pulsion, was the power to tax ; and by the very act 
 which surrendered this power, we solemnly, deliber- 
 ately, and unequivocally reasserted the right of the 
 Parliament to give laws to the plantations in all other 
 respects whatever. Thus speaks the record of history 
 and the record of our Statute-book. But were both 
 history and the laws silent, there is a fact so plain 
 and striking, that it would of itself be quite sufficient 
 to establish the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. 
 I believe it may safely be affirmed, that on neither 
 side of the water was there a man more distinguished 
 for steady devotion to the cause of colonial indepen- 
 dence, or who made his name more renowned by firm 
 resistance to the claims of the mother country, than 
 Mr. Burke. He was, in truth, throughout that memor- 
 able struggle, the great leader in Parliament against 
 the infatuated ministry, whose counsels ended in se- 
 vering the empire ; and far from abating in his oppo- 
 sition as the contest advanced, he sacrificed to those 
 principles the favour of his constituents, and was in 
 consequence obliged to withdraw from the repre-
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 135 
 
 sentation of Bristol, which, till then he had held. 
 His speech on the occasion of his retirement re- 
 affirms the doctrines of American independence. 
 But neither then, nor at any other time, did he ever 
 think of denying the general legislative supremacy of 
 Parliament ; he only questioned the right of taxing 
 the unrepresented colonies. But another fact must 
 at once carry conviction to every mind. During the 
 heat of the controversy, he employed himself in fram- 
 ing a code for the government of our sugar colonies. 
 It was a bill to be passed into a law by the Legisla- 
 ture of the mother country ; and it has fortunately 
 been preserved among his invaluable papers. There 
 is no minute detail into which its provisions do not 
 enter. The rights of the slave the duties of the master 
 the obligation to feed and clothe the restriction of 
 thepower of coercion and punishment all that concerns 
 marriage and education and religious instruction all 
 that relates to the hours of labour and rest every thing- 
 is minutely provided for, with an abundance of regula- 
 tion which might well be deemed excessive, were not 
 the subject that unnatural state of things which sub- 
 jects man to the dominion of his fellow-creatures, and 
 which can only be rendered tolerable by the most 
 profuse enactment of checks and controls. This mea- 
 sure of most ample interference was devised by the 
 most illustrious champion of colonial rights, the most 
 jealous watchman of English encroachments. With 
 his own hand he sketched the bold outline ; with his 
 own hand he filled up its details; with his own hand, 
 long after the American contest had terminated, after 
 the controversy on negro freedom had begun, and 
 when his own principles, touching the Slave Trade and 
 Slavery, had bent before certain West India prejudices, 
 communicated by the party of the planters in Paris with 
 whom he made common cause on French revolutionary
 
 136 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 politics, even then, instead of rejecting all idea of 
 interference with the rights of the colonial assemblies, 
 he delivered over his plan of a slave code to Mr. 
 Dundas, the Secretary for the Colonies, for the patron- 
 age and adoption of Mr. Pitt and himself. I offer 
 this fact as a striking proof that it is worse than a jest, 
 it is an unpardonable delusion, to fancy that there 
 ever has existed a doubt of the right of Parliament 
 to give the colonies laws. 
 
 But I am told, that, granting the right to be ours, 
 we ought to shrink from the exercise of it, when it 
 would lead to an encroachment upon the sacred rights 
 of property. I desire the House to mark the short and 
 plain issue to which I am willing to bring this matter. 
 I believe there is no man, either in or out of the pro- 
 fession to which I have the honour of belonging, and 
 which, above all others, inculcates upon its members 
 an habitual veneration for civil rights, less disposed 
 than I am, lightly to value those rights, or rashly to 
 inculcate a disregard of them. But that renowned 
 profession has taught me another lesson also ; it has 
 imprinted on my mind the doctrine which all men, the 
 learned and the unlearned, feel to be congenial with 
 the human mind, and to gather strength with its 
 growth that by a law above and prior to all the laws 
 of human lawgivers, for it is the law of God there are 
 some things which cannot be holden in property, and 
 above everything else, that man can have no property 
 in his fellow-creature. 
 
 But I willingly avoid those heights of moral argu- 
 ment, where, if we go in search of first principles, we 
 see eternal fogs reign, and " find no end, in wandering 
 mazes lost." I had rather seek the humbler regions, 
 and approach the level plain, where all men see clear, 
 where their judgments agree, and common feelings- 
 knit their hearts together; and standing on that general
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 13? 
 
 level, I ask, what is the right which one man claims over 
 the person of another, as if he were a chattel, and one of 
 the beasts that perish ? Is this that kind of property 
 which claims universal respect, and is clothed in the 
 hearts of all with a sanctity that makes it inviolable ? 
 I resist the claim ; I deny the title ; as a lawyer T 
 demur to the declaration of the right ; as a man I set 
 up a law superior in point of antiquity, higher in 
 point of authority, than any which men have framed 
 the law of nature ; and, if you appeal from that, 1 
 set up the law of the Christian dispensation, which 
 holds all men equal, and commands that you treat 
 every man as a brother ! Talk to me not of such 
 monstrous pretensions being decreed by Acts of Par- 
 liament, and recognised by treaties ! Go back a 
 quarter of a century to a kindred contest, when a 
 long and painful struggle ended in an immortal 
 triumph. The self-same arguments were urged in 
 defence of the Slave-trade. Its vindication was 
 rested upon the rights of property, as established by 
 laws and treaties ; the right to trade in men was held 
 to be as clear then, as the right to hold men in pro- 
 perty is held to be clear now. P'or twenty-five years, 
 I am ashamed to repeat, for twenty-five years, to the 
 lasting disgrace of the Parliament, the African slave 
 traffic was thus defended ; and that which it was then 
 maintained every one had a right to do, is now 
 denounced by our laws as piracy, and whoso doeth it 
 shall surely die the death of a felon. 
 
 But I am next told, that, be the right as it may, 
 the facts are against me ; that the theory may be with 
 those who object to slavery, but the practice is in 
 favour of the system. The negroes are well off, it 
 seems ; they are inured to the state in which they 
 have been born and grown up ; they are happy and 
 contented, and we shall only hurt them by changing
 
 138 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 their condition, which the peasantry of England are 
 desired to regard with envy. I will not stoop to 
 answer such outrageous assertions by facts or by 
 reasons. I will not insult your understanding, by 
 proving, that no slave can taste happiness or com- 
 fort; that where a man is at the nod of another, 
 he can know nothing of real peace or repose. But 
 I will at once appeal to two tests ; to these I shall 
 confine myself, satisfied that if they fail to decide 
 the question, I may resort in vain to any argu- 
 ment which philosophers can admit, or political 
 economists entertain, or men of ordinary common 
 sense handle. The two tests or criteria of happiness 
 among any people, which I will now resort to, are the 
 progress of population, and the amount of crime. 
 These, but the first especially, are, of all others, the 
 most safely to be relied on. Every one who has 
 studied the philosophy of human nature, and every 
 one who has cultivated statesman-like wisdom, which 
 indeed is only that philosophy reduced to practice, 
 must admit, that the principle implanted in our 
 nature, which ensures the continuance of the species, 
 is so powerful that nothing can check its operation 
 but some calamitous state of suffering, which reverses 
 the natural order of things. Wherever, then, we see 
 the numbers of men stationary, much more when we 
 perceive them decreasing, we may rest assured that 
 there is some fatal malady, some fundamental vice in 
 the community, which makes head against the most irre- 
 sistible of all the impulses of our physical constitution. 
 Now, look to the history of the black population, both 
 free and slave in the Antilles. In the British islands, 
 including Barbadoes, on a population of 670,000 
 slaves, there was a decrease of 31,500 in the six years 
 which elapsed between 1818 and 1824; in Jamaica 
 alone, upon the number of 330,000, a decrease of be-
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 139 
 
 tween 8,000, and 9,000. But not so with the free 
 coloured men; although placed in circumstances exceed- 
 ingly unfavourable to increase of numbers, yet such is the 
 natural fruitfulness of the negro race that they rapidly 
 multiplied. The Maroons doubled between 1 749 and 
 1782; and when great part of them were removed 
 after the rebellion of 1796, those who remained 
 increased in six years, from 1810 to 1810, no less 
 than eighteen per cent.; and in five years, from 1816 
 to 1821, fourteen per cent. In North America, 
 where they are better fed, the negroes have increased 
 in thirty years no less than 130 per cent. Look next 
 to Trinidad: in four years, from 1825 to 1829, the 
 slaves have fallen off from 23,117 to 22,436, not- 
 withstanding a considerable importation under an 
 order in council, being a decrease of at least a thirty- 
 fourth, but probably of a twentieth. But what has 
 happened to the same race, and circumstanced alike 
 as to climate, soil, food in short, everything save 
 liberty ? Nature has with them upheld her rights ; 
 her first great law has been obeyed ; the passions and 
 the vigour of man have had their course unrestrained ; 
 and the increase of his numbers has attested his free- 
 dom. They have risen in the same four years from 
 13,995 to 16,412, or at a rate which would double 
 their numbers in twenty years ; the greatest rate at 
 which population is, in any circumstances, known to 
 increase. There cannot be a more appalling picture 
 presented to the reflecting mind than that of a people 
 decreasing in numbers. To him who can look beyond 
 the abstract numbers, whose eye is not confined to the 
 mere tables and returns of population, but ranges over 
 the miseries of which such a diminution is the infal- 
 lible symptom ; it offers a view of all the forms of 
 wretchedness, suffering in every shape, privations in 
 unlimited measure. whatever is most contrary to the
 
 UO NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 nature of human beings, most alien to their habits, 
 most adverse to their happiness and comfort all be- 
 ginning in slavery, the state most unnatural to man ; 
 consummated through various channels in his degra- 
 dation, and leading to one common end, the grave. 
 Show me but the simple fact, that the people in any 
 country are regularly decreasing, so as in half a cen- 
 tury to be extinct ; and I want no other evidence that 
 their lot is that of the bitterest wretchedness : nor 
 will any other facts convince me that their general 
 condition can be favourable or mild. The second 
 general test to which I would resort for the purpose 
 of trying the state of any community, without the 
 risk of those deceptions to which particular facts are 
 liable, is the number of crimes committed. In Trini- 
 dad, I find that the slaves belonging to plantations, in 
 number 16,580,- appear, by the records printed, to have 
 been punished in two years for 11,131 offences, that 
 is to say, deducting the number of infants incapable 
 of committing crimes, every slave had committed some 
 offence in the course of those two years. It is true 
 that the bulk of those offences, 7644, were connected 
 with their condition of bondage refusing to work, 
 absconding from the estate, insolence to the owner or 
 overseer, all incidental to their sad condition, but all 
 visited with punishment betokening its accompanying 
 debasement. Nevertheless, other crimes were not 
 wanting: 713 were punished for theft, or above 350 
 in a year, on a number of about 12,000, deducting 
 persons incapacitated by infancy, age, or sickness, 
 from being the subjects of punishment. Let any one 
 consider what this proportion would give in England : 
 it would amount to 350,000 persons punished in one 
 year for larceny. In Berbice, on a population of 21,000 
 plantation slaves, there were .9000 punishments ; no 
 record being kept of those in plantations of six slaves
 
 NEGHO SLAVERY. J-H 
 
 or under: and in Demerara, of ol,000, there were 
 20,567 punished, of whom 84GI were women. 
 
 1 cannot here withhold from the House the testimony 
 of the Protector of Slaves to the happiness of their con- 
 dition. " I cannot," says that judicious officer, " refrain 
 from remarking on the contented appearance of the 
 negroes; and, from the opportunities of judging which 
 I have, I think that generally they have every reason 
 to be so." I would not have this Protector placed in 
 the condition of the very happiest of this contented 
 tribe, whose numbers are hourly lessening, and whose 
 lives are spent in committing crime and in receiving 
 punishments. No, not for a day would I punish his 
 error in judgment, by condemning him to taste the 
 comforts which he describes, as they are enjoyed by 
 the very luckiest of those placed under his protection. 
 But such testimony is not peculiar to this officer. 
 Long before his protectorate commenced, before he 
 even came into this world of slavery and bliss, of bon- 
 dage and contentment, the like opinion had been pro- 
 nounced in favour of West Indian felicity. I hold in 
 my hand the evidence of Lord Rodney, who swore 
 before the Privy Council that he never saw an in- 
 stance of cruel treatment, that in all the islands, 
 " and," said his Lordship, " I know them all," the 
 negroes were better off in clothing, lodging, and food, 
 than the poor at home, and were never in any case at 
 all overworked. Admiral Barrington, rising in ardour 
 of expression as he advanced in knoAvledge, declares 
 that he has often wished himself in the condition of 
 the slaves. Neither would I take the gallant Admiral 
 at his rash word, sanctioned though it be by an oath. 
 I would not punish his temerity so severely as to con- 
 sign him to a station, compared with which he would 
 in four-and-twenty hours have become reconciled to 
 the hardest fare in the most crazy bark that ever
 
 1+2 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 rocked on the most perilous wave ; or even to the lot 
 which our English seamen are the least inured to 
 the most disastrous combat that ever lowered his flag 
 in discomfiture and disgrace. But these officers con- 
 fined not their testimony to the condition of slavery ; 
 they cast its panoply around the Slave-trade itself. 
 They were just as liberal in behalf of the Guineaman, 
 as of those whom his toils were destined to enrich. 
 They gave just as Arcadian a picture of the slaver's 
 deck and hold, as of the enviable fields whither she was 
 fraught with a cargo of happy creatures, designed by 
 their felicitous destiny to become what are called the 
 cultivators of those romantic regions. " The slaves 
 on board are comfortably lodged," says one gallant 
 officer, " in rooms fitted up for them." " They are 
 amused with instruments of music : when tired of 
 music, they then go to games of chance." Let the 
 inhabitants or the frequenters of our club-houses hear 
 this and envy those " famous wits," to whom St. 
 James's purlieus are " native or hospitable :" let them 
 cast a longing look on the superior felicity of their 
 sable brethren on the middle passage. They toil not, 
 neither do they spin, yet have they found for them all 
 earthly indulgences ; food and raiment for nothing ; 
 music to charm the sense ; and when, sated with such 
 enjoyment, the mind seeks a change, games of chance 
 are kindly provided by boon traffic to stimulate the 
 lazy appetite. " The slaves," adds the Admiral, " are 
 indulged in all their little humours." Whether one 
 of these caprices might be to have themselves tied up 
 from time to time, and lacerated with a scourge, he 
 has omitted to mention. " He had frequently," he 
 says, " seen them, and as happy as any of the crew, it 
 being the interest of the officers and men to make them 
 so." But it is Admiral Evans who puts the finishing 
 stroke to this fairy picture. " The arrival of a Gui-
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. Hy 
 
 neaman," he says, " is known in the West Indies by 
 the dancing* and singing of the negroes on board." 
 
 It is thus that these cargoes of merry, happy crea- 
 tures, torn from their families, their native fields, and 
 their cottages, celebrate their reaching the land of 
 promise, and that their coming is distinguished from 
 the dismal landing of free English seamen, out of West 
 India traders, or other receptacles of cruelty and 
 wretchedness. But if all the deductions of philosophy, 
 and all the general indications of fact, loudly prove the 
 unalterable wretchedness of colonial slavery, where, 
 may it be asked, are the particular instances of its 
 existence ? Alas ! there is no want of these : but I 
 will only cull out a few, dealing purposely with the 
 mass rather by sample than by breaking its foul bulk. 
 I shall illustrate, by a few examples, the effects of 
 slavery in communities to the exertions of which we 
 are bid to look for the mitigation and final extinction 
 of that horrid condition. 
 
 A certain Reverend Thomas Wilson Bridges was 
 charged with an offence of the deepest dye. A 
 slave girl had been ordered to dress a turkey for din- 
 ner, and the order having been disobeyed, he struck 
 her a violent blow, which caused her nose and mouth 
 to flow with blood, applying to her at the same time 
 an oath, and a peculiarly coarse epithet, highly unbe- 
 coming in a clergyman, and indeed in any man, as it 
 is the name most offensive to all womankind. He 
 then commanded two men to cut bamboo rods and 
 point them for her punishment. She was stripped of 
 every article of dress, and flogged till the back part of 
 her, from the shoulders to the calves of the legs, was 
 one mass of lacerated flesh. She made her escape, 
 and went to a Magistrate. The matter was brought 
 before what is called a Council of Protection, where, 
 by a majority of fourteen to four, it was resolved that
 
 144 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 no further proceedings should take place. The Secre- 
 tary of State for the Colonies, however, thought other- 
 wise, and in a dispatch, with no part of which have I 
 any fault to find, directed the evidence to be laid be- 
 fore the Attorney General. I understand that the 
 reverend gentleman has not been put on his trial. I 
 hope I may have been misinformed : I shall rejoice to 
 find it so. I shall also be glad to find that there is 
 no ground for the charge ; although the man's ser- 
 vants, when examined, all admitted the severity of the 
 flogging ; and himself allowed he had seen it, though 
 he alleged he was not near, but could not deny he had 
 heard the screams of the victim. This reverend Mr. 
 Bridges I happened to know by his other works, by 
 those labours of slander which have diversified the life 
 of this minister of peace and truth. For publishing 
 one of these, a respectable bookseller has been con- 
 victed by a jury of his country ; others have been 
 passed over with contempt by their illustrious object 
 that venerable person, the great patriarch of our 
 cause, whose days are to be numbered by acts of bene- 
 volence and of piety, whose whole life, and long may 
 it be extended for his own glory and the good of his 
 fellow-creatures ! has been devoted to the highest 
 interests of religion and of charity, who might have 
 hoped to pass on his holy path undisturbed by any one 
 calling himself a Christian pastor, even in a West 
 Indian community. The man, however, has so far 
 succeeded, whether by the treatment of his slaves, or 
 the defamation of Mr. AVilberforce, in recommending 
 himself to his fellow-citizens in Jamaica, that a great 
 majority in the Protecting Council forbade his con- 
 duct being inquired into. So vain is it to expect from 
 the owners of slaves any active execution of the laws 
 against slavery ! And will you then trust those slave 
 owners with the making of such laws ! Recollect the
 
 NEC 110 SLAVERY. 14.5 
 
 memorable warning of Mr. Canning, given thirty years 
 ago, and proved true by every day's experience since. ' 
 " Have a care how you leave to the owners of Slaves 
 the task of making laws against Slavery. While hu- 
 man nature remains the same, they never can be 
 trusted with it." 
 
 It is now six years since I called the attention of 
 Parliament to one of the most grievous outrages that 
 ever was committed since the Caribbean Archipelago 
 was peopled with negro slaves the persecution unto 
 death of a Christian minister, for no other offence than 
 preaching the gospel of his Master. I was then told, 
 that no such wrong would ever be done again. It 
 was a single case, which never could recur : at all 
 events, the discussion in this House, and the universal 
 reprobation called forth, even from those who had not 
 sufficient independence to give their voices for doing 
 justice upon the guilty, would, I was told, effectually 
 secure the freedom of religious worship in future. I 
 was silenced by the majority of votes, but not con- 
 vinced by such reasons as these. And I now hold in 
 my hand the proof that I was right. It is a state- 
 ment promulgated by a numerous and respectable 
 body of sincere Christians, with whom I differ both in 
 religious and political opinions, but in whose conduct, 
 if there be any thing which I peculiarly blame, it is 
 their disinclination to deviate from a bad habit of pas- 
 sive obedience of taking all that is done by men in 
 authority to be right. They seem, however, now to 
 be convinced that they have carried this habit too far, 
 and that the time is come when they can no longer do 
 their duty and hold their peace. The narrative which 
 they have given, confirmed by the conduct of the 
 Government itself, is such as would have filled me 
 with indignation had I read it six years ago ; but, after 
 the warning voice so loudly raised in the debates upon 
 
 VOL. n. K
 
 14G NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 the Missionary Smith's murder, I gaze upon it asto- 
 nished and incredulous. The simple and affecting 
 story is told by Mr. Orton, a blameless and pious mi- 
 nister of the Gospel in Jamaica. He first alludes to 
 the " daring attack made on the mission premises, at 
 St. Ann's Bay, on Christmas-day, 1826," (the festival 
 chosen by these friends of the Established Church for 
 celebrating their brotherly love towards another sect.) 
 " The attack," says he, " was made by a party of white 
 persons, of the light company of militia, who were 
 stationed at St. Ann's Bay as the Christmas guards. 
 The plan appeared to have been premeditated, and 
 there remains but little doubt that the design was 
 murderous. A great number of balls were fired into 
 the chapel and house, fourteen of which I assisted to 
 extract from various parts of the building ; and upon 
 noticing particularly the direction, and measuring the 
 distance from which some of the shots must have been 
 fired, it appeared that Mr. and Mrs. Ratcliffe and their 
 child most narrowly escaped the fatal consequences 
 which were no doubt designed." All attempt to bring 
 these criminals to justice failed, it seems, for want of 
 evidence a somewhat extraordinary incident in a 
 community calling itself civilized, that so many per- 
 sons as must have been concerned in it should all have 
 escaped. In the course of the next summer, Mr. 
 Grimsdall, another clergyman of the same persuasion, 
 was arrested twice ; the second time for having preach- 
 ed at a small place called Ocho Rios, in an unlicensed 
 house, although a license had been applied for and re- 
 fused, contrary to the judgment of the Gustos and 
 another Magistrate. He was flung into a noisome 
 dungeon, " such," says the narrative, " as no person in 
 Great Britain can have any conception of. His con- 
 stitution, naturally strong, could not sustain the attack 
 he sunk under the oppression of these persecutors,
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. U? 
 
 and the deleterious effects of confinement in a noxious 
 prison ; and this devoted servant of God, after a pain- 
 ful sickness of sixteen days, was delivered by death 
 from the further sufferings projected by his unfeeling 
 persecutors. He died the lath day of December 
 1827-" Mr. Whitehouse, too, was a preacher of the 
 Gospel, and consequently an object of persecution. 
 In the summer of 1828, he was seized and carried be- 
 fore a Magistrate, accused of having preached without 
 a license ; that is, of having a license in one parish and 
 preaching in another. He besought the Magistrates 
 as a favour, to be bound in irons in the market-place, 
 instead of being confined in the cell where his prede- 
 cessor had been deprived of life. They treated his 
 remonstrances with indifference, said they were resol- 
 ved to do their duty, professed not to regard what the 
 public might say of them, and added, that " whoever 
 might come should be treated in the same manner." 
 He was accordingly flung into the dungeon where Mr. 
 Grimsdall had perished. " I found it," says he " oc- 
 cupied by an insane black woman. She was removed, 
 but the cell was exceedingly filthy, and the stench 
 unbearable. It was now eight o'clock in the evening, 
 and the gaoler said he " must lock up." I desired 
 that the cell floor might, at least, be swept, which a 
 few friends immediately attended to. There was no 
 bed provided for me, not even one of straw ; and it 
 was not until I had made several requests to the 
 gaoler, that a few benches from the chapel were al- 
 lowed to be brought in, on which to make a bed. A 
 large quantity of vinegar, and one of strong camphor- 
 ated rum, was thrown upon the floor and walls, for the 
 purpose of counteracting the very disagreeable effluvia 
 which proceeded from the filth with which the place 
 abounded ; but this produced very little effect. The 
 sea-breeze had subsided, and the onlv window from
 
 148 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 which I could obtain the least air, was just above the 
 place in which all the filth of the premises is deposited." 
 Mr. Orton received the intelligence of his persecuted 
 brother's affliction, with a request that he would per- 
 form his pastoral duty to his congregation. He did 
 so, and was forthwith committed to the same gaol. 
 " Of the horrid state of the place," he says, " an idea 
 can scarcely be formed from any representation which 
 can here be made, as common decency forbids the 
 mention of its filthy condition, and the many unseemly 
 practices which were constantly presented to our no- 
 tice. The hospital, gaol, and workhouse, are united : 
 the two former are under one roof, occupying an area 
 of about twenty-five feet by thirty-five. On the 
 ground-floor were three apartments. In the condemn- 
 ed cell were two unfortunate creatures awaiting their 
 doom. In an adjoining cell were many Negroes, con- 
 fined for petty offences ;, and in another apartment on 
 the same floor, forty were crammed together, who had 
 been taken in execution, and were waiting to be driven 
 and sold in the market. This building, small and con- 
 fined, was, especially during the night, literally stowed 
 with persons, so that, from the number of the pri- 
 soners, and the extreme filth of the Negroes, it was 
 almost unbearable." Let us but reflect on the suffer- 
 ings of imprisonment even in the best gaol of our own 
 temperate climate ; and let us then add to those the 
 torments of tropical heats ! Think of being enclosed 
 with crowds beyond what the air will supply with the 
 needful nourishment of the lungs, while a fiery sun 
 wheels round the clear sky from morning to night, 
 without the veil of a single cloud to throw a shade 
 between ; where all matter passes instantly from life 
 to putrescence, and water itself, under the pestilent 
 ray, becomes the source of every frightful malady ! 
 Add the unnatural condition of the inmates, not there
 
 NEGRO SLAVKRY. 140 
 
 for debts or for offences of their own, hut .seized for 
 their owner's default, and awaiting, not the judgment 
 of the law, or their liberation under an Insolvent Act, 
 but till the market opens, when, like brute beasts, they 
 are to be driven and sold to the highest bidder ! In 
 such a dungeon was it that Mr. Orton and his brethren 
 were immured ; and when their strength began to sink, 
 and it seemed plain that the) 7 must speedily follow' 
 their friend to the grave, they were taken before the 
 Chief Justice, who instantly declared the warrant 
 illegal, and their seventeen days' confinement to have 
 been without the shadow of pretence. 
 
 Who then was in the right, six years ago, in the 
 memorable debate upon the persecution of the Mis- 
 sionary Smith ? You, who said enough had been 
 done in broaching the subject, and that religion and 
 her ministers would thenceforward be secure ; or I, 
 who warned you, that if my Resolutions were rejected, 
 lie would not, by many a one, be the last victim ? I 
 would to God that the facts did not so plainly prove 
 me to have foretold the truth. 
 
 I may seem to have said enough ; but it is painful 
 to me that I cannot stop here, that I must try 
 faintly to paint excesses unheard of in Christian times 
 which to match we must go back to heathen ages, 
 to the days and to the stations, wherein absolute 
 power made men, but Pagan men, prodigies of cruelty 
 exaggerated by caprice, that I must drag before you 
 persons moving in the higher walks of life, and exert- 
 ing proportionable influence over the society they be- 
 long to : an English gentleman, and an English gen- 
 tlewoman accused, guilty, convicted of the most in- 
 fernal barbarity ; and an English community, so far 
 from visiting the enormity with contempt, or indig- 
 nant execration, that they make the savage perpetra- 
 tors the endeared objects of esteem, respect, and aflfec-
 
 150 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 tion ! I read the recital from the despatch of the 
 late Secretary for the Colonies,* a document never 
 to be sufficiently praised for its statesman-like firm- 
 ness, for the manly tone of feeling and of determina- 
 tion united, which marks it throughout. " The slave 
 girl was accused of theft," he says ; " but some dis- 
 obedience in refusing to mend the clothes was the 
 more immediate cause of her punishment. On the 
 22d of July 1826, she was confined in the stocks, and 
 she was not released till the 8th of August following, 
 being a period of seventeen days. The stocks were 
 so constructed, that she could not sit up and lie down 
 at pleasure, and she remained in them night and day. 
 During this period she was flogged repeatedly, one of 
 the overseers thinks about six times, and red pepper 
 was rubbed upon her eyes to prevent her sleeping. 
 Tasks were given her, which in the opinion of the same 
 overseer, she was incapable of performing ; sometimes 
 because they were beyond her powers ; at other times 
 because she could not see to do them on account of 
 the pepper having been rubbed on her eyes ; and she 
 was flogged for failing to accomplish these tasks. A 
 violent distemper had been prevalent on the planta- 
 tion during the summer. It is in evidence, that on 
 one of the days of her confinement she complained of 
 fever, and that one of the floggings which she received 
 was the day after she had made this complaint. When 
 she was taken out of the stocks she appeared to be 
 cramped, and was then again flogged. The very day 
 of her release she was sent to field-labour, (though 
 heretofore a house-servant,) and on the evening of the 
 third day ensuing was brought before her owners as 
 being ill and refusing to work, and she then again 
 complained of having had fever. They were of opi- 
 
 Mr. Huskisson.
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 1.31 
 
 nion that she had none then, but gave directions to 
 the driver, if she should be ill, to bring her to them 
 for medicines in the morning. The driver took her to 
 the negro-house, and again flogged her, though this 
 time apparently without orders from her owners to do 
 so. In the morning, at seven o'clock, she was taken 
 to work in the field, where she died at noon." Mark 
 the refinement of their wickedness ! I nowise doubt, 
 that to screen themselves from the punishment of 
 death due to their crimes, these wretches will now 
 say, they did indeed say on their trial, that their hap- 
 less victim died of disease. When their own lives 
 were in jeopardy, they found that she had caught the 
 fever, and died by the visitation of God ; but when 
 the question was, shall she be flogged again ? shall 
 she, who has for twelve days been fixed in the stocks 
 under the fiery beams of a tropical sun, who has been 
 torn with the scourge from the nape of the neck to 
 the plants of her feet, who has had pepper rubbed in 
 her eyes to ward off the sleep that might have stolen 
 over her senses, and for a moment withdrawn her spi- 
 rit from the fangs of her tormentors, shall she be 
 subjected by those accursed fiends to the seventh 
 scourging ? Oh ! then she had no sign of fever ! she 
 had caught no disease ! she was all hale, and sound, 
 and fit for the lash ! At seven she was flogged at 
 noon she died ! and those execrable and impious mur- 
 derers soon found out that she had caught the malady, 
 and perished by the " visitation of God !" No, no ! I 
 am used to examine circumstances, to weigh evidence, 
 and I do firmly believe that she died by the murder- 
 ous hand of man ! that she was killed and murdered ! 
 It was wisely said by Mr. Fox, that when some grie- 
 vous crime is perpetrated in a civilized community, 
 we are consoled by finding in all breasts a sympathy 
 with the victim, and an approval of the punishment
 
 152 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 by which the wrong-doer expiates his offence. But in 
 the West Indies there is no such solace to the mind 
 there all the feelings flow in a wrong course per- 
 verse, preposterous, unnatural the hatred is for the 
 victim, the sympathy for the tormentor ! I hold in 
 my hand the proof of it in this dreadful case. The 
 Mosses were condemned by an iniquitous sentence ; 
 for it was only to a small fine and five months' impri- 
 sonment. The public indignation followed the trans- 
 action ; but it was indignation against the punish- 
 ment, not the crime ; and against the severity, not 
 the lenity of the infliction. The Governor, a British 
 officer and I will name him to rescue others from the 
 blame General Grant tells us in his despatch, that 
 " he had been applied to by the most respectable in- 
 habitants to remit the sentence ;" that " he loses no 
 time in applying to Lord Bathurst to authorize the 
 remission." He speaks of " the unfortunate Henry 
 and Helen Moss ;" says, " they are rather to be pitied 
 for the untoward melancholy occurrence," (as if he 
 were talking of some great naval victory over the Turk, 
 instead of a savage murder), and that " he hastens to 
 prevent the impression, which the mention of the case 
 might make on his Lordship's mind." In a second 
 despatch, he earnestly renews the application; de- 
 scribes " the respectability of Mr. and Mrs. Moss, 
 their general kindness to their Slaves, the high esti- 
 mation in which they are held by all who have par- 
 taken of their hospitality ;" tells us that "they have 
 always been favourably spoken of in every respect, 
 including that of Slave management ;" states his own 
 anxiety that "persons of their respectability should 
 be spared from imprisonment ;" and that at any rate 
 " the mulct should be relinquished, lest they should 
 be thought cruel and oppressive beyond others, and 
 also in order to remove in some degree the impression
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 153 
 
 of their being habitually and studiously cruel ;" and 
 he adds a fact, which speaks volumes, and may well 
 shut all mouths that now cry aloud for leaving- such 
 things to the assemblies of the islands "notwith- 
 standing their being in gaol, they are visited by the 
 most respectable persons in the place, and by all who 
 knew them before." The Governor who thus thinks 
 and thus writes, has been removed from that settlement; 
 but only, I say it with grief, to be made the ruler of a 
 far more important colony. From the Bahamas he 
 has been promoted to Trinidad that great island, 
 which Mr. Canning described as about to be made the 
 model, by the Crown, for all Slave colonies. Over 
 such a colony was he sent to preside, who, having 
 tasted of the hospitality of the Mosses, could discern 
 in their treatment of their slaves, nothing out of the 
 fair, ordinary course of humane management. 
 
 From contemplating the horrors of slavery in the 
 West Indies, it is impossible that we can avoid the 
 transition to that infernal traffic, alike the scourge of 
 Africa and America, the disgrace of the old world and 
 the curse of the new, from which so much wretched- 
 ness has flowed. It is most shocking to reflect that 
 its ravages are still abroad, desolating the earth. I 
 do not rate the importation into the Brazils too high, 
 when I put it at 100,000 during the last twelve 
 months. Gracious God ! When we recollect that 
 the number of seventy-three capital punishments, 
 among which are but two or three for murder, in a 
 population of twelve millions, excites our just horror 
 in England, what shall we say of 100,000 capital 
 crimes, committed by a handful of desperate men, 
 every one of which involves and implies rapine, fraud, 
 murder, torture, in frightful abundance ? And yet we 
 must stand by and see such enormities perpetrated 
 without making any remonstrance, or even urging any
 
 154 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 representation! By the Treaty with Portugal, it is 
 true, no such crimes can henceforth be repeated, for 
 this year the traffic is to cease, and the mutual right 
 of search is given to the vessels of both nations, the 
 only possible security for the abolition being effectual. 
 But there is another country nearer to us in position, 
 and in habits of intercourse more familiar, one of far 
 more importance for the authority of its example, in 
 which the Slave Trade still flourishes in most portent- 
 ous vigour, although denounced by the law, and visit- 
 ed with infamous punishment : the dominions of the 
 Monarch who calls himself ** Most Christian," and re- 
 fuses the only measure that can put such wholesale 
 iniquity down. There it must thrive as long as 
 groundless national jealousies prevent the right of 
 search from being mutually conceded. Let us hope 
 that so foul a stain on the character of so great a 
 nation will soon be wiped away ; that the people who 
 now take the lead of all others in the march of liberty, 
 will cast far from their camp this unclean thing, by 
 all lovers of freedom most abhorred. I have heard 
 with amazement some thoughtless men say, that the 
 French cannot enjoy liberty, because they are unused 
 to it. I protest before God I could point to no nation 
 more worthy of freedom, or which knows better how 
 to use it, how to gain it, how to defend it. I turn 
 with a grateful heart to contemplate the glorious 
 spectacle now exhibited in France of patriotism, of 
 undaunted devotion to liberty, of firm yet temperate 
 resistance to arbitrary power. It is animating to 
 every beholder; it is encouraging to all freemen in 
 every part of the world. I earnestly hope that it may 
 not be lost on the Bourbon Monarch and his Council- 
 lors ; for the sake of France and of England, for the 
 sake of peace, for the sake of the Bourbon Princes 
 themselves, I pray that they may be wise in time, and
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 155 
 
 yield to tlie wish, the determination of their people ; 
 I pray, that, bending before the coming breeze, the 
 gathering storm may not sweep them away ! But of 
 one thing I would warn that devoted race ; let them 
 not flatter themselves that by trampling upon liberty 
 in France, they can escape either the abhorrence of 
 man or the Divine wrath for the execrable traffic in 
 Slaves, carried on under their flag, and flourishing 
 under their sway in America. I will tell their ghostly 
 councillors, in the language of a book with which they 
 ought to be familiar "Behold, obedience is better 
 than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." 
 To what should they lend an ear ? To the commands 
 of a God who loves mercy, and will punish injustice, 
 and abhors blood, and will surely avenge it upon their 
 heads; nothing the less because their patronage of 
 Slavery in distant climes is matched by their hatred of 
 liberty at home. Sir, I have done. I trust that at 
 length the time is come when Parliament will no 
 longer bear to be told, that Slave-owners are the best 
 law-givers on slavery ; no longer allow an appeal from 
 the British public, to such communities as those in 
 which the Smiths and the Grimsdalls are persecuted 
 to death, for teaching the Gospel to the Negroes ; and 
 the Mosses holden in affectionate respect for torture 
 and murder : no longer suffer our voice to roll across 
 the Atlantic in empty warnings, and fruitless orders. 
 Tell me not of rights talk not of the property of the 
 Planter in his Slaves. I deny the right I acknow- 
 ledge not the property. The principles, the feelings 
 of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be 
 the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, 
 the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you 
 tell me of laws that sanction such a claim ! There is 
 a law above all the enactments of human codes the 
 same throughout the world, the same in all times*
 
 156 NEGRO SLAVERY. 
 
 such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus 
 pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the 
 sources of power, wealth, and knowledge ; to another, 
 all unutterable woes ; such it is at this day : it is the 
 law written by the finger of God on the heart of man ; 
 and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men 
 despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they 
 will reject with indignation the wild and guilty phan- 
 tasy, that man can hold property in man ! In vain 
 you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations : 
 the covenants of the Almighty, whether the Old cove- 
 nant or the New, denounce such unholy pretensions. 
 To those laws did they of old refer who maintained 
 the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and 
 not untruly ; for by one shameful compact you bar- 
 tered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. 
 Yet, in despite of law and of treaty, that infernal traffic 
 is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like 
 other pirates. How came this change to pass ? Not, 
 assuredly, by Parliament leading the way ; but the 
 country at length awoke ; the indignation of the peo- 
 ple was kindled ; it descended in thunder, and smote 
 the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. 
 Now, then, let the Planters beware let their Assem- 
 blies beware let the Government at home beware 
 let the Parliament beware ! The same country is 
 once more awake, awake to the condition of Negro 
 Slavery ; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of 
 the same people ; the same cloud is gathering that 
 annihilated the Slave Trade ; and, if it shall descend 
 again, they, on whom its crash may fall, will not be 
 destroyed before I have warned them : but I pray that 
 their destruction may turn away from us the more 
 terrible judgments of God ! I therefore move you, 
 " That this House do resolve, at the earliest practicable 
 period of the next Session, to take into its serious
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY. 157 
 
 consideration the state of the Slaves in the Colonies 
 of Great Britain, in order to the mitigation and final 
 abolition of their Slavery, and more cs]iecially in order 
 to the amendment of the administration of justice 
 within the same "
 
 SPEECH 
 
 ON 
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 
 JANUARY 29, 1838.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO 
 
 RICHARD MARQUESS WELLESLEY, K.G. 
 
 ETC. ETC. ETC. 
 
 IN compliance with the wishes of the friends of the 
 Abolition, I have revised the report of this speech, 
 in order that the facts which I yesterday brought before 
 Parliament, and which all admitted to be truly stated, 
 nay, to have been rather understated than exaggerated, 
 may be made known through the country. I believe 
 these pages contain, as nearly as it is possible, what I 
 spoke in my place. 
 
 To your Lordship they are inscribed with peculiar 
 propriety, because you are one of the oldest and most 
 staunch friends of this great question, and because 
 your animated descriptions of the Parliamentary 
 struggles in its behalf, at which you have assisted, and 
 of the eloquence of other times which it called forth, 
 have formed one of the most interesting of the many 
 
 VOL. II. L
 
 162 DEDICATION. 
 
 conversations we have had upon the scenes of your 
 earlier life. My own recollections do not reach so far 
 back ; but I have now been a zealous, though humble 
 labourer, in the same cause upwards of six and thirty 
 years ; and it is truly melancholy to reflect that the 
 Slave Trade still desolates Africa, while it disgraces the 
 civilized world, hardly covering with less shame those 
 who suffer, than those who perpetrate the enormous 
 crime. May we hope that at length the object of our 
 wishes is about to be attained ! 
 
 This Dedication is offered without your permission 
 having been asked. It gives me an opportunity of 
 faintly expressing that admiration of your truly states- 
 man-like genius which all your countrymen feel who 
 have marked your illustrious career in Europe as well 
 as Asia ; and that gratitude for your past services which 
 in the public mind never can exceed the affection of 
 your private friends. 
 
 But I will confess that another motive contributes 
 to this intrusion upon your retirement. During the 
 years that the controversy has lasted, I have written 
 and published many volumes upon it; this is the first 
 page to which I have set my name ; and I naturally 
 feel desirous that it should have the advantage of 
 appearing in company with one so incomparably more 
 eminent. 
 
 BROUGHAM. 
 
 January 30, 1838.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 MY LORDS, I hold in my hand a petition from a 
 numerous and most respectable body of your fellow 
 citizens the inhabitants of Leeds. Between 16 and 
 17,000 of them have signed it, and on the part of the 
 other inhabitants of that great and flourishing com- 
 munity, as well as of the country at large in which it is 
 situated, I can affirm with confidence that their state- 
 ments and their prayer are those of the whole province 
 whose people I am proud to call my friends, as it was 
 once the pride of my life to represent them in Parlia- 
 ment. They remind your Lordships that between 18 
 and 19 millions have been already paid, and the residue 
 of the 20 millions is in a course of payment to the 
 holders of Slaves for some loss which it was supposed 
 their property would sustain by the Emancipation 
 Act ; whereas, instead of a loss they have received a 
 positive gain ; their yearly revenues are increased, 
 and the value of their estates has risen in the market. 
 Have not these petitioners have not the people of 
 England a right to state, that but for the firm belief 
 into which a generous Parliament and a confiding 
 country were drawn, that the Bill of 1833 would oc- 
 casion a loss to the Planter, not one million, or one 
 pound, or one penny of this enormous sum would ever
 
 1G4 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 have been granted to the owners of the slaves ? When 
 it is found that all this money has been paid for no- 
 thing, have we not an equal right to require that 
 whatever can be done on the part of the planters to 
 further a measure which has already been so gainful 
 to them, shall be performed without delay ? Have we 
 not an undeniable right to expect for the sake, not 
 more of humanity towards the Negroes, than of strict 
 justice to those whose money was so paid for nothing, 
 under a mere error in fact, that we, we who paid the 
 money, shall obtain some compensation? And as all 
 we ask is, not a return of it, not to have the sums 
 paid under mistake refunded, but only the bargain 
 carried into full effect, when the Colonial Legislatures 
 refuse to perform their part, are we not well entitled 
 to compel them ? In a word, have not the people of 
 England a right to demand that the Slavery which 
 still exists under the name of Indentured Apprentice- 
 ship, shall forthwith cease, all pretext for continuing 
 it, from the alleged risk of the sudden change or the 
 Negro's incapacity of voluntary labour, having been 
 triumphantly destroyed by the universal and notorious 
 fact of the experiment of total emancipation having 
 succeeded wherever it has been tried, and of the Negro 
 working cheerfully and profitably where he has been 
 continued an apprentice ? In presenting this petition 
 from Yorkshire, and these thirteen others from various 
 parts of the country, I have the honour of giving notice, 
 that as soon as the unfortunate and pressing question 
 of Canada shall have been disposed of by the passing 
 or the rejection of the Bill expected from the Com- 
 mons, that is, in about a week or ten days, I shall submit 
 a motion to your Lordships with the view of enabling 
 you to comply with the earnest prayer of your country- 
 men, by fixing the period of complete emancipation 
 on the tirst of August in this year, instead of 1840.
 
 THE SLAVE TRADK. l<>'-> 
 
 But, my Lords, while I thus express my entire 
 concurrence in the sentiments of these Petitions, and 
 of the various others which I have presented upon this 
 subject, I cannot conceal from myself that there is a 
 very material difference between the subject of their 
 complaint and of the complaint which I made at our 
 last meeting respecting the continuance not of Slavery 
 but the Slave Trade, which I cannot delay for a single 
 hour bringing before Parliament. The grievance set 
 forth in the Petitions, is, that the Emancipation Act 
 according to some did not go far enough and fast 
 enough to its purpose that while some hold it to 
 have stopped short, in not at once and effectually 
 wiping out the foul stain of slavery, others complain 
 of our expectations having been frustrated in the 
 working of the measure by the planters and the local 
 authorities that enough has not been done, nor with 
 sufficient celerity to relieve the unhappy Slave of his 
 burden nevertheless all admit that whatever has 
 been effected has been done in the right direction. 
 The objections made are upon the degree, not upon 
 the nature of the proceedings. It is that too little 
 relief has been given to the Slave that^ too late a 
 day has been assigned for his final liberation that he 
 still suffers more than he ought : it is not that, we have 
 made Slavery more universal, more burthensome, or 
 more bitter. But what would have been said by the 
 English people in what accents would they have 
 appealed to this House if instead of finding that the 
 goal we aimed at was not reached that the chains 
 we had hoped to see loosened still galled the limbs 
 that the burthen we had desired to lighten still pressed 
 the Slave to the earth it had been found that the 
 curse and the crime of human bondage had extended 
 to regions which it never before had blighted that 
 the burthen was become heavier and more unbearable
 
 16G THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 that the fetters galled' the victim's limbs more 
 cruelly than ever what I ask, would then have been 
 the language of your petitioners? What the sensa- 
 tion spread through the country ? What the cry of 
 rage, echoing from every corner of its extent, to 
 charge us with mingled hypocrisy and cruelty, should 
 we allow an hour to pass without rooting out the 
 monstrous evil? I will venture to assert that there 
 would have burst universally from the whole people 
 an indignant outcry to sweep away in a moment every 
 vestige of slavery, under whatever name it might lurk, 
 and whatever disguise it might assume ; and the Negro 
 at once would have been a free man. Now this is the 
 very charge which I am here to make, and prepared 
 to support with proof, against the course pursued with 
 a view to extinguish the Slave Trade. That accursed 
 traffic, long since condemned by the unanimous voice 
 of all the rational world, nourishes under the very 
 expedients adopted to crush it ; and increases in con- 
 sequence of those very measures resorted to for its 
 extinction. Yes, my Lords, it is my painful duty to 
 shew what, without suffering severely, it is not pos- 
 sible to contemplate, far less to recite, but what I 
 cannot lay my head once more on my pillow without 
 denouncing, that at this hour, from the very nature of 
 the means used to extirpate it, this infernal traffic 
 becomes armed with new horrors, and continues to 
 tear out, year after year, the very bowels of the great 
 African Continent that scene of the greatest suffer- 
 ings which have ever scourged humanity the worst 
 of all the crimes ever perpetrated by man ! 
 
 When the act for abolishing the British Slave Trade 
 passed in 1807, and when the Americans performed 
 the same act of justice by abolishing their traffic in 
 1806, the earliest moment, it must to their honour be 
 observed, that the Federal Constitution allowed this
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 167 
 
 step to be taken ; and when, at a later period, treaties 
 were made, with a view to extinguish the traffic 
 carried on by France, Spain, and Portugal, the plan 
 was in an evil hour adopted which up to the present 
 time has been in operation. The right of search and 
 seizure was confined to certain vessels in the service 
 of the State, and there was held out as an inducement 
 to quicken the activity of their officers and crews, a 
 promise of head-money, that is, of so much to be 
 paid for each slave on board the captured ship, over 
 and above the proceeds of its sale upon condemnation. 
 The prize was to be brought in and proceeded against ; 
 the slaves were to be liberated ; the ship, with her 
 tackle and cargo, to be sold, and the price distributed; 
 but beside this, the sum of five pounds for each slave 
 taken on board was to be distributed among the captors. 
 It must be admitted that the intention was excellent ; 
 it must further be allowed, that at first sight the 
 inducement held out seemed likely to work well, by 
 exciting the zeal and rousing the courage of the crews 
 against those desperate miscreants who defiled and 
 desecrated the great high-way of nations with their 
 complicated occupation of piracy and murder. I 
 grant it is far easier to judge after the event. Never- 
 theless, a little reflection might have sufficed to show 
 that there was a vice essentially inherent in the 
 scheme, and that by allotting the chief part of the pre- 
 mium for the capture of Slaves, and not of Slave- 
 ships, an inducement was held out, not to prevent the 
 principal part of the crime, the shipping of the Negroes, 
 from being committed, but rather to suffer this in order 
 that the head-money might be gained when the vessel 
 should be captured with that on board which we must 
 still insult all lawful commerce by calling the cargo 
 that is, the wretched victims of avarice and cruelty, 
 who had been torn from their country, and carried to the
 
 168 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 loathsome hold. The tendency of this is quite undeni- 
 able ; and equally so is its complete inconsistency with 
 the whole purpose in view, and indeed the grounds 
 upon which the plan itself is formed ; for it assumes 
 that the head-money will prove an inducement to the 
 cruisers, and quicken their activity ; it assumes there- 
 fore, that they will act so as to obtain the premium : 
 and yet the object in view is to prevent any slaves 
 from being embarked, and consequently any thing 
 being done which can entitle the cruiser to any head- 
 money at all. The cruiser is told to put down the 
 Slave Trade, and the reward held out is proportioned 
 to the height which that trade is suffered to reach 
 before it is put down. The plan assumes that he 
 requires this stimulus to make him prevent the 
 offence ; and the stimulus is applied only after the 
 offence has been in great part committed. The ten- 
 dency, then, of this most preposterous arrangement 
 cannot be questioned for a moment ; but now see how 
 it really works. 
 
 The Slave vessel is fitted out and sails from her port, 
 with all the accommodations that distinguish such 
 criminal adventures, and with the accustomed equip- 
 ment of chains and fetters, to torture and restrain the 
 Slaves the investment of trinkets wherewith civilized 
 men decoy savages to make war on one another, and 
 to sell those nearest to them in blood with the stock 
 of muskets too, prepared by Christians for the trade, 
 and sold at sixteen pence a-piece, but not made to fire 
 above once or twice without bursting in the hand of 
 the poor Negro, whom they have tempted to plunder 
 his neighbour or to sell his child. If taken on her 
 way to the African coast, she bears internal evidence, 
 amply sufficient, to convict her of a Slave trading 
 destination. I will not say that the cruisers having 
 visited and inspected her, would suffer her to pass
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 160 
 
 onward. I will not impute to gallant and honourable 
 men a breach of duty, by asserting, that knowing a 
 ship to have a guilty purpose, and aware that they 
 had the power of proving this, they would voluntarily 
 permit her to accomplish it. I will not even suggest 
 that vessels are less closely watched on their route 
 towards the coast than on their return from it. But 
 I may at least affirm, without any fear of being con- 
 tradicted, that the policy which holds out a reward, 
 not to the cruiser who stops such a ship and interrupts 
 her on the way to the scene of her crimes, but to the 
 cruiser who seizes her on her way back when full of 
 Slaves, gives and professes to give the cruiser an 
 interest in letting her reach Africa, take in her cargo 
 of Slaves, and sail for America. Moreover, I may 
 also affirm with perfect safety, that this policy is 
 grounded upon the assumption that the cruiser will be 
 influenced by the hope of the reward, in performing 
 the service, else of what earthly use can it be to offer it ? 
 and consequently I am entitled to conclude, that the 
 offering this reward, assumes that the cruiser cares 
 for the reward, and will let the Slaver pass on unless 
 she is laden with Slaves. If this does not always 
 
 / 
 
 happen, it is very certainly no fault of the policy which 
 is framed upon such a preposterous principle. But I 
 am not about to argue that any such consequences 
 actually take place. It may or it may not be so in 
 the result ; but the tendency of the system is plain. 
 The fact I stop not to examine. I have other facts 
 to state about which no doubt exists at all. The 
 statements of my excellent friend, Mr. Laird, who, 
 with his worthy coadjutor, Mr. Oldfield, has recently 
 returned from Africa, are before the world, and there 
 has been no attempt made to contradict them. Those 
 gallant men are the survivors of an expedition full of 
 hardships and perils, to which, among many others.
 
 170 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the learned and amiable Dr. Briggs, of Liverpool, 
 unhappily fell a sacrifice an irreparable loss to 
 humanity as well as science. 
 
 It appears that the course pursued on the coast is 
 this, The cruiser stationed there to prevent the 
 Slave trade, carefully avoids going near the harbour 
 or the creek where the Slavers are lying. If she comes 
 within sight, the Slaver would not venture to put his 
 cargo on board and sail. Therefore she stands out, 
 just so far as to command a view of the port from the 
 masthead, but herself quite out of sight. The SJaver 
 believes the coast is clear ; accomplishes his crime of 
 shipping the cargo, and attempts to cross the Atlantic. 
 Now, whether he succeeds in gaining the opposite 
 shore, or is taken and condemned, let us see what the 
 effect of the system is first of all, in the vessel's con- 
 struction and accommodation that is, in the comforts, 
 if such a word can be used in connection with the hull 
 of a Slave-ship or the torments rather prepared for 
 her unhappy inmates. Let us see how the unavoidable 
 miseries of the middle passage are exasperated by the 
 contraband nature of the adventure how the unavoid- 
 able mischief is needlessly aggravated by the very 
 means taken to extirpate it. The great object being 
 to escape our cruisers, every other consideration is 
 sacrificed to swiftness of 'sailing in the construction of 
 the Slave-ships. I am not saying that humanity is 
 sacrificed. I should of course be laughed to scorn by 
 all who are implicated in the African traffic, were I 
 to use such a word in any connexion with it. But 
 all other considerations respecting the vessel herself 
 are sacrificed to swiftness, and she is built so narrow 
 as to put her safety in peril, being made just broad 
 enough on the beam to keep the sea. What is the 
 result to the wretched slaves? Before the trade was 
 put down by us in 1807, they had the benefit of what
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 171 
 
 was termed the Slave Carrying Act. During the 
 twenty years that we spent in examining the details 
 of the question in ascertaining whether our crimes 
 were so profitable as not to warrant us in leaving them 
 off in debating whether robbery, piracy, and murder 
 should be prohibited by law, or receive protection and 
 encouragement from the State we, at least, were 
 considerate enough to regulate the perpetration of 
 them ; and while those curious and very creditable 
 discussions were going on, Sir William Dolben's Bill 
 gave the unhappy victims of our cruelty and iniquity 
 the benefit of a certain space between decks, in which 
 they might breathe the tainted air more freely, and a 
 certain supply of provisions and of water to sustain 
 their wretched existence. But now there is nothing 
 of the kind ; and the Slave is in the same situation in 
 which our first debates found him above half a century 
 ago, when the venerable Thomas Clarkson awakened 
 the attention of the world to his sufferings. The scan- 
 tiest portion which will support life is alone provided ; 
 and the wretched Africans are compressed and stowed 
 into every nook and cranny of the ship, as if they 
 were dead goods concealed on board smuggling vessels. 
 I may be thought to have said enough ; but I may not 
 stop here. Far more remains to tell ; and I approach 
 the darker part of the subject with a feeling of horror 
 and disgust, which I cannot describe, and which three 
 or four days gazing at the picture has not been able 
 to subdue. But I go through the painful duty in the 
 hope of inducing your Lordships at once to pronounce 
 the doom of that system which fosters all that you are 
 about to contemplate. 
 
 Let me first remind you of the analogy which this 
 head-money system bears to what was nearer home, 
 called blood-money. That it produces all the effects 
 of the latter, I am certainly not prepared to affirm ;
 
 172 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 for the giving a reward to informers on capital convic- 
 tion had the effect of engendering conspiracies to pro- 
 secute innocent men, as well as to prevent the guilty 
 from being stopt in their career, until their crimes had 
 ripened into capital offences ; and I have no concep- 
 tion that any attempts can be made to capture vessels 
 not engaged in the trade nor indeed could the head- 
 money, from the nature of the thing, be obtained by 
 any such means. But in the other part of the case 
 the two things are precisely parallel, have the self- 
 same tendency, and produce the same effects ; for 
 they both appeal to the same feelings and motives, 
 putting in motion the same springs of human action. 
 Under the old bounty system no policeman had an in- 
 terest in detecting and checking guilt until it reached 
 a certain pitch of depravity, until the offences became 
 capital, and their prosecutor could earn forty pounds, 
 they were not worth attending to. The cant expres- 
 sion, but the significant one is well known. " He 
 (the criminal) is not yet weight enough he does not 
 weigh his forty pounds" was the saying of those who 
 cruised for head-money at the Old Bailey. And thus 
 lesser crimes were connived at by some encouraged, 
 nurtured, fostered in their growth by others that 
 they might attain the maturity which the law had in 
 its justice and wisdom said they must reach before it 
 should be worth any one's while to stop the course of 
 guilt. Left to itself wickedness could scarcely fail to 
 shoot up and ripen. As soon as he saw that time come, 
 the policeman pounced upon his appointed prey, made 
 his victim pay the penalty of the crime he had suf- 
 fered, if not encouraged him to commit, and himself 
 obtained the reward provided by the State for the pa- 
 trons of capital felony. Such within the tropics is the 
 tendency, and such are the effects of our head-money 
 system. The Slave-ship gains the African shores ; she
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 170 
 
 there remains unmolested by the land authorities, and 
 unvisited by the sea ; the human cargo is prepared for 
 her ; the ties that knit relatives together arc forcibly 
 severed ; all the resources of force and of fraud, of 
 sordid avarice and of savage intemperance, are ex- 
 hausted to fill the human market ; to prevent all this, 
 nothing, or next to nothing is attempted ; the penalty 
 has not as yet attached ; the Slaves arc not on board, 
 and head-money is not due ; the vessel, to use the 
 technical phrase, does not yet weigh enough ; let her 
 ride at anchor till she reach her due standard of five 
 pounds a Slave, and then she will be pursued ! Ac- 
 cordingly, the lading is completed ; the cruiser keeps 
 out of sight; and the pirate puts to sea. And now 
 begin those horrors those greater horrors, of which 
 I am to speak, and which arc the necessary conse- 
 quences of the whole proceeding, considering with 
 what kind of miscreants our cruisers have to deal. 
 
 On being discovered, perceiving that the cruiser 
 is giving chase, the Slaver has to determine whether 
 he will endeavour to regain the port, escaping for the 
 moment, and waiting for a more favourable opportu- 
 nity, or will fare across the Atlantic, and so perfect 
 his adventure, and consummate his crime, reaching 
 the American shores with a part at least of his 
 lading. How many unutterable horrors are em- 
 braced in the word that has slipt my tongue ? A 
 part of the lading ! Yes yes For no sooner does 
 the miscreant find that the cruiser is gaining upon 
 him, than he bethinks him of lightening his ship, 
 and he chooses the heaviest of his goods, with the 
 same regard for them as if they were all inanimate 
 lumber. He casts overboard, men and women and 
 children ! Does he first knock off their fetters ? No I 
 Why ? Because those irons by which they have been 
 held together in couples, for safety but not more to
 
 174 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 secure the pirate crew against revolt, than the cargo 
 against suicide to prevent the Africans from seeking 
 in a watery grave an escape from their sufferings those 
 irons are not screwed together and padlocked, so as to 
 be removed in case of danger from tempest or from 
 fire but they are rivetted welded together by the 
 blacksmith in his forge never to be removed, nor 
 loosened, until after the horrors of the middle passage, 
 the children of misery shall be landed to bondage in 
 the civilized world, and become the subjects of Chris- 
 tian kings ! The irons, too, serve the purpose of 
 weights ; and, if time be allowed in the hurry of the 
 flight, more weights are added, to the end that the 
 wretches may be entangled, to prevent their swim- 
 ming. Why ? Because the Negro, with that hercu- 
 lean strength which he is endowed withal, and those 
 powers of living in the water which almost give him 
 an amphibious nature, might survive to be taken up 
 by the cruiser, and become a witness against the 
 murderer. The escape of the malefactor is thus 
 provided, both by lightening the vessel which bears 
 him away, and by destroying the evidence of his 
 crimes. Nor is this all. Instances have been recorded 
 of other precautions used with the same purpose. 
 Water-casks have been filled with human beings, and 
 one vessel threw twelve overboard thus laden. In 
 another chase, two Slave-ships endeavoured, but in 
 vain, to make their escape, and, my blood curdles 
 when I recite, that, in the attempt, they flung into 
 the sea five hundred human beings, of all ages, and 
 of either sex ! These are things related not by 
 enthusiasts, of heated imagination not by men who 
 consult only the feelings of humanity, and are inspired 
 to speak by the great horror and unextinguishable 
 indignation that fill their breasts but by officers on 
 duty, men engaged professionally in the Queen's
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 175 
 
 service. It is not a creation of fancy to add, as these 
 have done, to the hideous tale, that the ravenous 
 animals of the deep are aware of their prey ; when 
 the Slave-ship makes sail, the shark follows in her 
 wake, and her course is literally to be tracked through 
 the ocean by the blood of the murdered, with which 
 her enormous crimes stain its waters. I have read of 
 worse than even this ! But it will not be believed ! 
 I have examined the particulars of scenes yet more 
 hideous, while transfixed with horror, and ashamed 
 of the human form that I wore scenes so dreadful as 
 it was not deemed fit to lay bare before the public 
 eye ! scenes never surpassed in all that history has 
 recorded of human guilt to stain her pages, in all that 
 poets have conceived to harrow up the soul ! scenes, 
 compared with which the blood-stained annals of Spain 
 cruel and sordid Spain have registered only ordi- 
 nary tales of avarice and suffering though these have 
 won for her an unenvied pre-eminence of infamy ! 
 scenes not exceeded in horror by the forms with which 
 the great Tuscan poet peopled the hell of his fancy, 
 nor by the dismal tints of his illustrious countryman's 
 pencil, breathing its horrors over the vaults of the 
 Sistine chapel ! Mortua quin ctiam jungebat corpora 
 vims ! On the deck and in the loathsome hold are to 
 be seen the living chained to the dead the putrid 
 carcase remaining to mock the survivor with a spec- 
 tacle that to him presents no terrors to mock him 
 with the spectacle of a release which he envies ! Nay, 
 women have been known to bring forth the miserable 
 fruit of the womb surrounded by the dying and the 
 dead the decayed corpses of their fellow victims. 
 
 Am I asked how these enormities shall be prevented? 
 First ask me, to what I ascribe them ? and then my 
 answer is ready. I charge them upon the system of 
 head-money which I have described, and of whose
 
 176 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 tendency no man can pretend to doubt. Reward men 
 for preventing the Slaver's voyage, not for interrupting 
 it for saving the Africans from the Slave-ship, not 
 for seizing the ship after it has received them ; and 
 then the inducement will be applied to the right place, 
 and the motive will be suited to the act you desire to 
 have performed. 
 
 But I have hitherto been speaking of the intolerable 
 aggravation which we superadd to the traffic. Its 
 amount is another thing. Do all our efforts materi- 
 ally check it ? Are our cruisers always successful ? 
 Are all flags and all the slavers under any flag subject 
 to search and liable to capture ? I find that the bulk 
 of this infernal traffic is still undiminished; that though 
 many Slave-ships may be seized, many more escape 
 and reach the New World; and that the numbers 
 still carried thither are as great as ever. Of this sad 
 truth the evidence is but too abundant and too con- 
 clusive. The premium of insurance at the Havannah 
 is no higher than 12j per cent, to cover all hazards. 
 Of this 4^ per cent, is allowed for sea risk and under- 
 writer's profits, leaving but 8 for the chance of capture. 
 But in Rio it is as low as 1 1 per cent, leaving but 6^ 
 for risk of capture. In the year 1835, 80 Slave-ships 
 sailed from the Havannah alone ; and I have a list of 
 the numbers which six of those brought back, giving 
 an average of about 360 ; so that above 28,000 were 
 brought to that port in a year. In the month of De- 
 cember of that year, between 4000 and 5000 were 
 safely landed in the port of Rio, the capital of our 
 good friend and ally, the Emperor of Brazil. It is 
 frightful to think of the numbers carried over by some 
 of these ships. One transported 570, and another no 
 less than 700 wretched beings. I give the names of 
 these execrable vessels the Felicidad and the Socorro. 
 Of all Slave-traders, the greatest of all the criminals
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 1?7 
 
 engaged in these guilty crimes, the worst are the 
 Brazilians, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese the 
 three nations with whom our commerce is the closest, 
 and over whom our influence is the most command- 
 ing. These are the nations with whom we (and I 
 mean France as well as ourselves) go on in lingering 
 negotiation in quibbling discussion to obtain some 
 explanation of some article in a feeble inefficient 
 treaty, or some extension of an ineffectual right of 
 search, while their crimes lay all Africa waste, and 
 deluge the seas with the blood of her inhabitants. 
 Yet if a common and less guilty pirate dared pollute 
 the sea, or wave his black flag over its waves, let him 
 be of what nation he pleased to libel by assuming its 
 name, he would in an instant be made to pay the 
 forfeit of his crimes. It was not always so. We did 
 not in all times, nor in every cause, so shrink from 
 our duty through delicacy or through fear. When 
 the thrones of ancient Europe were to be upheld, or 
 their royal occupants to be restored, or the threatened 
 privileges of the aristocracy wanted champions, we 
 could full swiftly advance to the encounter, throw 
 ourselves into the breach, and confront alone the 
 giant arm of republics and of emperors wielding the 
 colossal power of France. But now when the millions 
 of Africa look up to us for help when humanity and 
 justice are our only clients I am far from saying that 
 we do not wish them well : I can believe that if a 
 word could give them success if a wave of the hand 
 sufficed to end the fray the word would be pro r 
 nounced the gesture would not be withholden ; but 
 if more be wanted, if some exertion is required if 
 some risk must be run in the cause of mercy then 
 our tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth ; our 
 hand falls paralysed ; we pause and falter, and blanch 
 and quail before the ancient and consecrated monarchy 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 178 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 of Brazil, the awful might of Portugal, the compact, 
 consolidated, overwhelming power of Spain ! My 
 lords, I trust I expect we shall pause and falter, 
 and blanch and quail no more ! Let it be the earliest, 
 and it will be the most enduring glory of the new 
 reign, to extirpate at length this execrable traffic ! 
 I would not surround our young Queen's throne with 
 fortresses and troops, or establish it upon the triumphs 
 of arms and the trophies of war no, not I ! 
 
 Ou ya% }Jdoi Irtiyjea TT,V oroX/v ovbs 
 
 TUV 1/tayroD ipgovu' aXX' Idv riv s[&i>v rti%iff{j(,bv, x. r. X. 
 
 I would build her renown neither upon military nor 
 yet upon naval greatness ; but upon rights secured, 
 upon liberties extended, humanity diffused, justice 
 universally promulged. In alliance with such virtues 
 as these I would have her name descend to after ages. 
 I would have it commemorated for' ever, that in the 
 first year of her reign, her throne was fortified, and her 
 crown embellished, by the proudest triumph over the 
 worst of crimes the greatest triumph mortal ever 
 won, over the worst crime man ever committed ! 
 
 * AHM. Hi
 
 SPEECH 
 
 ON THE 
 
 IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICES. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 
 FEBRUARY 20, 1838.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO 
 
 THE MARQUESS OF SLIGO, K.P. 
 
 ETC. ETC. ETC. 
 
 LATE GOVERNOR AND CAPTAIN-GENERAL OF JAMAICA. 
 
 THIS Speech is inscribed with peculiar propriety to 
 the humane and virtuous Viceroy, who, himself a 
 Master of Slaves, gained by his just and beneficent 
 Government of the greatest Slave colony in the world, 
 the truly enviable title of the Poor Negro's Friend. 
 The only other publication upon the subject to which 
 I ever affixed my name, was dedicated to an illustrious 
 Statesman, whose life has been devoted to his coun- 
 try's service, and whose noble ambition has always 
 connected itself with the improvement of mankind, 
 by that natural sympathy which unites brilliant genius 
 with public virtue. But the fame with which your 
 Administration has surrounded your character makes 
 it not unfit to name you even after a Wellesley. 
 The anxiety expressed from all parts of the country
 
 182 DEDICATION. 
 
 to obtain an authentic report of this Speech, and the 
 acceptance with which my countrymen have honoured 
 the humble though zealous efforts of their fellow- 
 labourer in this mighty work, I regard as by far the 
 highest gratification of a long public life. The pre- 
 sent occasion also affords me an opportunity of con- 
 tradicting the studied misrepresentations of some 
 injudicious supporters of the Government, who have 
 not scrupled to assert that my principal object in 
 proposing the measures of yesterday, was not the abo- 
 lition of Negro Apprenticeship, but only the regula- 
 tion of the Master's conduct. Nothing can be more 
 wide of the fact than such a statement. 
 
 I appeal to your Lordship, and to all who heard 
 me, whether my whole contention was not in behalf 
 of Instant and Complete Emancipation, as the only 
 effectual remedy, and whether I wasted more than a 
 single sentence upon any mere palliatives. To regu- 
 late the master's conduct, while the abominable system 
 is suffered to continue, was the purpose of the first 
 five resolutions but my whole forces, such as they 
 are, were brought to bear upon the only position to 
 take which I was very anxious, and, to force an imme- 
 diate, unconditional surrender of the master's rights 
 an immediate, unconditional liberation of the slave. 
 
 I think I have some right to complain of these mis- 
 statements. It was surely enough that I should be 
 resisted by the whole strength of the Government, and 
 that, in consequence of their resistance, my great object 
 of obtaining the Negro's freedom should be defeated, 
 as well as all hopes of effectually destroying the Slave 
 Trade itself disappointed by the rejection of my other
 
 DEDICATION. 183 
 
 propositions. There is a refinement of subtle injustice 
 in those men propagating a belief through the country, 
 that the conduct of the Ministry, by which my motion 
 was defeated, and by which I verily think their official 
 existence is endangered, did not altogether thwart the 
 intentions of the parties by whom that motion was 
 brought forward and supported. The reader of this 
 speech will be at no loss to perceive how entirely its 
 object was the Immediate Destruction of Slavery, and 
 how invariably every word of it w r as inspired by hos- 
 tility to the existing system, inextinguishable and 
 uncompromising. 
 
 BROUGHAM. 
 
 February -2], 1H3H,
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 1 DO not think, my lords, that ever but once before, 
 in the whole course of my public life, I have risen to 
 address either House of Parliament with the anxiety 
 tinder which I labour at this moment. The occasion 
 to which alone I can liken the present, was, when I 
 stood up in the Commons to expose the treatment of 
 that persecuted Missionary whose case gave birth to 
 the memorable debate upon the condition of our Negro 
 brethren in the Colonies a debate happily so fruitful 
 of results to the whole of this great cause. But there 
 is this difference between the two occasions to sustain 
 my spirits now, that whereas, at the former period, the 
 horizon was all wrapt in gloom, through which not a 
 ray of light pierced to cheer us, we have now emerged 
 into a comparatively bright atmosphere, and are pursu- 
 ing our journey full of hope. For this we have mainly 
 to thank that important discussion, and those eminent 
 men who bore in it so conspicuous a part. And now 
 I feel a further gratification in being the means of 
 enabling your lordships, by sharing in this great and 
 glorious work nay, by leading the way towards its 
 final accomplishment, to increase the esteem in which 
 you are held by your fellow-citizens; or if, by any 
 differences of opinion on recent measures, you may
 
 186 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 unhappily have lost any portion of the public favour, 
 I know of no path more short, more sure, or more 
 smooth, by which you may regain it. But I will not 
 rest my right to your co-operation upon any such 
 grounds as these. I claim your help by a higher title. 
 I rely upon the justice of my cause I rely upon the 
 power of your consciences I rely upon your duty to 
 God and to man I rely upon your consistency with 
 yourselves and, appealing to your own measure of 
 1833, if you be the same men in 1838, 1 call upon you 
 to finish your own work, and give at length a full effect 
 to the wise and Christian principles which then guided 
 your steps. 
 
 I rush at once into the midst of this great argument. 
 I drag before you, once more, but I trust for the last 
 time, the African Slave Trade, which I lately denounced 
 here, and have so often denounced elsewhere. On this 
 we are all agreed. Whatever difference of opinion may 
 exist on the question of Slavery, on the Slave traffic 
 there can be none. I am now furnished with a precedent 
 which may serve for an example to guide us. On Slavery 
 we have always held that the Colonial legislatures could 
 not be trusted ; that, to use Mr. Canning's expression, 
 you must beware of allowing the masters of Slaves to 
 make laws upon Slavery. But upon the detestable 
 traffic in Slaves, I can show you the proceeding of a 
 Colonial Assembly, which we should ourselves do well 
 to adopt after their example. These masters of Slaves, 
 not to be trusted on that subject, have acted well and 
 wisely on this. I hold in my hand a document, which 
 I bless heaven that I have lived to see. The legisla- 
 ture of Jamaica, owners of Slaves, and representing 
 all other Slave owners, feel that they also represent 
 the poor Negroes themselves : and they approach the 
 throne, expressing themselves thankful tardily thank- 
 ful, no doubt that the traffic has been now for thirty
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 187 
 
 years put down in our own Colonies, and beseeching 
 the Sovereign to consummate the great work by the 
 only effectual means of having it declared piracy by 
 the law of nations, as it is robbery, and piracy, and 
 murder by the law of God. This address is precisely 
 that which I desire your lordships now to present to 
 the same gracious Sovereign. After showing how 
 heavily the Foreign Slave Trade presses upon their 
 interests, they take higher ground in this remarkable 
 passage : " Nor can we forego the higher position, 
 as a question of humanity ; representing all classes of 
 the island, we consider ourselves entitled to offer to 
 your Majesty our respectful remonstrance against the 
 continuance of this condemned traffic in human beings. 
 As a community, composed of the descendants of 
 Africa as well as Britain, we arc anxious to advance 
 the character of the country ; and we, therefore, 
 entreat your Majesty to exert your interest with 
 foreign powers to cause this trade at once to be 
 declared piracy, as the only effectual means of putting 
 it down, and thereby to grace the commencement of 
 your auspicious reign." 
 
 My lords, I will not stop to remind the lawgivers of 
 Jamaica why it is that the Slave traffic is a crime of 
 so black a dye. I will not remind them that if Slavery 
 were no more, the trade in Slaves must cease ; that if 
 the West Indies were like England, peopled with free 
 men, and cultivated only by free hands, where no 
 man can hold his fellow-creature in bondage, and the 
 labourer cannot be tormented by his masters ; if the 
 cart-whip having happily been destroyed, the doors of 
 the prison-house were also flung open, and chains, and 
 bolts, and collars were unknown, and no toil endured 
 but by the workmen's consent, nor any effort extorted 
 by dread of punishment ; the traffic which we justly 
 call not a trade but a crime, would no longer inflict
 
 188 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 the miseries with which it now loads its victims, who, 
 instead of being conveyed to a place of torture and 
 misery, would be carried into a land of liberty and 
 enjoyment. Nor will I now pause to consider the 
 wishes of some colonies, in part, I am grieved to say, 
 granted by the Government, that the means should be 
 afforded them of bringing over what they call labourers 
 from other parts of the globe, to share in the sufferings 
 of Slavery, hardly mitigated under the name of appren- 
 ticeship. That you should ever join your voices with 
 them on this matter, is a thing so out of the question 
 that I will not detain you with one other remark upon 
 it. But so neither have I any occasion to go at pre- 
 sent into the subject of the Slave trade altogether, 
 after the statements which I lately made in this place 
 upon the pernicious effects of our head-money, the 
 frightful extent of the Negro traffic, and the horrible 
 atrocities which mark its course still more awfully now 
 than before. In order to support my call upon your 
 lordships for the measures which alone can extirpate 
 such enormities, I need but refer you to those state- 
 ments. Since I presented them here, they have been 
 made public, indeed promulgated all over the kingdom, 
 and they have met with no contradiction, nor excited 
 the least complaint in any quarter, except that many 
 have said the case was understated ; and that in one 
 place, and only in one, I have been charged with 
 exaggeration. I have read with astonishment, and I 
 repel with scorn, the insinuation, that I had acted the 
 part of an advocate, and that some of my statements 
 were coloured to serve a cause. How dares any man so 
 to accuse me? How dares any one, skulking under 
 a fictitious name, to launch his slanderous imputations 
 from his covert ? I come forward in my own person. 
 I make the charge in the face of day. I drag the 
 criminal to trial. I openly call down justice on his
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 189 
 
 head. I defy his attacks. I defy his defenders. I 
 challenge investigation. How dares any concealed 
 adversary to charge me as an advocate speaking from a 
 brief, and misrepresenting the facts to serve a purpose ? 
 But the absurdity of this charge even outstrips its 
 malice. I stated that the Negroes were thrown over- 
 board in pairs during a chase to lighten the ship and 
 enable her to escape ; thrown overboard in fetters, 
 that they might sink, and not be witnesses against the 
 murderers. The answer is, that this man, if man he 
 be, had been on board Slave ships, and never seen such 
 cruelties. I stated that the fetters were not locked, 
 but rivetted in the forge. The answer is, that the 
 writer had been on board of Slave vessels, and seen 
 fetters which were locked, and not rivetted. How 
 dares any man deny a statement made upon authority 
 referred to by name, on such a trumpery story as this ? 
 As well might he argue that a murder sworn to by 
 fifty or a hundred credible witnesses, had never been 
 committed, because some one came forward and said 
 he had not seen it done. Did I not give the parti- 
 culars ? Did I not avouch my authority ? Did I not 
 name the gallant officer from whose official report, 
 printed and published, my account was taken ? Did I 
 not give the respected name of Commodore Hayes, 
 one of the best esteemed officers in her Majesty's ser- 
 vice ? I, indeed, understated the case in many parti- 
 culars. But, my lords, if I have not been chargeable 
 with exaggeration if all who took part in the former 
 debate, whether in or out of office, agreed in acquitting 
 me of that so neither shall I be charged for the future 
 with understating the atrocities of the case. What 
 I then withheld, I will now tell and not keeping 
 back my authority now any more than I did before, 
 I appeal to my noble friend near me* for the truth of 
 
 * Lord Sligo.
 
 190 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 the appalling story, himself a planter, and an owner of 
 Slaves. I ask him if he did not know a vessel brought 
 in with a cargo of a hundred and eighty or two hundred 
 wretched beings jammed into a space three feet and a 
 half in height. 
 
 LORD SLIGO. Two and a half. 
 
 LORD BROUGHAM. There, my lords, I am under- 
 stating again. Into that space of two feet and a half 
 between the decks, that number of miserable creatures 
 were jammed, like inanimate lumber, certainly in a 
 way in which no Christian man would crowd dumb 
 animals. My Noble friend will say whether or not 
 that vessel, whose slaves had never been released, or 
 even washed, or in any way cleansed, since it left the 
 African coast, presented an intolerable nuisance to all 
 the senses a nuisance unfit for any description. Nor 
 is this all. I will be chargeable with understatement no 
 more ! The ophthalmia had broken out among the poor 
 creatures thus kept in unspeakable torment ; and as 
 often as any one was seized, instead of affording him any 
 medical or other assistance, he was instantly cast over- 
 board, and sunk in his chains, with the view of stopping 
 the infection. I will understate things no more ! I 
 said before that as many as 700 slaves were carried 
 across the sea in one ship ; there I stopped, for to those 
 who know what a slave ship is, this sufficed to harrow 
 up every feeling of the soul. But another vessel 
 brought away, first and last, in one voyage, 980 miser- 
 able, unoffending, simple beings ; and of this number, 
 without any chase, or accident, or violence, or any 
 acts of wholesale murder, such as those we have been 
 contemplating, six hundred perished in the voyage, 
 through the hardships and sufferings inseparably con- 
 nected with this execrable traffic. Of 23 or 2400 
 carried away by four other ships, no less than 1500 
 perished in like manner, having fallen a sacrifice to
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 101 
 
 the pestilential hold. How this enormous crime of 
 these Foreign nations is to be rooted out I know full 
 well. You must no longer treat it as a mere contra- 
 band trade no longer call murder smuggling, or treat 
 pirates as offenders against the revenue laws. As 
 long as our Slave Traders were so dealt with, they 
 made this calculation " If we escape three times in 
 four, our profits are so large that the seizure and con- 
 fiscation can be well afforded ; nay, if we are taken as 
 often as we escape, the ships netting 20, 30, even as 
 much as 50 and 60,000 pounds a voyage, we can well 
 afford to lose 1500 or 2000 pounds when the adventure 
 fails." So they ran the risk, and on a calculation of profit 
 and loss were fully justified. But I had in 1811 the 
 singular happiness of laying the axe to the root of this 
 detestable system. I stopt all those calculations by 
 making the trade felony and punishing it as such ; for 
 well I know that they who would run the risk of 
 capture when all they could suffer by it was a diminu- 
 tion of their profits, would be slow to put their heads 
 in the noose of the halter which their crimes so richly 
 deserved. The measure passed through all its stages 
 in both Houses without one dissenting voice ; and I 
 will venture to assert that ever since, although English 
 capital, I have too much reason to think, finds its way 
 into the Foreign Slave Trade, no Englishman is con- 
 cerned directly with it in any part of the world. Trust 
 me, the like course must be taken if we would put an 
 end to the same crimes in other countries. Piracy and 
 murder must be called by their right names, and 
 visited with their appropriate penalties. That the 
 Spanish and Portuguese traders now make the same 
 calculations which I have been describing, is a certain 
 fact. I will name one Captain Inza, of the ship 
 Socorro, who, on being captured, had the effrontery to 
 boast that he had made fourteen Slave voyages, and
 
 192 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 that this was the first time he had been taken. Well 
 might he resolve to run so slight a risk for such vast 
 gains ; but had the fate of a felon-pirate awaited him, 
 not all the gains which might tempt his sordid nature 
 would have prevailed upon him to encounter that 
 hazard. 
 
 I formerly recounted instances of murder done by 
 wholesale in the course of the chase of our cruisers. 
 I might have told a more piteous tale ; and I will no 
 longer be accused of understating this part of the case 
 either. Two vessels were pursued. One after another, 
 Negroes were seen to be thrown overboard to the 
 number of a hundred and fifty, of all ages the elder 
 and stronger ones loaded with their fetters, to prevent 
 them from swimming or floating the weaker were 
 left unchained to sink or expire ; and this horrible 
 spectacle was presented to the eyes of our cruisers' 
 men they saw, unable to lend any help, the water 
 covered with those hapless creatures, the men sinking 
 in their chains the women, and piteous sight ! the 
 infants and children struggling out their little strength 
 in the water till they too were swallowed up and 
 disappeared ! 
 
 I now approach a subject, not, indeed, more full of 
 horrors, or of greater moment, but on which the at- 
 tention of the people has for some time past been 
 fixed with an almost universal anxiety, and for your 
 decision upon which they are now looking with the 
 most intense interest, let me add, with the liveliest 
 hopes. I need not add that I mean the great question 
 of the condition into which the Slaves of our Colonies 
 were transferred as preparatory to their complete li- 
 beration a subject upon which your table has been 
 loaded with so many petitions from millions of your 
 fellow-countrymen. It is right that I should first 
 remind your lordships of the anxious apprehensions 

 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. l!)3 
 
 which were entertained in 1833, when the Act was 
 passed, because a comparison of those fears with the 
 results of the measure, will form a most important 
 ingredient of the argument which I am about to urge 
 for the immediate liberation of the apprentices. I 
 well remember how uneasy all were in looking forward 
 to the first of August, 1834, when the state of slavery 
 was to cease, and I myself shared in those feelings of 
 alarm when I contemplated the possible event of the 
 vast but yet untried experiment. My fears proceeded 
 first from the character of the masters. I knew the 
 nature of man, fond of power, jealous of any interfer- 
 ence with its exercise, uneasy at its being questioned, 
 offended at its being regulated and constrained, averse 
 above all to have it wrested from his hands, especially 
 after it has been long enjoyed, and its possession can 
 hardly be severed from his nature. But I also am 
 aware of another and a worser part of human nature. 
 I know that whoso has abused power, clings to it with 
 a yet more convulsive grasp. I dreaded the nature 
 of man prone to hate whom he has injured because 
 I knew that law of human weakness which makes the 
 oppressor hate his victim, makes him who has injured 
 never forgive, fills the wrong doer with vengeance 
 against those whose right it is to vindicate those 
 injuries on his own head. I knew that this abominable 
 law of our evil nature was not confined to different 
 races, contrasted hues and strange features, but pre- 
 vailed also between white man and white for I never 
 yet knew any one hate me, but those whom I had 
 served, and those who had done me some grievous in- 
 justice. Why then should I expect other feelings to 
 burn within the planter's bosom, and govern his con- 
 duct towards the unhappy beings who had suffered so 
 much and so long at his hands ? But, on the part of 
 the Slaves, I was not without some anxiety, when I 
 
 VOL. II. N
 
 194 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 considered the corrupting effects of that degrading sys- 
 tem under which they had for ages groaned, and recog- 
 nised the truth of the saying in the first and the earliest 
 of profane poets, that " the day which makes a man a 
 Slave robs him of half his value." I might well think 
 that the West India Slave offered no exception to 
 this maxim ; that the habit of compulsory labour 
 might have incapacitated him from voluntary exer- 
 tion ; that over much toil might have made all work 
 his aversion ; that never having been accustomed to 
 provide for his own wants, while all his supplies were 
 furnished by others, he might prove unwilling or unfit 
 to work for himself, the ordinary inducements to in- 
 dustry never having operated on his mind. In a 
 word, it seemed unlikely that long disuse of freedom, 
 might have rendered him too familiar with his chains 
 to set a right value on liberty ; or that, if he panted to 
 be free, the sudden transition from the one state to 
 the other, the instantaneous enjoyment of the object 
 of his desires, might prove too strong for his uncul- 
 tured understanding, might overset his principles, and 
 render him dangerous to the public peace. Hence it 
 it was that I entertained some apprehensions of the 
 event, and yielded reluctantly to the plan proposed of 
 preparing the Negroes for the enjoyment of perfect 
 freedom by passing them through the intermediate 
 state of Indentured Apprenticeship. Let us now see 
 the results of their sudden though partial liberation, 
 and how far those fears have been realised ; for upon 
 this must entirely depend the solution of the present 
 question Whether or not it is safe now to complete 
 the emancipation, which, if it only be safe, we have 
 not the shadow of right any longer to withhold. 
 Well, then, let us see. 
 
 The First of August came, the object of so much 
 anxiety and so many predictions that day so joyously
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 195 
 
 expected by the poor Slaves, so sorely dreaded by their 
 hard taskmasters ; and surely if ever there was a pic- 
 ture interesting, even fascinating to look upon if 
 ever there was a passage in a people's history that 
 redounded to their eternal honour if ever triumphant 
 answer was given to all the scandalous calumnies for 
 ages heaped upon an oppressed race, as if to justify 
 the wrongs done them that picture, and that passage, 
 and that answer were exhibited in the uniform history 
 of that auspicious day all over the Islands of the 
 Western sea. Instead of the horizon being lit up 
 with the lurid fires of rebellion, kindled by a sense of 
 natural though lawless revenge, and the just resistance 
 to intolerable oppression the whole of that wide- 
 spread scene was mildly illuminated with joy, content- 
 ment, peace, and goodwill towards men. No civilized 
 nation, no people of the most refined character, could 
 have displayed after gaining a sudden and signal vic- 
 tory, more forbearance, more delicacy, in the enjoy- 
 ment of their triumph, than these poor untutored 
 Slaves did upon the great consummation of all their 
 wishes which they had just attained. Not a gesture 
 or a look was seen to scare the eye not a sound or a 
 breath from the Negro's lips was heard to grate on the 
 ear of the Planter. All was joy, congratulation, and 
 hope. Everywhere were to be seen groups of these 
 harmless folks assembled to talk over their good for- 
 tunes ; to communicate their mutual feelings of happi- 
 ness ; to speculate on their future prospects. Finding 
 that they were now free in name, they hoped soon to 
 taste the reality of liberty. Feeling their fetters 
 loosened, they looked forward to the day which should 
 see them fall off, and the degrading marks which they 
 left be effaced from their limbs. But all this was 
 accompanied with not a whisper that could give 
 offence to the Master by reminding him of the change.
 
 19G NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 This delicate, calm, tranquil joy, was alone to be 
 marked on that day over all the chain of the Antilles. 
 Amusements there were none to be seen on that 
 day not even their simple pastimes by which they 
 had been wont to beguile the hard hours of bondage, 
 and which reminded that innocent people of the 
 happy land of their forefathers, whence they had been 
 torn by the hands of Christian and civilized men. 
 The day was kept sacred as the festival of their liber- 
 ation ; for the Negroes are an eminently pious race. 
 They enjoy the advantages of much religious instruc- 
 tion, and partake in a large measure of spiritual con- 
 solation. These blessings they derive not from the 
 ministrations of the Established Church not that the 
 aid of its priests is withheld from them, but the ser- 
 vices of others, of zealous Missionaries, are found 
 more acceptable and more effectual, because they are 
 more suited to the capacity of the people. The meek 
 and humble pastor, although perhaps more deficient 
 in secular accomplishments, is far more abounding in 
 zeal for the work of the vineyard, and being less 
 raised above his flock, is better fitted to guide them 
 in the path of religious duty. Not made too fine for 
 his work by pride of science, nor kept apart by any 
 peculiar refinement of taste, but inspired with a fer- 
 vent devotion to the interests of his flock, the Mis- 
 sionary pastor lives but for them ; their companion on 
 the week-day, as their instructor on the Sabbath ; 
 their friend and counsellor in temporal matters, as 
 their guide in spiritual concerns. These are the 
 causes of the influence he enjoys this the source 
 from whence the good he does them flows. Nor can 
 I pass by this part of the West Indian picture with- 
 out rendering the tribute of heartfelt admiration 
 which I am proud to pay, when I contemplate the 
 pious zeal, the indefatigable labours of these holy
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 197 
 
 and disinterested men ; and I know full well that 
 if I make my appeal to my Noble friend* he will 
 repeat the testimony he elsewhere bore to the same 
 high merits, when he promulgated his honest opinion, 
 that " for the origin of all religious feeling among the 
 Negroes, it is among the missionaries, and not the 
 clergy, we must look." Therefore it was that fourteen 
 years ago, I felt all the deep anxiety to which I this 
 night began by referring, when it was my lot to drag- 
 before the Commons of England the persecutors of 
 one among the most useful, most devoted, and most 
 godly of that most estimable class of men, who for 
 his piety and his self-devotion had been hunted down 
 by wicked men, conspiring with unjust Judges, and 
 made to die the death for teaching to the poor Negroes 
 the gospel of peace. I am unspeakably proud of the 
 part I then took ; I glory mightily in reflecting that I 
 then struck, aided and comforted by far abler men,f 
 the first of those blows, of which we are now aiming 
 the last, at the chains that bind the harmless race of 
 our Colonial peasantry. The First of August came 
 and the day was kept a sacred holiday, as it will ever 
 be kept to the end of time throughout all the West 
 Indies. Every church was crowded from early dawn, 
 with devout and earnest worshippers. Five or six 
 times in the course of that memorable Friday were 
 all those churches filled and emptied in succession by 
 multitudes who came, not coldly to comply with a 
 formal ceremonial, not to give mouth worship or eye 
 worship, but to render humble and hearty thanks to 
 
 * Lord Sligo. 
 
 1" The great exertions on that memorable occasion of Lord Chief Justice 
 penman, Dr. Lushington, and others, are well known ; and the report of the 
 interesting debate does them justice. But no one from merely reading it can 
 form an adequate idea of Mr. Justice Williams's admirable speech, distinguished 
 alike for closeness of argument and for the severity of Attic taste.
 
 198 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 God for their freedom at length bestowed. In coun- 
 tries where the bounty of nature provokes the passions, 
 where the fuel of intemperance is scattered with a 
 profuse hand, I speak the fact when I tell that not one 
 Negro was seen in a state of intoxication. Three 
 hundred and forty thousand Slaves in Jamaica were 
 at once set free on that day, and the peaceful festivity 
 of these simple men was disturbed only on a single 
 estate, in one parish, by the irregular conduct of three 
 or four persons, who were immediately kept in order, 
 and tranquillity in one hour restored. 
 
 But the termination of Slavery was to be the end 
 of all labour; no man would work unless compelled 
 much less would any one work for hire. The cart- 
 whip was to resound no more, and no more could 
 exertion be obtained from the indolent African. I 
 set the fact against these predictions. I never have 
 been in the West Indies ; I was one of those whom, 
 under the name of reasoners, and theorists, and vision- 
 aries, all planters pitied for incurable ignorance of 
 Colonial affairs ; one of those who were forbidden to 
 meddle with matters of which they could only judge 
 who had the practical knowledge of experienced men 
 on the spot obtained. Therefore I now appeal to the 
 fact and I also appeal to one who has been in the 
 West Indies, is himself a planter, and w r as an eye- 
 witness of the things upon which I call for his confir- 
 matory testimony. It is to my noble friend* that I 
 appeal. He knows, for he saw, that ever since Slavery 
 ceased, there has been no want of inclination to work 
 in any part of Jamaica, and that labour for hire is now 
 to be had without the least difficulty by all wiio can 
 afford to pay wages the apprentices cheerfully work- 
 ing for those who will pay them, during the hours not 
 
 * Lord Sligo.
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 199 
 
 appropriated to their masters. My noble friend made 
 an inquisition as to the state of this important matter 
 in a large part of his government ; and I have his 
 authority for stating, that, in nine estates out of ten, 
 labourers for hire were to be had without the least 
 difficulty. Yet this was the people of whom we were 
 told with a confidence that set all contradiction at 
 defiance, with an insulting pity for the ignorance of 
 us who had no local experience, that without the lash 
 there would be no work done, and that when it ceased 
 to vex him the African would sink into sleep. The 
 prediction is found to have been ridiculously false ; 
 the Negro peasantry is as industrious as our own ; 
 and wages furnish more effectual stimulus than the 
 scourge. O but, said the men of Colonial experience 
 the true practical men this may do for some kinds 
 of produce. Cotton may be planted coffee may be 
 picked indigo may be manufactured all these kinds 
 of work the Negro may probably be got to do ; but at 
 least the cane will cease to grow the cane-piece can 
 no more be hoed, nor the plant be hewn down, nor 
 the juice boiled, and sugar will utterly cease out of 
 the land. Now, let the man of experience stand for- 
 ward the practical man, the inhabitant of the Colo- 
 nies I require that he now come forth with his pre- 
 diction, and I meet him with the fact. Let him but 
 appear, and I answer for him, we shall hear him pro- 
 phecy no more. Put to silence by the fact, which 
 even these confident men have not the courage to 
 deny, they will at length abandon this untenable 
 ground. Twice as much sugar by the hour was found, 
 on my noble friend's* inquiry, to be made since the 
 Apprenticeship as under the Slave system, and of a 
 far better quality ; and one planter on a vast scale has 
 
 * Lord Sligo.
 
 200 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 said, that, with twenty free labourers, he could do the 
 work of a hundred Slaves. But linger not on the 
 
 o 
 
 islands where the gift of freedom has been but half 
 bestowed look to Antigua and Bermuda, where the 
 wisdom and the virtue has been displayed, of at once 
 giving complete emancipation. To Montserrat the 
 same appeal might have been made, but for the folly 
 of the Upper House, which threw out the bill passed 
 in the Assembly by the representatives of the planters. 
 But in Antigua and Bermuda, where, for the last three 
 years and a half, there has not even been an Appren- 
 tice where all have been at once made as free as the 
 peasantry of this country the produce has increased, 
 not diminished, and increased notwithstanding the 
 accidents of bad seasons, droughts, and fires. 
 
 But then we were told by those whose experience 
 was reckoned worth so much more than our reasoning, 
 that even if by some miracle industry should be found 
 compatible with liberty, of which indeed we in our 
 profound ignorance of human nature had been wont to 
 regard it as the legitimate offspring ; at all events, the 
 existence of order and tranquillity was altogether 
 hopeless. After so long being inured to the abject 
 state of Slavery, its sudden cessation, the instant 
 transition from bondage to freedom, must produce 
 convulsions all over the Colonies, and the reign of 
 rebellion and anarchy must begin. Not content with 
 reasoning, the practical men condescended to tax their 
 luxuriant imagination for tropes to dazzle and delude 
 whom their arguments might fail to convince. The 
 child could not walk alone if his leading-strings were 
 cut away the full-grown tree could not be trans- 
 planted the limbs cramped by the chain could not 
 freely move the maniac might not safely be freed 
 from the keeper's control ; and Mr. Wyndham used 
 to bring the play of his own lively fancy upon the
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 201 
 
 question, and say, that if it was a cruel thing to throw 
 men out of the window, he saw no great kindness in 
 making up for the injury you had done by throwing 
 them back again into the house. Alas ! for all those 
 prophecies, and reasonings, and theories, and figures of 
 speech. The dawn of the First of August chased away 
 the phantoms, and instead of revolt and conspiracy, 
 ushered in order and peace. But the fanciful men of 
 experience, the real practical visionaries of the West 
 Indies, though baffled, were not defeated. Only wait, 
 they said, till Christmas all who know the Negro 
 character then dread rebellion all experience of 
 Negro habits shows that to be the true season of 
 revolt. We did wait till Christmas and what hap- 
 pened? I will go to Antigua, because there the 
 emancipation began suddenly, without any preparatory 
 state of apprenticeship with no gradual transition, 
 but the chains knocked off at once, and the Slave in 
 an instant set free. Let then the men of practical 
 experience hear the fact. For the first time these 
 thirty years on that day, Christmas 1834, martial law 
 was not proclaimed in Antigua. You call for facts ; 
 here is a fact a fact that .speaks volumes. You 
 appeal to experience here is our experience, your 
 own experience ; and now let the man who scoffed at 
 reasoning who laughed us to scorn as visionaries, 
 deriding our theories as wild fancies, our plans of 
 liberty as frantic schemes which never could be carried 
 into effect, whose only fruit must be wide spreading 
 rebellion, and which must entail the loss of all other 
 colonies let him come forward now ; I dare him to 
 deny one of the statements I have made. Let those 
 who thought the phrases "Jamaica Planter" "Colonial 
 interest" " West Indian residence" flung into the 
 scale of oppression, could make that of mercy and 
 freedom kick the beam let them now hear the fact,
 
 202 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 and hold their peace ; the fact, that neither on the 
 first day of emancipation, nor on the Christmas fol- 
 lowing 1 the Negro festival, was there any breach of 
 the peace committed over all the West Indian world. 
 Then, after these predictions had all failed these 
 phantasies been all dispelled the charges against the 
 Negro race been thoroughly disproved surely we 
 might have looked for a submission to the test of 
 experience itself, from the men of experience, and an 
 acquittal of those so unjustly accused, after the case 
 against them had been so signally defeated. No such 
 thing. The accusers, though a second time discom- 
 fited, were not subdued ; and there was heard a third 
 appeal to a future day an appeal which had I not 
 read it in print, and heard of it in speeches, I could 
 not have believed possible. Only wait, said these 
 planters, till the anniversary of the first of August, 
 and then you will witness the effects of your rash 
 counsels ! Monstrous effort of incurable prejudice 
 almost judicial blindness ! As if they whom the event 
 of liberation itself could not excite to commit the least 
 disorderly act, would be hurried into rebellion by the 
 return next year of the day on which it had happened ; 
 and having withstood all temptation to irregular con- 
 duct in the hour of triumph, would plunge into ex- 
 cess in celebrating its anniversary ! I will not insult 
 the understandings of your Lordships by adding that 
 this prediction shared the fate of all the rest. And 
 are we then now to set at nought all the lessons of 
 real and long continued and widely extended expe- 
 rience ? Are we never to profit by that of which we 
 are for ever to prate ? I ask you not to take advan- 
 tage of other men's experience, by making its fruits 
 your own to observe what they have done or have 
 suffered, and, wise by the example, to follow or to 
 avoid. That indeed is the part of wisdom, and reflect-
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 203 
 
 ing men pride themselves upon pursuing such a course. 
 But I ask nothing of the kind my desires are more 
 humble my demand is more moderate far. I only 
 ask you to be guided by the results of your own 
 experience, to make some gain by that for which you 
 have paid so costly a price. Only do not reject the 
 lesson which is said, in the Book you all revere, to 
 teach even the most foolish of our foolish kind ; only 
 show yourselves as ready to benefit by experience as 
 the fool whom it proverbially is able to teach and all 
 I desire is gained. 
 
 But now, my lords, my task is accomplished, my work- 
 is done. I have proved my case, and may now call 
 for judgment. I have demonstrated every part of the 
 proposition which alone it is necessary that I should 
 maintain, to prove the title of the apprentice to instant 
 freedom from his task-masters, because I have demon- 
 strated that the liberation of the Slave has been 
 absolutely, universally safe attended with not even 
 inconvenience nay, productive of ample benefits to 
 his master. I have shown that the apprentice works 
 without compulsion, and that the reward of wages is 
 a better incentive than the punishment of the lash. I 
 have proved that labour for hire may anywhere be 
 obtained as it is wanted and can be purchased all the 
 apprentices working extra hours for hire, and all the 
 free Negroes, wherever their emancipation has been 
 complete, working harder by much for the masters 
 who have wherewithal to pay them, than the Slave 
 can toil for his owner or the Apprentice for his master. 
 Whether we look to the noble minded Colonies which 
 have at once freed their Slaves, or to those who still 
 retain them in a middle and half-free condition, I have 
 shown that the industry of the Negro is undeniable, 
 and that it is constant and productive in proportion as 
 he is the director of its application and the master of
 
 204 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 its recompense. But I have gone a great deal further 
 I have demonstrated by a reference to the same 
 experience the same unquestioned facts that a 
 more quiet, peaceful, inoffensive, innocent race, is not 
 to be found on the face of this earth, than the Afri- 
 cans not while dwelling in their own happy country, 
 and enjoying freedom in a natural state, under their 
 own palm trees, and by their native streams but after 
 they have been torn away from it, enslaved, and their 
 nature perverted in your Christian land, barbarised by 
 the policy of civilized states their whole character 
 disfigured, if it were possible to disfigure it all their 
 feelings corrupted, if you could have corrupted them. 
 Every effort has been made to spoil the poor African 
 every resource of wicked ingenuity exhausted to 
 deprave his nature all the incentives to misconduct 
 placed around him by the fiend-like artifice of Chris- 
 tian, civilized men and his excellent nature has 
 triumphed over all your arts your unnatural culture 
 has failed to make it bear the poisonous fruit that 
 might well have been expected from such abominable 
 husbandry though enslaved and tormented, degraded 
 and debased, as far as human industry could effect its 
 purpose of making him blood-thirsty and savage, his 
 gentle spirit has prevailed, and preserved, in spite of 
 all your prophecies, aye, and of all your efforts, unbro- 
 ken tranquillity over the whole Caribbean chain ! 
 Have I not then proved my case ? I shew you that 
 the whole grounds of the arrangement of 1833, the 
 very pretext for withholding complete emancipation, 
 alleged incapacity for labour, and risk of insurrection, 
 utterly fail. I rely on your own records ; I refer to 
 that record which cannot be averred against ; I plead 
 the record of your own statute. On what ground 
 does its preamble rest the necessity of the interme- 
 diate, or apprentice state all admitting that nothing
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 20.3 
 
 but necessity could justify it ? " Whereas it is expe- 
 dient that provision should be made for promoting the 
 industry, and securing the good conduct of the manu- 
 mitted Slaves." These are the avowed reasons for 
 the measure these its only defence. All men con- 
 fessed, that, were it not for the apprehension of liber- 
 ated Slaves not working voluntarily, and not behaving 
 peaceably of Slavery being found to have unfitted 
 them for industry, and of a sudden transition to com- 
 plete freedom being fraught with danger to the peace 
 of society you had no right to make them indented 
 apprentices, and must at once set them wholly free. 
 But the fear prevailed, which, by the event, I have 
 now a right to call a delusion ; and the apprenticeship 
 was reluctantly agreed to. The delusion went further. 
 The planter succeeded in persuading us that he would 
 be a vast loser by the change, and we gave him 
 twenty millions sterling money to indemnify him for 
 the supposed loss. The fear is found to be utterly 
 baseless the loss is a phantom of the brain a shape 
 conjured up by the interested parties to frighten our 
 weak minds and the only reality in this mockery is 
 the payment of that enormous sum to the crafty and 
 fortunate magician for his incantations. The spell is 
 dissolved the charm is over ; the unsubstantial 
 fabric of calculating alarm, reared by the colonial body 
 with our help, has been crushed to atoms, and its frag- 
 ments scattered to the wind. And now, I ask, suppose 
 it had been ascertained in 1833, when you made the ap- 
 prenticeship law, that these alarms were absolutely 
 groundless the mere phantom of a sick brain, or con- 
 trivance of a sordid ingenuity would a single voice 
 have been raised in favour of the intermediate state ? 
 Would the words Indentured Apprenticeship ever 
 have been pronounced ? Would the man have been 
 found endued with the courage to call for keeping
 
 206 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 the Negro in chains one hour after he had been ac- 
 knowledged entitled to his freedom ? 
 
 I freely admit that formerly, and before the event, 
 when the measure was passed, the proof was upon us, 
 who maintained that the experiment of emancipation 
 was safe. We did not pretend to deny all risk ; we 
 allowed the possibility of a loss being sustained by the 
 planters ; nay, we did more ; we took for granted there 
 would be a loss, and a loss to the amount of twenty 
 millions, and that vast sum we cheerfully paid to in- 
 demnify them. Then we had not the facts with us ; 
 all experience was said to be the other way ; and be- 
 cause we could only offer argument against the opinions 
 of practical men of local knowledge, we were fain to 
 let them take every thing their own way, and receive 
 our money by way of securing them against the possi- 
 bility of damage. But now the case is reversed ; the 
 facts are all with us ; experience has pronounced in 
 our favour, and the burthen of the proof is thrown on 
 the planter, or whoever would maintain, contrary to 
 the result of the trial already made, that there is any 
 risk whatever in absolute emancipation. The case 
 lies in a narrow compass ; the sudden transition from 
 absolute slavery to apprenticeship from the condition 
 of chattels to that of men has been made without 
 the least danger whatever, though made without the 
 least preparation. It is for those who, in spite of this 
 undoubted fact, maintain that the lesser step of sub- 
 stituting freedom for apprenticeship will be dangerous, 
 though made after a preparation of three years, to 
 prove their position. Therefore I am not bound to 
 maintain the opposite proposition, by any one argu- 
 ment or by a single fact. Nevertheless, I do prove 
 the negative, against those upon whom it lies to prove 
 the affirmative ; I gratuitously demonstrate, both by 
 argument and by fact, that the transition to freedom
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 20 r 
 
 from apprenticeship may be safely made. I appeal to 
 the history of Antigua and Bermuda, where the whole 
 process took place at once where both steps were 
 taken in one and where, notwithstanding, there was 
 more tranquillity than had ever before been enjoyed 
 under the death-like silence of Slavery. Nay, I prove 
 even more than the safety of the step in question ; 
 for in those Colonies the transition being so made at 
 once, it follows, a fortiori, that the making the half 
 transition, which alone remains to be made in the rest, 
 is doubly free from all possible risk of any kind, either 
 as to voluntary labour or orderly demeanour. 
 
 But this is not all let us look at the subject from 
 another point. The twenty millions have been paid 
 in advance, on the supposition of a loss being incurred. 
 No loss, but a great gain has accrued to the planter, 
 Then he has received our money for nothing; it is 
 money paid under a mistake in fact, to propagate 
 which he himself contributed. If such a transaction 
 had happened between private parties, I know not 
 that the payer of the money might not have claimed 
 it back as paid under mistake ; or if deception had 
 been practised, that he was not equitably entitled to 
 recover it. But without going so far, of this I am 
 certain, that all men of honourable minds would in 
 such circumstances have felt it hard to keep the party 
 to his bargain. Again, view the matter from a diffe- 
 rent point, for I am desirous to have it narrowly 
 examined on all sides. Suppose it is still maintained 
 that the second step we require to be taken will be 
 attended with risk how much is the loss likely to 
 be ? Six years apprenticeship and the emancipation 
 were reckoned at twenty millions. No loss has as yet 
 accrued, and four years have elapsed. Then what 
 right have you to estimate the loss of the two years 
 that remain at more than the whole sum ? But unless
 
 208 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 it exceeds that sum, the planter, by giving up these 
 two years, manifestly loses nothing at all ; for he has 
 his compensation, even supposing the total loss to 
 happen in two years, for which the money was given, 
 on the supposition of a six years' diminished income. 
 But suppose I make a present of this concession like- 
 wise, and admit that there may be a loss in the next 
 two years as there lias been a gain in the former four, 
 have not I a right to set off that gain against any loss, 
 and then unless twice as much shall be lost yearly in 
 future as has been gained in past years, the planter is 
 on the whole a gainer, even without taking the twenty 
 millions into the account, and although there should 
 be that double rate of loss, contrary to all probability : 
 even without these twenty millions, he will on the 
 whole have lost nothing. But I will not consent to 
 leave that vast sum out of the account. It shall go in 
 diminution of the loss, if any has been suffered. It 
 shall be reckoned as received by the planters, and 
 unless they lose, during the next two years, more than 
 twenty millions over and above the gains they have 
 made during the last four, I insist upon it that they 
 be deemed to have suffered no loss at all, even if, 
 contrary to all experience and all reason, they lose by 
 the change. What is the consequence of all this? 
 That at the very least we have a right to make the 
 planters bring their twenty millions to account, and 
 give us credit for that sum so that until their losses 
 exceed it, they shall have no right whatever to com- 
 plain. Take, now, a new view of the subject, in order 
 that we may have left no stone unturned, no part of 
 the whole subject unexplored have we not at the 
 very least a title to call upon the planters to consign 
 the money into a third party's hands, to pay it, as it 
 were, into Court, until it shall be ascertained whether 
 they sustain any loss at all, and, if any, to what
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 209 
 
 amount? I defy all the quibblers in the world to 
 shew what right the planters can have, if they insist 
 upon retaining our money, now given for nothing, to 
 keep the Negroes out of their liberty, that money 
 having been paid to compensate a supposed loss, and 
 experience having demonstrated that instead of loss, 
 the present change has already been to them a gain. 
 My proposal is this, and if the planters be of good 
 faith it must at once settle the question, at least it 
 must bring their sincerity to the test. They say they 
 are afraid of a loss by the apprenticeship ceasing 
 then let them either pay the money into Court, or 
 keep an account of their losses, and if they, at the end 
 of the two years, after emancipating the apprentices, 
 shall be found to have incurred any loss, let them be 
 repaid out of the money. I agree that they should be 
 further compensated should their losses exceed the 
 twenty millions, provided they will consent to repay 
 all the money that exceeds the losses actually sus- 
 tained. This is my proposal and I am as certain of 
 its being fair as I am convinced it will be rejected with 
 universal horror by the planters. 
 
 Once more I call upon your Lordships to look 
 at Antigua and Bermuda. There is no getting over 
 that no answering it no repelling the force with 
 which our reason is assailed by the example of thirty 
 thousand Negroes liberated in one night liberated 
 without a single instance of disturbance ensuing, and 
 with the immediate substitution of voluntary work 
 for hire in the stead of compulsory labour under the 
 whip. There is no getting over that no answering 
 it no repelling the force with which it assails the 
 ordinary reason of ordinary men. But it is said that 
 those islands differ from Jamaica and Barbadoes, 
 because they contain no tracts of waste or woody 
 ground to which Negroes may flee away from their 
 VOL. ii. o
 
 210 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 masters, conceal themselves, and subsist in a Maroon 
 state. I meet the objection as one in front, and I 
 pledge myself to annihilate it in one minute by the 
 clock. Why should free Negroes run away and seek 
 refuge in the woods, if Slaves, or half Slaves, like 
 apprentices, never think of escaping ? That the Slave 
 should run away that the apprentice should fly is 
 intelligible ; but if they don't, why should a bettering 
 of their condition increase their inclination to fly ? 
 They who do not flee from bondage and the lash, why 
 should they from freedom, wages, independence, and 
 comfort? But this is not all. If you dread their 
 escape and Marooning now, what the better will you 
 be in 1840? Why are they to be less disposed then 
 than now to fly from you ? Is there any thing in the 
 training of the present system to make two years more 
 of it disarm all dislike of white severity, all inclination 
 for the life of the Maroon ? The minute is not yet 
 out, and I think I have disposed of the objection. 
 
 Surely, surely, we are here upon ground often trod- 
 den before by the advocates of human improvement, 
 the friends of extended rights. This is the kind of 
 topic we have so often been fated to meet on other 
 questions of deep and exciting interest. The argument 
 is like that against the repeal of the penal laws 
 respecting Catholics if it proves any thing, it proves 
 far too much if there be any substance in it, the 
 conclusion is, that we have gone too far already, and 
 must retrace our steps either complete the emanci- 
 pation of the Catholics, or re-enact the penal code. 
 The enemies of freedom, be it civil or religious be it 
 political or personal are all of the same sect, and deal 
 in the same kind of logic. If this argument, drawn 
 from the danger of Negroes eloping in 1838, should 
 we emancipate the apprentices, is worth any thing at 
 all, it is a reason for not emancipating them in 1840,
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 211 
 
 and, consequently, for repealing altogether the law of 
 1833. But I shall not live to hear any one man in 
 any one circle of any one part of the globe, either in 
 the Eastern hemisphere or in the Western, venture to 
 breathe one whisper in favour of so monstrous a course. 
 But I will not stop here. Lives there, my lords, a man 
 so ignorant of West Indian society, so blind to all that 
 is passing in those regions, as to suppose that the 
 continuance of the apprenticeship can either better 
 the Negro's condition, or win him over to more love 
 for his master ? I am prepared to grapple with this 
 part also of the argument. I undertake to demon- 
 strate that the state of the Negro is in but a very few 
 instances better, and in many beyond all comparison 
 worse, than ever it was in the time of Slavery itself. 
 
 I begin by freely admitting that an immense benefit 
 has been conferred by the cart-whip being utterly 
 abolished. Even if the lash were ever so harshly or 
 unsparingly or indiscriminately applied in execution 
 of sentences pronounced by the magistrate, still the 
 difference between using it in obedience to judicial 
 command, and using it as the stimulus to labour, is 
 very great. The Negro is no longer treated as a brute, 
 because the motive to his exertions is no longer placed 
 without himself, and in the driver's hand. This is, I 
 admit, a very considerable change for the better in his 
 condition, and it is the only one upon which he has 
 to congratulate himself since the Act of Emancipation 
 was passed. In no one other respect whatever is his 
 condition improved in many it is very much worse. 
 I shall run over a few of these particulars, because the 
 view of them bears most materially upon this whole 
 question, and I cannot better prove the absolute 
 necessity of putting an immediate end to the state of 
 apprenticeship, than by showing what the victims of it 
 are daily fated to endure.
 
 212 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 First of all, as to the important article of food, to 
 secure a supply of which in sufficient abundance the 
 Slave-regulating acts of all the islands have always 
 been so anxiously directed I will compare the prison 
 allowance of Jamaica with the apprentice allowance 
 in Barbadoes, and other colonies, from which we have 
 the returns, there being none in this particular from 
 Jamaica itself. The allowance to prisoners is fourteen 
 pints weekly of Indian corn, and different quantities 
 of other grain, but comparing one will be sufficient for 
 our purpose. In Barbadoes the allowance to appren- 
 tices is only ten pints, while in the Leeward Islands 
 and Dominica it is no more than eight pints ; for the 
 Crown colonies, the Slave allowance, before 1834, was 
 twenty-one pints ; in the same colonies the apprentice 
 receives but ten ; so that in the material article of 
 food there is the very reverse of an improvement 
 effected upon the Negro's condition. Next as to 
 time it is certain that he should have half a day in 
 the week, the Friday, to w r ork his own provision- 
 ground, beside Saturday to attend the market, and the 
 Sabbath for rest and religious instruction. The Eman- 
 cipation Act specifies forty-five hours as the number 
 which he shall work weekly for his master. But these 
 are now so distributed as to occupy the whole of Friday, 
 and even in some cases to trench upon Saturday too. 
 The planter also counts those hours invariably from 
 the time when the Negro, having arrived at the place 
 of work, begins his labour. But as it constantly hap- 
 pens that some at least of the Negroes on an estate 
 have several miles to walk from their cottages, all the 
 time thus consumed in going and returning is wholly 
 lost to the Negro. Nay, it is lost to the master as well 
 as the apprentice, and so long as he is not compelled 
 to reckon it in the statutory allowance, it will continue 
 a loss to both parties. For as no reason whatever can
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP, 213 
 
 be assigned why the Negro huts should be on the 
 frontier of the plantation, only make the time, fre- 
 quently as much at present as three or four hours a 
 day, consumed in going and returning, count for part 
 of the forty-five hours a week, and I'll answer for it, 
 all the Negroes will be provided with cottages near 
 the place of their toil. 
 
 I come now to the great point of the Justice admi- 
 nistered to the people of colour. And here let me 
 remind your Lordships how little that deserves the 
 name of justice, which is administered wholly by one 
 class, and that the dominant class, in a society com- 
 posed of two races wholly distinct in origin and descent, 
 whom the recollection of wrongs and sufferings has 
 kept still more widely apart, and taught scarcely to 
 regard each other as brethren of the same species. 
 All judicial offices are filled by those whose feelings, 
 passions, and interests are constantly giving them a 
 bias towards one, and from the other, of the parties 
 directly appearing before the judgment-seat. If to a 
 great extent this is an unavoidable evil, surely you are 
 bound, by every means possible, to prevent its receiv- 
 ing any unnecessary aggravation. Yet we do aggra- 
 vate it by appointing to the place of Puisne Judge 
 natives of the colonies, and proprietors of estates. 
 From the same privileged class are taken all who 
 compose the juries, both in criminal and in civil cases, 
 to assess damages for injuries done by whites to blacks 
 to find bills of indictment for crimes committed 
 upon the latter class to try those whom the Grand 
 Jury presents to try Negroes charged with offences 
 by their masters. Nay, all magistrates, goalers, turn- 
 keys all concerned in working every part of the 
 apparatus of jurisprudence, executive as well as admi- 
 nistrative, are of one tribe alone. What is the conse- 
 quence ? It is proverbial that no bills are found for
 
 214 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 maltreatment, how gross soever, of the Negroes. Six 
 were preferred by a humane individual at one assize, 
 and all flung out. Some were for manslaughter, 
 others for murder. Assize after assize presents the 
 same result. A wager was on one occasion offered, 
 that not a single bill would be found that assize, and 
 nobody was found to take it ; prudent was the refusal 
 proved by the result : for all the bills were ignored, 
 without any exception. Now, your Lordships will 
 observe that in no one case could any evidence have 
 been examined by those Grand Juries, except against 
 the prisoner. In cases of murder sworn to, as plainly 
 as the shining of the sun at noon-day tide, by witness 
 after witness still they said, " No Bill." Nay, they 
 sometimes said so when only part of the witnesses 
 for the prosecution had been heard, and refused to 
 examine the others that were tendered. 
 
 The punishments inflicted are of monstrous severity. 
 The law is wickedly harsh ; its execution is committed 
 to hands that exasperate that cruelty. For the vague, 
 undefined, undefinable offence of insolence, thirty-nine 
 lashes ; the same number for carrying a knife in the 
 pocket ; for cutting the shoot of a cane-plant, fifty 
 lashes, or three months imprisonment in that most 
 loathsome of all dungeons a West Indian gaol. There 
 seems to have prevailed at all times among the law- 
 givers of the Slave Colonies a feeling, of which I 
 grieve to say, those of the mother country have par- 
 taken; that there is something in the nature of a 
 Slave something in the disposition of the African 
 race something in the habits of those hapless victims 
 of our crimes, our cruelties and frauds which requires 
 a peculiar harshness of treatment from their rulers, and 
 makes what in other men's cases we call justice and 
 mercy, cruelty to society and injustice to the law in 
 theirs inducing us to visit with the extremity of
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 215 
 
 rigour in the African what if done by our own tribes 
 would be slightly visited or not at all, as though there 
 were in the Negro nature something so obdurate that 
 no punishment with which they can be punished would 
 be too severe. Prodigious, portentous injustice ! As 
 if we had a right to blame any but ourselves for 
 whatever there may be of harsh or cunning in our 
 Slaves as if we were entitled to visit upon them that 
 disposition, were it obdurate, those habits, were they 
 insubordinate, those propensities, were they dishonest, 
 (all of which I deny them to be, and every day's expe- 
 rience justifies my denial), but were these charges as 
 true as they are foully slanderous and absolutely false 
 is it for us to treat our victims harshly for failings 
 or for faults with which our treatment of them has 
 corrupted and perverted their nature, instead of taking 
 to ourselves the blame punishing ourselves at least 
 with self-abasement, and atoning with deepest shame 
 for having implanted vice in a pure soil ? If some 
 capricious despot were, in the career of ordinary 
 tyranny, to tax his pampered fancy to produce some- 
 thing more monstrous, more unnatural than himself; 
 were he to graft the thorn upon the vine, or place the 
 dove among vultures to be reared much as we might 
 marvel at this freak of a perverted appetite, we should 
 marvel still more if we saw tyranny exceed even its 
 own measure of proverbial unreasonableness, and com- 
 plain because the grape was not gathered from the 
 thorn, or because the dove so trained had a thirst for 
 blood. Yet this is the unnatural caprice this the 
 injustice the gross, the foul, the outrageous, the 
 monstrous, the incredible injustice of which we are 
 daily and hourly guilty towards the whole of the ill- 
 fated African race ! 
 
 My lords, we fill up the measure of this injustice 
 by executing laws wickedly conceived, in a yet more
 
 216 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 atrocious spirit of cruelty. Our whole punishments 
 smell of blood. Let the treadmill stop, from the 
 weary limbs and exhausted frame of the sufferers no 
 longer having the power to press it down the requisite 
 number of turns in a minute the lash instantly 
 resounds through the mansion of woe ! Let the stone 
 spread out to be broken, not crumble fast enough 
 beneath the arms already scarred, flayed, and wealed 
 by the whip again the scourge tears afresh the half- 
 healed flesh ! Within the last hour before I entered 
 this House, I heard from an eye-witness of the fact as 
 disgusting as it was appalling, that a leper among the 
 prisoners was cut to pieces by stripes with the rest. 
 And in passing, let me here note the universal but 
 cruel practice of placing the patients stricken with 
 infectious diseases in hospitals, and in prisons among 
 others, upon almost all private estates ; and the no 
 less unjust and exclusively West Indian practice of 
 cruelly and stingily compelling the prisoners to go out 
 daily and find their own food, instead of the master 
 supplying them in the gaol a refinement of harsh- 
 ness and meanness not, I venture to assert, ever 
 reached by the tyrant master of the Siberian mines. 
 But I was speaking of the public prison, and there as 
 the leper had been scourged, so when a miserable 
 wretch, whose legs were one mass of ulcerated flesh 
 from former inflictions, gave some offence to his task- 
 masters, he was on those limbs mangled anew by the 
 merciless application of the lash. I have told you 
 how the bills for murdering Negroes were systemati- 
 cally thrown out by the Grand Juries. But you are 
 not to imagine that bills are never found by those 
 just men, even bills against Whites. A person of 
 this cast had, unable to bridle his indignation, roused 
 by the hideous spectacle I have described (so disgust- 
 ing, but that all other feelings are lost in pity for the
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 217 
 
 victim, and rage against his oppressor), repaired to the 
 Governor, and informed him of what he had witnessed. 
 Immediately the Grand Jury, instead of acknowledg- 
 ing his humane, and, in a Slave colony, his gallant 
 conduct, found a bill against him, and presented him 
 as a nuisance ! 
 
 My lords, I have had my attention directed within 
 the last two hours to the new mass of papers laid on 
 our table from the West Indies. The bulk I am 
 averse to break; but a sample I have culled of its 
 hateful contents. Eleven females were punished by 
 severe flogging and then put on the treadmill, where 
 they were compelled to ply until exhausted nature 
 could endure no more. When faint, and about to fall 
 off, they were suspended by the arms in a manner that 
 has been described to me by a most respectable eye- 
 witness of similar scenes, but not so suspended as that 
 the mechanism could revolve clear of their persons ; 
 for the wheels at each turn bruised and galled their 
 legs, till their sufferings had reached the pitch when 
 life can no longer even glimmer in the socket of the 
 weary frame. In the course of a few days these 
 wretched beings languished, to use the language of 
 our law that law which is thus so constantly and 
 systematically violated and "languishing, died." 
 Ask you if crimes like these, murderous in their legal 
 nature as well as frightful in their aspect, passed un- 
 noticed if inquiry was neglected to be made respect- 
 ing these deaths in a prison ? No such thing ! The 
 forms of justice were on this head peremptory, even 
 in the West Indies and those forms, the handmaids 
 of Justice, were present, though their sacred Mistress 
 was far away. The coroner duly attended his jury 
 were regularly impannelled eleven inquisitions were 
 made in order and eleven verdicts returned. Mur- 
 der ! manslaughter ! misdemeanour ! misconduct ! No
 
 218 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 but " Died by the visitation of God !" Died by the 
 visitation of God ! A lie ! a perjury ! a blasphemy ! 
 The visitation of God ! Yes, for it is among the 
 most awful of those visitations by which the inscrut- 
 able purposes of his will are mysteriously accomplished, 
 that he sometimes arms the wicked with power to 
 oppress the guiltless ; and if there be any visitation 
 more dreadful than another any which more tries 
 the faith and vexes the reason of erring mortals, it is 
 when Heaven showers down upon the earth the 
 plague not of scorpions, or pestilence, or famine, or 
 war but of Unjust Judges and perjured Jurors 
 wretches who pervert the law to wreak their personal 
 vengeance or compass their sordid ends, forswearing 
 themselves on the Gospels of God, to the end that 
 injustice may prevail, and the innocent be destroyed ! 
 
 Sed nos immensum spatiis confecimus sequor, 
 Et jam tempus equum fumantia solvere colla. 
 
 I hasten to a close. There remains little to add. 
 It is, my lords, with a view to prevent such enormi- 
 ties as I have feebly pictured before you, to correct 
 the administration of justice, to secure the comforts 
 of the Negroes, to restrain the cruelty of the tor- 
 mentors, to amend the discipline of the prisons, to 
 arm the Governors with local authority over the 
 police ; it is with these views that I have formed the 
 first five of the resolutions now upon your table, in- 
 tending they should take effect during the very short 
 interval of a few months which must elapse before the 
 sixth shall give complete liberty to the slave. I en- 
 tirely concur in the observation of Mr. Burke, repeated 
 and more happily expressed by Mr. Canning, that the 
 masters of Slaves are not to be trusted with making 
 laws upon Slavery ; that nothing they do is ever found 
 effectual ; and that if by some miracle they ever chance 
 to enact a wholesome regulation, it is always found to
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 219 
 
 want what Mr. Burke calls " the executory principle;" 
 it fails to execute itself. But experience has shewn 
 that when the lawgivers of the Colonies find you are 
 firmly determined to do your duty, they anticipate you 
 by doing theirs. Thus, when you announced the bill 
 for amending the Emancipation Act, they outstript 
 you in Jamaica, and passed theirs before yours could 
 reach them. Let then your resolutions only show you 
 to be in good earnest now, and I have no doubt a cor- 
 responding disposition will be evinced on the other 
 side of the Atlantic. These improvements are, how- 
 ever, only to be regarded as temporary expedients as 
 mere palliatives of an enormous mischief, for which 
 the only effectual remedy is that Complete Emanci- 
 pation which I have demonstrated by the unerring and 
 incontrovertible evidence of facts, as well as the 
 clearest deductions of reason, to be safe and practi- 
 cable, and therefore proved to be our imperative duty 
 at once to proclaim. 
 
 From the instant that glad sound is wafted across 
 the ocean, what a blessed change begins ; what an en- 
 chanting prospect unfolds itself! The African, placed 
 on the same footing with other men, becomes in reality 
 our fellow-citizen to our feelings, as well as in his 
 own nature our equal, our brother. No difference of 
 origin or of colour can now prevail to keep the two 
 castes apart. The Negro, master of his own labour, 
 only induced to lend his assistance if you make it his 
 interest to help you, yet that aid being absolutely ne- 
 cessary to preserve your existence, becomes an essen- 
 tial portion of the community, nay, the very portion 
 upon which the whole must lean for support. This 
 ensures him all his rights ; this makes it not only 
 no longer possible to keep him in thraldom, but places 
 him in a complete and intimate union with the whole 
 mass of Colonial society. Where the driver and the
 
 220 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 goaler once bore sway, the lash resounds no more ; 
 nor does the clank of the chain any more fall upon 
 the troubled ear; the fetter has ceased to gall the 
 vexed limb, and the very mark disappears which for a 
 w r hile it had left. All races and colours run together 
 the same glorious race of" improvement. Peace un- 
 broken, harmony uninterrupted, calm unruffled, reigns 
 in mansion and in field in the busy street, and the 
 the fertile valley, where nature, with the lavish hand 
 she extends under the tropical sun, pours forth all her 
 bounty profusely, because received in the lap of cheer- 
 ful industry, not extorted by hands cramped with 
 bonds. Delightful picture of general prosperity and 
 social progress in all the arts of civility and refine- 
 ment ! But another form is near ! and I may not 
 shut my eyes to that less auspicious vision. I do 
 not deny that danger exists I admit it not to be 
 far distant from our path. I descry it, but not in 
 the quarter to which West Indian eyes for ever turn. 
 The planter, as usual, looks in the wrong direction. 
 Averting his eyes from the real risk, he is ready to 
 pay the price of his blindness, and rush upon his 
 ruin. His interest tells him he is in jeopardy, but 
 it is a false interest, and misleads him as to the na- 
 ture of the risk he runs. They, who always dreaded 
 Emancipation who w r ere alarmed at the prospect of 
 Negro indolence who stood aghast at the vision of 
 Negro rebellion should the chains cease to rattle, 
 or the lash to resound through the air gathering 
 no wisdom from the past, still persist in affrighting 
 themselves and scaring you, with imaginary apprehen- 
 sions from the transition to entire freedom out of the 
 present intermediate state. But that intermediate 
 state is the very source of all their real danger ; and 
 I disguise not its magnitude from myself. You have 
 gone too far if you stop here and go no further ; you
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 221 
 
 are in imminent hazard if, having loosened the fetters, 
 you do not strike them off if, leaving them ineffectual 
 to restrain, you let them remain to gall, and to irri- 
 tate, and to goad. Beware of that state, yet more 
 unnatural than slavery itself liberty bestowed by 
 halves the power of resistance given the induce- 
 ment to submission withheld. You have let the Slave 
 taste of the cup of freedom ; while intoxicated with 
 the draught, beware how you dash the cup away from 
 his lips. You have produced the progeny of liberty 
 see the prodigious hazard of swathing the limbs of the 
 gigantic infant you know not the might that may 
 animate it. Have a care, I beseech you have a care, 
 how you rouse the strength that slumbers in the sable 
 peasant's arm ! The children of Africa, under the 
 tropical sun of the West, with the prospect of a free 
 Negro Republic in sight, will not suffer themselves to 
 be tormented when they no longer can be controlled. 
 The fire in St. Domingo is raging to windward, its 
 sparks are borne on the breeze, and all the Caribbean 
 sea is studded with the materials of explosion. Every 
 tribe, every shade of the Negro race will combine 
 from the fiery Koromantin to the peaceful Eboe, and 
 the ghastly shape of Colonial destruction meets the 
 astonished eye 
 
 " If shape it may be called that shape has none 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; 
 Or substance may be called that shadow seems, 
 For each seems either ; black it stood as night, 
 Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell !" 
 
 I turn away from the horrid vision that my eye mav 
 rest once more on the prospect of enduring empire, 
 and peace founded upon freedom. I regard the free- 
 dom of the Negro as accomplished and sure. Why ? 
 because it is his right because he has shown himself 
 fit for it because a pretext, or a shadow of a pretext, 
 can no longer be devised for withholding that right
 
 222 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 from its possessor. I know that all men at this day 
 take a part in the question, and they will no longer 
 bear to be imposed upon, now they are well informed. 
 My reliance is firm and unflinching upon the great 
 change which I have witnessed the education of the 
 people, unfettered by party or by sect witnessed from 
 the beginning of its progress, I may say from the 
 hour of its birth. Yes ! It was not for a humble 
 man like me to assist at Royal births with the illus- 
 trious Prince who condescended to grace the pageant 
 of this opening session, or the Great Captain and 
 Statesman in whose presence I am now proud to 
 speak. But with that illustrious Prince, and with 
 the father of the Queen, I assisted at that other birth, 
 more conspicuous still. With them, and with the 
 Head of the House of Russell, incomparably more 
 illustrious in my eyes, I watched over its cradle I 
 marked its growth I rejoiced in its strength I wit- 
 nessed its maturity I have been spared to see it 
 ascend the very height of supreme power ; directing 
 the councils of State; accelerating every great im- 
 provement ; uniting itself with every good work ; 
 propping all useful institutions; extirpating abuses 
 in all our institutions; passing the bounds of our 
 European dominion, and in the New World, as in 
 the Old, proclaiming that freedom is the birthright of 
 man that distinction of colour gives no title to op- 
 pression that the chains now loosened must be struck 
 off, and even the marks they have left effaced pro- 
 claiming this by the same eternal law of our nature 
 which makes nations the masters of their own destiny, 
 and which in Europe has caused every tyrant's throne 
 to quake ! But they need feel no alarm at the pro- 
 gress of light who defend a limited monarchy and sup- 
 port popular institutions who place their chiefest 
 pride not in ruling over slaves, be they white or be
 
 NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 223 
 
 they black, not in protecting the oppressor, but in 
 wearing a constitutional crown, in holding the sword 
 of justice with the hand of mercy, in being the first 
 citizen of a country whose air is too pure for Slavery 
 to breathe, and on w r hose shores, if the captive's foot 
 but touch, his fetters of themselves fall off. To the 
 resistless progress of this great principle I look with a 
 confidence which nothing can shake ; it makes all im- 
 provement certain ; it makes all change safe which it 
 produces ; for none can be brought about unless all 
 has been prepared in a cautious and salutary spirit. 
 So now the fulness of time is come for at length dis- 
 charging our duty to the African captive. I have 
 demonstrated to you that every thing is ordered- 
 every previous step taken all safe, by experience 
 shewn to be safe, for the long-desired consummation. 
 The time has come, the trial has been made, the hour 
 is striking : you have no longer a pretext for hesita- 
 tion, or faultering, or delay. The Slave has shown, 
 by four years' blameless behaviour, and devotion to 
 the pursuits of peaceful industry, that he is as fit for 
 his freedom as any English peasant, aye or any Lord 
 whom I now address. I demand his rights ; I demand 
 his liberty without stint. In the name of justice and 
 of law in the name of reason in the name of God, 
 who has given you no right to work injustice I de- 
 mand that your brother be no longer trampled upon as 
 your slave ! I make my appeal to the Commons, who 
 represent the free people of England ; and I require 
 at their hands the performance of that condition for 
 which they paid so enormous a price that condition 
 which all their constituents are in breathless anxiety 
 to see fulfilled ! I appeal to this House. Hereditary 
 judges of the first tribunal in the world to you I 
 appeal for justice ! Patrons of all the arts that 
 humanize mankind under your protection I place
 
 224. NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 humanity herself ! To the merciful Sovereign of a 
 free people I call aloud for mercy to the hundreds of 
 thousands for whom half a million of her Christian 
 sisters have cried aloud I ask that their cry may not 
 have risen in vain. But first I turn my eye to the 
 throne of all justice, and devoutly humbling myself be- 
 fore Him who is of purer eyes than to behold such vast 
 iniquities, I implore that the curse hovering over the 
 head of the unjust and the oppressor be averted from 
 us that your hearts may be turned to mercy and 
 that over all the earth His will may at length be done !
 
 UPON THE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF LOKDS, 
 MARCH 6, 1838. 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 TO 
 
 ARTHUR DUKE OF WELLINGTON, K.G. 
 
 ETC. ETC. ETC, 
 
 THE uniform candour which guides your public 
 conduct, and so often makes you sacrifice what ordi- 
 nary men would reckon fair party advantages, induces 
 me to hope that you will listen to the earnest entreaty 
 which I now make, that you would peruse the argu- 
 ments and the statements of this speech, with the 
 attention certainly due to the subject, though not to 
 the speaker. If you do, I feel very confident that you 
 will be disposed to admit that your moving the Pre- 
 vious Question upon my Resolutions last night, was 
 ill-considered ; and even if you should not arrive at 
 this conclusion, I still entertain the most sanguine 
 hope that a further attention to the subject will in- 
 cline you to support the next proposition which may 
 be brought forward upon the same matter. 
 
 There is but one meaning of a Previous Question. 
 It never can with propriety be moved unless when the
 
 228 DEDICATION. 
 
 original motion was held to be irresistible on its own 
 merits. Consequently, no Ministry ever before, with- 
 in my knowledge, would consent to accept of an escape 
 from a vote of censure by a proceeding which admits 
 their guilt or their error, and only professes an unwill- 
 ingness to condemn them. Unless the truth of the 
 Resolutions was undeniable, the Previous Question 
 last night could have no meaning, and my motion 
 should have been met with a direct negative. 
 
 The eagerness with which the Ministers caught at 
 your offer of letting them escape, censured in substance 
 though without a formal sentence pronounced against 
 them, provided they would adopt and enact your plan 
 themselves, was very remarkable. But this made no 
 difference in their former conduct. Nay, all the re- 
 gulations which they can make must leave the worst 
 parts of their whole error untouched ; because they 
 cannot make laws for the coast of Africa or the settle- 
 ments of foreign Crowns. 
 
 But if it is certain, nay, if it is admitted by your- 
 self and others, that this Order should not have been 
 issued, at all events without guards and precautions, 
 surely it was not expecting too much to look for an 
 expression of disapproval from Parliament when a 
 measure for ENCOURAGING THE SLAVE TRADE was 
 brought before it. The character of the country and 
 its success in all negotiations on the foreign traffic 
 seemed imperatively to require that step. 
 
 I have in this address to your Grace employed not 
 the language of panegyric, which you of all men would 
 the most despise, but the language^of truth which you 
 know well how to value. "The treachery which 
 deceives is as criminal as that which would dethrone
 
 DEDICATION. 229 
 
 you" was the memorable saying of the great French 
 orator to a Sovereign* who loved the treason of pleas- 
 ing flattery more than the loyalty of unpalatable truth. 
 It is a thing of the utmost importance to the honour 
 and interest of the country, that one who stands in 
 your pre-eminent position should upon such a question 
 as the Slave trade have his eyes opened, in order that 
 he may be found to side with all the other great 
 statesmen of his age. 
 
 BROUGHAM. 
 
 March 7th, 1838. 
 
 * Massillon "La perfulic qni vous trompc cst atissi criminelle quo 
 celle qui vous detroncroit."
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 IF, my lords, of all the subjects that ever engaged 
 the attention of this country, and of its Parliament, 
 the one which I am about to broach before your lord- 
 ships has been found to possess at all times the most 
 commanding attractions ; and if, after struggling in 
 the public mind and in the chambers of the legisla- 
 ture through a long course of years, it at length ended 
 in the most brilliant victory ever gained by truth for 
 humanity and justice ; I will venture to affirm that 
 now, when we had been fain to hope the battle was 
 won, the doom of the Slave Trade pronounced by the 
 universal voice of mankind, and the state of Slavery 
 itself condemned the only question being as to the 
 precise moment for executing the sentence the ques- 
 tion of the traffic will be found to have lost nothing 
 of its pristine and enduring interest, but that the 
 attention of the world will be arrested, and the feel- 
 ings of mankind be aroused in greater excess than 
 ever, by the new ingredient mingled in the cup of 
 bitter disappointment at finding our hopes still so far 
 from realized and marking the efforts once more 
 making to revive that execrable traffic which all men 
 had believed to have been for ever destroyed. For 
 when I look at this Order in Council, and compare its 
 frame, its professed object, its inevitable consequences,
 
 232 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 with everything that the history of the past has taught 
 us of the Slave Trade, I am compelled to express the 
 bitterness of the anguish which fills my bosom on 
 reflecting that towards the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, full fifty years after that monstrous iniquity 
 was dragged into the light of public discussion, and 
 thirty years after we believed it extirpated from the 
 British world, I am actually standing here to grapple 
 with a measure which all but professes to plant it 
 anew, and of necessity must have the effect of extend- 
 ing its range to coasts which hitherto it had spared. 
 
 But in thus coming forward, no man can accuse me 
 of proposing a censure against the Government with- 
 out giving ample warning, and affording abundant 
 opportunity for escape or amendment. It is upwards 
 of six weeks since I dragged to light this reluctant 
 Act of Council I say reluctant because though 
 passed in July last, not the least intimation of its 
 existence was ever given, by publication in the Gazette, 
 the ordinary repertory of much less important pro- 
 ceedings of State. I am told, indeed, that it is the 
 practice not to publish such Orders but I am sure 
 it is a course " more honoured in the breach than in 
 the observance." For when w r e consider that such 
 Orders, framed in private by the Minister, make the 
 law of the Crown Colonies as absolutely as the law 
 of England is made by the enactments, the open and 
 public enactments, of King, Lords, and Commons, 
 surely it is not too much to desire that those reso- 
 lutions of the Executive Government, thus private in 
 their adoption, and, it may be, little considered before 
 made, should not be consigned at once to the Council 
 books, where they can only be accessible to the 
 clerks, but should be promulged to the whole people 
 whose interests they concern, whose conduct they 
 govern. When I denounced this Order, I stated
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 233 
 
 shortly but distinctly my reasons for condemning 
 it ; I showed in some detail how it must work ; I 
 referred to the former history of Slave trading to 
 illustrate my meaning; and believing, or willing to 
 believe, that it had been issued through inattention, 
 or negligence, or indolence, or ignorance of the sub- 
 ject, I said, " Let it only be withdrawn, and I shall 
 never again advert to the subject in any way nor 
 comment upon the issuing it nor in any manner 
 make it the subject of observation." I have waited 
 since then, anxiously looking for its recall ; but I find 
 my not unfriendly suggestion was thrown away, and 
 that the measure is persisted in, maintained, defended, 
 by its authors. No man, then, can accuse me of 
 having stood by while mischief was brewing, and 
 only spoken out after it was done. No man can, 
 without the most indecent disregard of truth, charge 
 me here with crying, " I warned you," when the event 
 is o'er. And yet I have seen, what on no other 
 evidence than the testimony of my own senses I could 
 have believed, this charge made against me when it 
 was just as false as it would be now. I have been 
 vilely, impudently, most falsely aspersed for standing 
 by and saying nothing on the great Canada question 
 charged in the records of the Government press, 
 with being like 
 
 Juggling friends, who never spoke before, 
 
 But cry, " I warn'd you," when the event is o'er. 
 
 Incredible but true ! I have often heard it dis- 
 puted among critics which of all quotations was the 
 most appropriate the most closely applicable to the 
 subject-matter illustrated ; and the palm is generally 
 awarded to that which applied to Dr. Franklin the 
 line in Claudian, 
 
 " Eripuit fulmcn coelo, mox sccptra tyrannis," 
 
 yet still there is a difference of opinion, and even
 
 234 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 that citation, admirably close as it is, has rivals. But 
 who has hit upon the most inapplicable quotation, 
 no critic will hereafter presume to doubt. The Go- 
 vernment scribe must be allowed by universal consent 
 to bear away the palm of inaptness and falsehood from 
 all his rivals in the art of false quoting as of fabrica- 
 tion. So far from standing by till after the event, I 
 addressed your Lordships and the Government as long 
 ago as March last, and afterwards warned them, with 
 full reasons, and in much detail, both in my place and 
 in an elaborate protest, which yet stands on your 
 journals to record the warning my voice had given. 
 So far from waiting till the event justified my warn- 
 ing, and then crying, " I warned you," I never even 
 said so never once, that I can recollect, taunted 
 them with having neglected my warning voice after 
 the rebellion broke out of which I had bidden them 
 to beware. If, then, I now say that I do not expect 
 any one will have the effrontery to bring a similar 
 charge on this occasion, it is not because as great 
 effrontery has not been displayed before, but because 
 such audacity can hardly be repeated a second time 
 by any one at so short an interval after a former ex- 
 posure to the indignation and scorn of the world, under 
 which, unless all feeling be extinct, its author must 
 now be writhing. 
 
 I must now begin by shortly restating what I six 
 weeks ago said of the nature and import of this Order 
 in Council. An order of March 1837 had sanctioned 
 the Ordinance made by the Court of Policy in Guiana, 
 with the intention of confining the period of appren- 
 ticeship to three years. In July, representations were 
 made by some Planters, that if this term were not 
 extended to five years, no man could possibly bring 
 any labourers into the Colony. No cargoes of human 
 .beings could be imported to share the lot of the half-
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 235 
 
 freed slaves, by becoming indentured apprentices, if 
 they could only be bound for three years. The papers 
 on your table give both the memorials of the Planters, 
 and the statement of the Colonial department, that 
 with the request of the memorialists they had com- 
 plied, and for the reasons assigned in the memorial. 
 My Noble Friend* says, in so many words, when an- 
 nouncing to the Governor of Guiana the change made 
 in the former Ordinance, that it was made because 
 without it the importer of such cargoes of apprentices 
 would not find it worth his while to carry on the traffic, 
 and that no apprentices could be brought from the 
 East. It was therefore avowedly for the express pur- 
 pose, and with the deliberate intention of facilitating, 
 of encouraging, of stimulating this traffic, that the law 
 Avas thus changed. It was with the view of enabling 
 those to carry on the traffic who otherwise could not 
 do so, that the Order was framed and issued, being, 
 I think, about the first after the Queen's accession. 
 This is the account given by the Ministers themselves 
 of their own conduct and of its motives. With their 
 eyes open, in league with the Planters, and to give 
 every facility for the importation of apprentices into 
 Guiana, they adopted this measure. It is easy indeed 
 for them and their West Indian confederates to speak 
 in soft language of bringing over free men of intro- 
 ducing labourers of increasing the number of hands 
 employed of enabling the owners of estates to find 
 workmen as they wanted them. But I will tear away 
 all these flimsy disguises I will shew you what it is 
 that lurks under these fair words I will demonstrate 
 to you, and by facts rather than by mere arguments, 
 what is distinctly felt and loudly proclaimed by every 
 one of those whose acquaintance with the Slave Trade
 
 23G EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 is the most enlarged and the most minute, who have 
 for half a century and more been occupied in tracing 
 it through all its forms, and pursuing it in each dis- 
 guise which it unceasingly assumes that nothing but 
 Slave trading is, and that nothing but Slave trading 
 can be, the meaning and the result of all that is thus 
 doing. 
 
 And for this purpose I must first desire your Lord- 
 ships to accompany me while I cast a retrospective 
 glance over the sad history of that dreadful commerce, 
 and to mark with me its origin and its progress in 
 various parts of the globe. The task I know is pain- 
 ful; for we are going to contemplate by far the 
 blackest page in the annals of our race. When 
 the great satirist of England described our species, 
 reduced by his sarcastic fancy to a diminutive stature, 
 as the most vile, cunning, cruel, and detestable ver- 
 min that nature had suffered to crawl on and to 
 infest the face of the earth he was held to have 
 presented an exaggerated picture of human vices, 
 by those who remembered that he only professed 
 to draw it from the court and the camp the per- 
 fidies of politicians and the cruelties of soldiers. 
 But if he had thrown into the canvass the crimes of 
 sordid avarice, combining in one all the frauds that 
 distinguish the one class with all the heartless cruelty 
 ascribed to the other ; if he had darkened his picture 
 with that worst of all the monstrous births which that 
 execrable vice has ever engendered if his page had 
 not only been disfigured with the details of the whole- 
 sale cunning, and heartless ingratitude, and mean 
 trickery, that shine in the Statesman's life, and the 
 reckless and desperate feats that mark the course of 
 the warrior with blood, but been tinged with the far 
 deeper dye, of the African Slave Trade, combining 
 within itself all the most infernal lineaments of human
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 237 
 
 guilt no tongue ever could have complained of the 
 exaggerated terms which Swift has employed, and all 
 would have confessed that the fidelity of truth had 
 been the guide, and not the gall of misanthropy the 
 distillment of his pen. 
 
 It seems strange that a traffic of all others the most 
 unnatural and the most revolting to our feelings 
 should nevertheless be found in every age and nation 
 a practice among men, as if a propensity to it were 
 inherent in the human constitution. Whether it be 
 from the innate thirst of gain, or the irrepressible love 
 of dominion, or the deep-rooted selfishness of our na- 
 ture, anxious to save our own toil at another's expense 
 certain it is that a traffic in the persons, liberties, 
 labours, and lives of our fellow-men, is to be found in 
 one age or another of society wherever men have 
 existed. In the most savage state the fruit of war is 
 slavery, and captives become the property of the con- 
 querors, to be used and to be transferred and dealt in 
 at his pleasure. In the islands discovered by our 
 illustrious navigator, and unvisited before by the foot 
 of civilized man, Slavery was found in various forms, 
 sometimes in the state of absolute bondage, sometimes 
 of qualified vassalage, resembling our indentured ap- 
 prenticeship ; and for a limited period of time as well 
 as for life. Slavery, and a constant traffic in Slaves 
 polluted the most refined states of antiquity ; and in 
 the days when this Island formed but a remote and 
 barbarous member of the Roman world, our coasts 
 were ravaged by the heathen Slave Trade, as those of 
 Africa are laid waste by the Christian commerce. 
 Bristol, by a singular coincidence, since the great 
 emporium of the African trade, and a principal wrong- 
 doer in the modern enormity, was in ancient times a 
 great emporium of the Roman Slave traffic, and a victim 
 of the crimes she afterwards imitated in the days of
 
 238 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 her civility and refinement. The feudal times in the 
 western world were familiar with Slavery and Slave 
 dealing in all its forms. Every kind of bondage was 
 then known. There was the villein in gross, liable to 
 be possessed and to be dealt in as a beast or any other 
 chattel the villein regardant, native, or ascriptus gkbce, 
 who could not be removed from the place of his birth, 
 but belonged to the land and to its owner. The Slave 
 under a contract affixing terms and time, was also the 
 growth of the same system which made so little of 
 human rights and feelings, and gave to mere force so 
 much dominion. The state of hired Slavery and of 
 Apprenticeship, or a mitigated Slavery, arising out of 
 contract and for a consideration, whether of hire or of 
 being taught some trade, was a genuine produce of 
 feudality and its servile tenures and oppressive prac- 
 tices. 
 
 In the East the history of our race presents the 
 same features, excepting that the mild influence of 
 Christianity was there wanting, and the perpetration 
 of similar crimes was less inexcusable. To supply those 
 countries with Slaves, the centre of Africa was tra- 
 versed by caravans, which carried her children into the 
 more wealthy and civilized regions of Asia. But the 
 life of domestic Slaves mitigated the lot of those cap- 
 tives living in the houses of their masters, and shar- 
 ing in their comforts little exposed to extremes of 
 climate hardly ever doomed to severe toil often 
 admitted to confidential stations not unfrequently 
 rising to even high employment they tasted as little 
 of the bitterness of Slavery as is compatible with the 
 mildest form of that always bitter cup. But an event 
 now happened which gave to Slavery an aspect far 
 more hideous than it had ever before worn even in the 
 most barbarous regions, and in the darkest times. 
 
 For then succeeded things the record of which
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 239 
 
 tinges with its deepest shades the darkest page in 
 the history of man ; and yet that page was next to the 
 most brilliant by far of the eventful volume. As if 
 to bring down Spain from the summit of glory to 
 which her fame had been elevated by the daring 
 genius of Columbus, she plunged into an abyss of 
 crimes, and mingling all perfidy with all cruelty, the 
 sordid thirst of gold with the inhuman appetite for 
 blood, enacted such scenes as have called down upon 
 the Spanish name the reprobation of the world, and 
 as the just execration of centuries has left still inade- 
 quately condemned. The simple, unoffending Indians 
 were seized upon, distributed in lots like cattle, like 
 cattle worked, but not spared like cattle ; for they 
 were worked to death by their hard task-masters 
 exacting far more than their feeble frames could sus- 
 tain. Nor was it till the total extirpation of their 
 race approached, and there seemed reason to fear that 
 the field could no longer be tilled nor the mine 
 explored to allay the fierceness of Spanish avarice, 
 that a thought was given to their sufferings, or the 
 means sought for their relief. The substitution of 
 African for Indian labourers was the expedient 
 resorted to by an unnatural union between short- 
 sighted philanthropy and clear-sighted interest ; and 
 out of this union was engendered, and under this 
 appellation was cloaked, the monster which we have 
 since learned to loathe and detest as the African Slave 
 Trade. The course taken then, at the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century, was the same with that Avhich 
 in this country was pursued last year. Memorials 
 were presented to the Colonial-office in the Downing- 
 street of Madrid; representations were made that 
 the decrease of the Indians had begotten apprehen- 
 sions of the hands no longer sufficing for the work of 
 the West Indian estates ; the necessity was urged of
 
 240 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 introducing into the West labourers from the East, 
 (as the process was termed in either case) and the 
 facilities were asked, which Government alone could 
 give, to favour this important operation, on which it 
 was alleged the fortunes of the Planters, and the fate 
 of the Colonial empire depended. I might easily, 
 from these papers before you, cull out the very 
 expressions used in the correspondence between the 
 parties at Madrid. In neither the sixteenth century 
 nor the nineteenth, were the terms of Slave-trading, 
 or any thing equivalent, employed : but in both 
 instances it was the supply of hands, the introduction 
 of labourers, the encouragement of emigrants, the 
 obtaining of workmen phrases which dance through 
 these dispatches in various collocation, and in appa- 
 rently innocent array. To this scheme a man lent 
 himself whose name will descend to the latest ages 
 as a pattern of persevering and disinterested benevo- 
 lence, and a monument of its uselessness, nay, its 
 mischiefs, if the good will only exist, and is not under 
 the control of sound reason ; a lasting proof, that, to 
 serve mankind, the act must keep pace with the 
 intention. Bartholomew de Las Casas was that ill- 
 judging and well-meaning philanthropist, who, having 
 devoted his blameless life to mitigating the sufferings 
 of the Indian, could see nothing but charity and kind- 
 ness in relieving him, by substituting the hardier 
 African in his stead ; and he joined with the Planters 
 in the application to the Colonial Secretary of the day, 
 for so the Prime Minister of Spain may well be called, 
 as American affairs formed the bulk of his adminis- 
 tration. But in Cardinal Ximenes they found a 
 statesman of equal humanity and wisdom ; he agreed 
 with the benevolent " Protector of the Indians," in 
 desiring to relieve that injured race, but he said that 
 he understood not the left-handed, one-eyed philan-
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 2 41 
 
 thropy which would take the burthen from the 
 shoulders of one people to lay it still more heavily 
 on those of another ; and that the speculation in 
 African labourers should receive no aid from him. 
 This sagacious Statesman, however, was now in the 
 extremity of old age ; on his death the young- Emperor 
 took the helm of government into his own hands; 
 ignorant of Colonial affairs, and surrounded by Flemish 
 counsellors, who knew no better, he listened to the 
 plans of the speculators ; he granted a patent for the 
 yearly introduction of 4000 Negroes, and thus laid 
 the foundation of that regular Slave traffic which had 
 before only occasionally and on a very trifling scale 
 been driven by a few Portuguese settled in the Bra- 
 zils. Thus was established that infernal policy which 
 for above three centuries has been the scourge of 
 Africa. After it had desolated that unhappy conti- 
 nent for many ages, by the blackest crimes ever 
 committed systematically by men, there happily arose 
 in this our country a man, who, to the pure benevo- 
 lence, the pious zeal, the inextinguishable love of his 
 fellow-creatures, the indomitable perseverance of Las 
 Casas, united the only merit which was wanting in his 
 character, a strict love of justice and a sound judg- 
 ment, the guide of his principles and his conduct. 
 Need I name him whose venerable form already stands 
 before you even in iny feeble picture? Thomas 
 Clarkson yet lives, till lately happy in the reflection 
 that he first brought to light the horrors of the African 
 traffic, but now tasting, with all the surviving friends 
 of the Abolition, the bitter mortification of finding 
 that their labours are to begin again, since the Govern- 
 ment has become the patron of a new Slave Trade ; 
 and there is, I tell you plainly, but one opinion and 
 one feeling pervading every place where an Aboli- 
 tionist is to be found, and that is the opinion and the 
 VOL. n. Q
 
 2*2 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 feeling which all have urged me to lose not a moment 
 in expressing to your lordships. With Thomas Clark- 
 son, and with his early associate, the learned, pious, 
 and truly humane Granville Sharpe, was joined soon 
 after another and their most powerful fellow-labourer, 
 Mr. Wilberforce, whose name will be revered as long 
 as wisdom and eloquence attract the admiration, or 
 virtue and piety command the love of mankind. He 
 it was who brought the Slave Trade before Parliament 
 for trial. And now let us attend for a moment to the 
 way in which the traffic was defended, because we 
 shall find the self-same topics adduced, nay, and the 
 same language used, as are now employed to defend 
 the present measure. 
 
 The Slave trader took high ground. He was not 
 to be cowed by the big words of the philanthropists ; 
 he would not be put down by senseless clamour, or 
 silenced by the cry of mistaken humanity. The 
 threats of the Abolitionists should not drive him 
 from his honest occupation, nor the calumnies of his 
 adversaries destroy an important branch of trade 
 which (and here I blush to say he did speak the 
 truth,) the Legislature had sanctioned, and even 
 encouraged. He would show that the African was 
 happier by far in the West Indies than at home ; 
 that he was not stolen and carried over by force, 
 but rescued from murder, or, if not, from a more cruel 
 Slavery in Africa ; and that this great branch of com- 
 merce, this importation of labourers, as it was called 
 both in 1788 and 1838, proved no less beneficial to 
 the continent they were drawn from, than to the 
 islands they were brought to cultivate. Thus General 
 Tarleton asserted that the Africans themselves had no 
 objection to the Slave Trade complained that people 
 were led away by a mistaken humanity affirmed that 
 the greatest misrepresentations were abroad denied
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 243 
 
 the miseries of the middle passage, in which lie said 
 only five in five hundred died, while ten and a half 
 per cent, perished of our regiments on board of West 
 Indian transports ; and cited, in proof of the happi- 
 ness and comfort of the Negro Slave exceeding that 
 of the English peasant, the authority of a governor, 
 two admirals, one captain, and a commodore all 
 naval officers being, through the whole controversy, 
 friendly to the Slave Trade, and willing witnesses to 
 the blessings of Negro Slavery in the West Indies ; 
 as military men, who saw far more of those blessings, 
 were generally observed to take the opposite side of 
 the question. The report of General Tarleton's speech 
 I take from the Parliamentary History for 1701 ; 
 but Sir William Young's, \vhich follows, bears inter- 
 nal evidence of having proceeded from his own pen, 
 for I am very sure no reporter in modern times ever 
 used the words " hath" and " doth," as this account 
 of the worthy Baronet's speech does throughout. " Far 
 be it from me," says he, " to defend a traffic in human 
 beings." But then he did not regard the African 
 commerce at all in that light. He denied that a 
 system of kidnapping supplied the Slaves. They were 
 captives in war, or they sold themselves into bondage, 
 or were men w r ho must perish in a famine, or be mur- 
 dered by wholesale at the funeral of their chiefs, but 
 for the tender mercies of the Liverpool trader, who 
 rescued them from hunger or the sword. Then to 
 cultivate the Colonies without this trade, w r as wholly 
 impossible ; the decrease was 2 or 2^ per cent, a year 
 in the Slave population, the same proportion as I find 
 now given in the papers before us ; but in one Colony 
 especially, this necessity is so strongly represented, 
 says Sir William, that he who runs may read. And 
 what Colony, think your Lordships, is that whose cry 
 for more hands new workmen a supply of labourers
 
 244 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 from the East went up so loudly half a century ago ? 
 Why the very Colony of Guiana, upon whose demand 
 and for whose use the present Order in Council is 
 framed ! But there is this difference, that in 1 791 
 Africa alone was required to supply the wants of 
 Guiana ; whereas we are now extending the drain to 
 all the territories within the East India Company's 
 charter. General Phipps and others contended that 
 all Africans were Slaves ; that the traffic was supplied 
 in almost every instance voluntarily, not by kid- 
 napping ; and that the Negro was far better off in our 
 islands than in his own country. It never struck 
 these advocates of crime that the poor African, who 
 had never seen the ocean, could by no possibility form 
 an idea of the suffering he was about to endure, or 
 the scenes into which he was to be conveyed ; and 
 that to give him any such notions would have been as 
 difficult as to make him comprehend the transactions 
 of another planet. Memorable were the words of Mr. 
 Pitt; memorable the sudden reply with which he 
 swept all those sophistries away ! Would that his 
 awful voice could now sound them in his successor's 
 ears ! Would to God that he were still among us to 
 make these walls echo the language of his indignation, 
 and chase away at once and for ever the miserable 
 pretences, the shadows of an excuse urged for these 
 abominable proceedings ! " Alas ! alas !" said that 
 great man, " you make human beings the subjects of 
 your commerce, as if they were merchandise, and you 
 refuse them the benefit of the great law which governs 
 all commercial dealings that the supply must ever 
 adapt itself to the demand." But on the Slave traders 
 all appeals to reason or to feeling were thrown away. 
 The very next time that the subject was brought be- 
 fore Parliament, we find them reiterating their asser- 
 tions, that no wars and no kidnappings were caused
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 245 
 
 by the trade, and their contrasts of West Indian 
 happiness with African distress. Alderman Brook 
 Watson, representing the great city of London, was 
 heard to avow, that were humanity concerned in the 
 abolition, he should at once support the measure, but 
 it was all the other way the Negro being removed 
 from a worse to a better state. Your Lordships will 
 give me credit for not adverting to a topic urged, 
 hardly to an expression used in these memorable de- 
 bates for the support of the Slave Trade, to which a 
 match may not be found in the papers before you 
 upon the proposed Guiana importation. The worthy 
 Magistrate's comparison is paralleled by a similar con- 
 trast in the papers, between the state of the Coolies in 
 Asia, and after their removal to the Mauritius. 
 
 The Alderman, too, like my Noble Friend* and his 
 West Indian allies, had no kind of objection to regu- 
 late the trade. No one who defended it ever had. 
 From 1 788 to the period of its extinction, I never yet 
 found one, either of those engaged in it, or of those 
 who defended it, make the least objection to put it 
 under as many regulations as the wit of man could 
 devise. And why? Because these men knew, what 
 we too know as to the new traffic sanctioned by Go- 
 vernment, that all regulations must of necessity fail and 
 go for nothing that all efforts to prevent the abuses 
 with which it is inseparably connected, of cruelty and 
 fraud, both in procuring, and in conveying, and in 
 employing the Slaves or apprentices, must infallibly 
 fail, if the regulations w r ere devised by the wisdom of 
 an angel. But again, they said in 1791, as they say 
 now " You need not be disturbed as to treatment 
 on the voyage ; trust to men's interests if you won't 
 confide in their honesty and humanity" and surely, 
 
 * Lord Glenelg.
 
 24G EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 said Lord Penryn, then member for Liverpool, it is 
 the trader's interest to carry over as many Negroes in 
 a healthy state as possible. Such was the reasoning 
 by which we were argued out of a belief even in the 
 horrors of the middle passage ; such the grounds on 
 which were denied all the atrocities the torments 
 the murders of which the Slave-ship is universally the 
 scene and on which those men expected to make 
 the world reject the frightful history of those pro- 
 digious crimes, as the fabrications of calumny, or the 
 creatures of a distempered imagination. I shall pre- 
 sently show you that already the new traffic encouraged 
 by our Government, and incapable of being driven at 
 all without its help, has led to scenes of nearly the 
 same description, which before long will almost equal 
 the horrors of the middle passage itself. 
 
 The same advocates of the traffic have recorded 
 their defence of Slavery and Slave trading in their 
 works. I have this morning refreshed my recollection 
 of Sir William Young's writings, by reading his West 
 Indian Tour, undertaken immediately after the debate 
 of which I have given you an abstract. In St. Vin- 
 cent's, he says to a friend, the day of his landing, that 
 far from the Slaves being an oppressed race, the 
 proudest human being he ever beheld was a Negro 
 woman. After passing the winter months there, he 
 exclaims, " All you know in England of jolly Christ- 
 mas falls very far short of the Negro's three days' 
 Christmas in this Island." He visits a Slave-ship just 
 arrived, and vows he can see nothing unpleasant be- 
 longing to it. The Slaves laughed and joked with 
 him, he says, like a Davus of Terence. Indeed he is 
 fond of adorning the West Indies with classical allu- 
 sions, having himself written a very poor history of 
 Athens. The squares and streets remind him of the 
 Forum and great ways of old Rome, with groups of
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 24? 
 
 Slaves here and there. lie goes to Antigua, and 
 there the Slaves dance with more spirit and grace 
 than the most fashionable circles in England. In 
 Tobago it is still the same happy scene. " The 
 Negroes seem treated like the Planter's favourite 
 children." I dare to say in one respect the love of 
 the parent was conspicuous enough I mean in not 
 sparing the rod. 
 
 Such were the pictures of Slavery comforts, of 
 Negro happiness, with which the patience of the 
 country was worn out, and the reason of Parliament 
 beguiled for many a long year ; and such the argu- 
 ments by which men were persuaded that there was 
 something wholly unreasonable in the objections we 
 were always urging against wholesale robbery and 
 cruelty and murder. Nevertheless, our strange and 
 paradoxical opinions daily gained ground. The carry- 
 ing over 70 or 80,000 human beings from their own 
 country to labour in America, of whom above 15,000 
 were brought to our settlements, began to be univer- 
 sally reprobated. Men came to feel that such a traffic 
 could no longer be suffered, whether the objects of it 
 were termed labourers or apprentices, or more fairly 
 and honestly Slaves. We were no longer described 
 as visionaries and theorists. Our statements were no 
 more regarded as fictions or calumnies ; and at length, 
 in spite of every attempt to ward off the blow, the 
 doom of the traffic was pronounced to the immortal 
 honour of the Cabinet of 1806, with which it may 
 seem unaccountable, but is yet true, that some of the 
 present Government were closely connected. Lord 
 Grey, in concert with Mr. Wilberforce, brought in 
 the Abolition Bill and thus performed what I really 
 think, and I believe my Noble and most valued Friend 
 himself considers, the most glorious act of his long, 
 useful, and brilliant public life. It was passed by the
 
 248 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 greatest majority ever known on a great measure long 
 the subject of controversy. The Commons, by sixteen 
 to one, sealed the fate of the Slave Trade. 
 
 The predictions of the planters that the Negroes 
 must decrease continued to haunt them for some years, 
 and various schemes were proposed for keeping up 
 the numbers of labourers. This led Mr. Barham in 
 1811 to propose the introduction of free labourers 
 from Asia, and his motion forms the next event of 
 importance in this history. He was one of the very 
 best masters and most successful planters in Antigua ; 
 and his proposal was rested wholly upon motives of 
 kindness towards the Slaves. These being, as he 
 thought, reduced in numbers while there was the same 
 work to perform, in consequence of the embarrass- 
 ments of West Indian property not permitting the 
 produce to be diminished which went to satisfy cre- 
 ditors, there seemed reason to apprehend the effects 
 of the Negro labour being so much increased. The 
 reception of this plan in Parliament was very remark- 
 able. Mr. Anthony Browne, .then and now the 
 respectable agent for Antigua, cautioned the House 
 against being led astray by its feelings in behalf of the 
 Slaves, to sanction an impracticable and visionary 
 scheme. But Mr. Stephen gave it his decided oppo- 
 sition upon higher grounds. Now, than Mr. Stephen's, 
 there can no higher authority be cited on Slavery and 
 Slave trading, and every thing connected with these 
 subjects. He had long made them his study ; he had 
 been at all times the zealous co-operator with his 
 friend and brother-in-law, Mr. Wilberforce, in the 
 Abolition Committee; he had passed the best years 
 of his life in a Slave colony, St. Kitts ; and since his 
 return to Europe, he had never ceased to watch over 
 every branch of the great questions connected with 
 West Indian affairs. His resistance to the proposition
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 249 
 
 of introducing free labourers into the colonies, as it 
 was called then and is called now, was grounded upon 
 the injuries thus certain to be inflicted upon the people 
 whom it was proposed to transport from Asia ; and Mr. 
 Huskisson adopting the same views, opposed the pro- 
 ject upon the same grounds. An accident prevented 
 Mr. Canning from attending this debate, as absence 
 from town upon the circuit kept me also away from 
 it. I felt exceedingly anxious when the subject was 
 announced, and when I saw that eminent person after 
 the Committee had been appointed, I found he viewed 
 the subject in the same light with Mr. Stephen and 
 myself. No, no, said he it is enough to have deso- 
 lated Africa, without introducing this pest into Asia 
 too. 
 
 The next circumstance to which we must look in 
 pursuing this historical retrospect, is the traffic which 
 for some years has been going on between India and 
 the Mauritius ; for it is to the alleged success of this 
 experiment that we are desired to look by the patrons 
 of the new scheme the Government and the Guiana 
 planters. I own that I regard whatever relates to 
 the Mauritius with extreme jealousy in all Slave 
 questions. There is no quarter of the globe where 
 more gross abuses have been practised nay, more 
 flagrant violations of the law, from the eager appetite 
 for new hands which the fertile land excites in the 
 uncleared districts of that island. It was in 1811 
 that I had the happiness of passing the act through 
 Parliament, declaring Slave trading to be a felony, 
 and awarding to it the punishment of transportation. 
 Some years afterwards it was made capital. Yet in 
 spite of this penal sanction, the Mauritius planters 
 were audacious enough to introduce, by Slave traffic, so 
 many Africans, that Sir George Murray, when Secre- 
 tary for the Colonies some time back, admitted twenty-
 
 250 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 five thousand at least to have been thus brought thither 
 from the coasts of Africa. No less than twenty-five 
 thousand capital felonies had thus been perpetrated 
 in the course of a few years by those sordid and greedy 
 speculators. The position of the island is singularly 
 adapted for carrying on this detested commerce. 
 Near the continent, and near that part of it where 
 we have no settlement, and keep hardly ever any 
 cruisers, no effective check upon such operations can 
 ever be maintained, if the authorities in the island 
 itself do not exercise the most vigilant attention ; and 
 there is but too much reason to suspect, from what 
 came out in Mr. Buxton's Committee, that instead of 
 watching, they connived at one time, while some high 
 in office encouraged the offenders, and even partook in 
 the fruits of their crimes. Doubtless, if the Guiana 
 Order in Council is suffered to subsist, a like privilege 
 will be extended to this island. But in either case 
 the African coast is under the operation of this new 
 traffic. That Order comprehends it in terms the most 
 distinct. Nor does it only open the trade to 
 
 " them that sail 
 
 Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past 
 Mosambique" 
 
 It stretches along Sofala, and to Guardafui and 
 Arabia comprising all the Asian Islands 
 
 " Ceylon and Timor, Ternate and Cadore." 
 
 It then includes the whole coast of India, and all 
 the regions of that vast domain, stretching 
 
 " O'er hills where flocks do feed, beyond the springs 
 Of Ganges and Hydaspes, Indian streams." 
 
 All those plains and mountains all those ports, and 
 bays, and creeks long lines of sea-beach without a
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 251 
 
 fort, or a witness, a magistrate to control, or an eye 
 to see what is done from Madagascar to the Red 
 Sea. from the Arabian Gulf along Malabar, to Tra- 
 vancore, thence from Comorin to the months of 
 the Ganges, and of all the unknown and unnamed 
 streams that water the peninsula and flow into the 
 Indian Ocean. It is in such vast and such desolate 
 regions that we are to be told this Order will never 
 be abused, and none be taken by force, nor any 
 circumvented by fraud. When in the heart of 
 Europe, with all men's eyes to watch him and his 
 agents, the King of Prussia could drive his trade of 
 a crimp, and fill his army with recruits spirited away 
 from the banks of the Rhine populous, civilized 
 countries, enjoying the blessings of regular govern- 
 ment, the protection of a vigilant police, and enter- 
 taining ambassadors at the Court of Berlin when 
 that monarch could, in such countries, and in the face 
 of day, carry off the priest at the altar, and the pro- 
 fessor at his desk, from the countries on the Rhine, 
 the Moselle, and the Oder, and these reverend and 
 learned recruits were, for months afterwards, found 
 carrying his firelocks, and serving in his ranks how 
 can the folly be sufficiently derided which represents 
 it as difficult to abuse this abominable regulation, and 
 make it the cover of common Slave trading, in the 
 remote desolate countries watered by the Niger, and 
 the yet more deserted shores of Eastern Africa, 
 through which nameless rivers flow into the sea? 
 The Order was passed without a single regulation 
 being subjoined, either here or in the East Indies, to 
 prevent such abuses, or to limit their amount. But 
 to speak of regulations in such circumstances, is too 
 absurd. What regulations can the wit of man devise 
 which can have any effect at all ? Nay, in the very 
 places where the abuse is most likely to occur, you
 
 252 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 have not the shadow of authority to make rules. 
 How can you legislate for the Slave-dealers on the 
 eastern coast, north of the Cape ? Yet there the 
 worst branches of the old Slave Trade at this 
 moment exist. I saw only yesterday a person who 
 had been present at the capture of a Portuguese 
 Slave-ship, which had sailed from the coast of Zan- 
 guebar with eight hundred Negroes on board, and 
 lost above two hundred before she reached her port 
 of destination in the Brazils. Let it not then be 
 said that regulations may be devised for preventing 
 abuse. But none have been attempted or thought of. 
 The wretched beings, apprentices you call them, are to 
 be carried without a word said specifying the tonnage 
 regulating the space for accommodation between 
 the decks fixing the proportion of water to drink, or 
 provision to sustain life ordering medical attendance 
 directing the course of the voyage or limiting its 
 duration. The Order was issued here in July, before 
 it could possibly be known that any law had been pro- 
 mulgated in Bengal for the date of the Bengal regu- 
 lation was May 1, and it was sent over on the 7th of 
 June. That regulation, too, was and still is, confined 
 to the Presidency of Fort William. Nay more, it is 
 altogether silent on every one of the important parti- 
 culars which I have mentioned, and merely prescribes 
 in vague and general terms that the parties interested 
 in disobeying it, and on whose conduct it sets no kind 
 of watch, shall attend to the comforts of the crew and 
 cargo. 
 
 Contrast now this legislation of the Crown with the 
 enactments of the Parliament when giving laws, I will 
 not say in pari materid, but on things incomparably less 
 demanding legislative care, because hardly liable to 
 any of the like abuses. A band of emigrants are about 
 to leave their native country, and seek their fortunes
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 253 
 
 in the western world. They are civilized men well 
 acquainted with all that regards their voyage and des- 
 tination generally well informed nay, compared 
 with the Coolies of Bengal, or the Negroes of the 
 Mozambique coast, I have aright to say accomplished 
 persons. In the Thames, or the Mersey, or the Se- 
 vern, the gallant ship that is to convey them forth is 
 ready her crew on board her stores taken in her 
 anchor a-peak her sails unfurled. Every passenger 
 is there, and as the favouring breeze sounds through 
 the cordage, all are more anxious to go than the cap- 
 tain of the vessel to make sail. Shall she go ? The 
 fore-top-sail dangles from the mast in token of her 
 readiness to drop down the river, if she only may. Shall 
 she go? No. The Act of Parliament interposes. 
 The Act of Parliament says, No. The Act of Parlia- 
 ment commands, under penalties which may not be 
 risked, that she shall stay and be examined. " Come 
 ashore thou Captain," says the Law of the Land, " and 
 shew thyself worthy to take charge of so many British 
 subjects on the ocean. Come ashore you crew, and 
 muster, that the equipment be seen sufficient. Come 
 ashore thou Surgeon, and prove, by the testimonials of 
 Surgeon's Hall, the requisite fitness to be entrusted 
 with the health of this emigrant people !" But at 
 least those emigrants may remain on board. They 
 are of mature age fully aware of their own intentions 
 well fitted to look after their own interests, and 
 guard themselves against all fraud. They may keep 
 in the berths where they are counting every minute 
 an hour that is lost of the propitious wind which shall 
 waft them to the wished-for region of all their hopes. 
 They surely may remain in the ship. Again, the Act 
 of Parliament says, No. Still it calls aloud, " Come 
 on shore, you emigrants, that you may be mustered, 
 and the King's officer who marshals you examining
 
 25t EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 into each man's case, may ascertain that none are 
 carried forth against their will, and that no fraud, nor 
 circumvention, nor delusive misrepresentation has 
 been practised upon any." And whence all this jeal- 
 ousy, this excessive care, which seems even to protect 
 men from the consequences of their own imprudence, 
 and almost interferes with their personal liberty in 
 order to make their maltreatment impossible ? It is 
 because the law was framed by wise and provident 
 men, who had well weighed the importance of throw- 
 ing every obstacle in the way of sordid cunning, and 
 had maturely calculated the hazards of deception 
 being practised, and abuses of every kind creeping 
 into a traffic so little in the ordinary course of human 
 affairs as the removing masses of the people from one 
 hemisphere to another. It is because the laws so 
 jealously guard the safety of the subject, that they 
 will take every elaborate precaution to exclude even 
 the possibility of a single person being entrapped, or 
 inveigled, or spirited away, lost among a crowd of 
 emigrants, whose general information about all they 
 are doing whose general design to go and of their 
 own free will to go and with their eyes open to go 
 no man w r ho ever made these laws ever doubted for 
 an instant. Therefore are all these regulations pre- 
 scribed, with the additional penalty of no less than 
 500 for any passenger taken on board in any place 
 where no Custom-house stands, and no officers are 
 ready to perform the examination lest peradventure 
 a single Englishman may by some improbable combi- 
 nation of accidents be kidnapped and carried, inno- 
 cently or ignorantly, into a foreign land. And then 
 comes my Noble Friend,* with his Order in Council 
 his crown made law to encourage the shipment 
 
 * Lord Glcnclg.
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 25.5 
 
 not of enlightened Englishmen, but simple Hindoos 
 and savage Africans, in distant, desert coasts, in remote 
 creeks and bays of the sea, laid down in no charts, bear- 
 ing no name, at the mouth of rivers which drain un- 
 known regions far inland, and carry down their streams 
 the barbarous natives to an ocean which they had never 
 beheld. Knowing the watchful care, the scrupulous and 
 suspicious jealousy of the English law made by Par- 
 liament on all that relates to the emigration of our 
 own civilized people knowing that the shipper would 
 be ruined who should suffer an Englishman to embark 
 of his own free will, and more desirous to go than he 
 to take him, where there was no Custom-house officer 
 to watch the operation my Noble Friend makes his 
 Colonial Law with the avowed purpose of enabling 
 thousands and thousands of simple, ignorant, uncivi- 
 lized men to be taken in any speculating trader's 
 vessel, in obscure, nameless places, where, instead of 
 revenue establishments and public offices being sta- 
 tioned, the footstep of no European, save the Slave- 
 trader and the crimp, ever was known to have trodden 
 since the creation. The Law made by Parliament 
 suspects all engaged in the trade of emigration, even 
 from the City of London ; and the lawgivers have 
 framed its enactments on the assumption that abuse 
 and offence must come. The Law of the Colonial 
 Office suspects no one, even of those who navigate the 
 Indian seas, and sweep the coasts of Southern Africa 
 it proceeds upon the assumption that neither abuse 
 nor offence can ever come where the temptation is the 
 strongest, and the difficulty of prevention the most in- 
 surmountable. The Parliament adds regulation to 
 regulation for securing safety, where all . men's eyes 
 are directed and nothing can be done unseen. The 
 Colonial Office despises all regulations, and trusts 
 the Slave Trader and the crimp, where no eye but
 
 250 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 his own. can see, and no hand is uplifted to restrain his 
 arm. 
 
 But let us turn towards the place of destination, 
 and see what the consequences will be of this scheme, 
 even if nothing illegal shall be done if the most 
 strictly correct course of conduct be pursued by every 
 one engaged in the new traffic if nothing whatever 
 is done but introducing a number of apprenticed 
 labourers into the West Indies, all of whom go there 
 knowingly and willingly. Let us see the consequences 
 to the Negroes who are already there, who are now 
 apprentices working partly for wages, and whose com- 
 plete emancipation is approaching. On the first of 
 August, 1840, as the law now stands on the first of 
 August, 1838, as I fervently hope the whole of these 
 poor people will have the command of their own 
 time, and the right to derive from their own labour 
 its just reward. Then see how you are treating 
 them ! Just at the moment when their voluntary 
 industry should begin to benefit them, and the profits 
 of their toil no longer belong to their masters just as 
 they are about to earn a pittance by the sweat of 
 their brow, wherewithal to support themselves and 
 their families just at that instant comes your Order 
 in Council to prepare for them a competition, with 
 crowds of labourers brought over by wholesale from 
 the East, and able by their habits to work for little 
 and live upon nothing. You let in upon them a 
 supply of hands sufficient to sluice the labour-market 
 and reduce its gains to the merest trifle, by this forced 
 and unnatural emigration thither of men habituated 
 all their lives to subsist upon a handful of rice and a 
 pinch of pepper. Can any thing be conceived more 
 cruel and unjust ? This is the avowed object of the 
 whole proceeding. It is stated in express terms by 
 the planters, whose representations obtained the
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 25? 
 
 Order in Council " The emancipated Slaves," say 
 they (p. 25,) " are very likely to form combinations 
 for the purpose of restricting the ordinary and neces- 
 sary periods of labour, as well as to compel the Planters 
 to pay them wages at rates much above their means 
 and ability to comply with." 
 
 Do, I beseech you, my lords, let us make the case 
 our own. Suppose such an experiment were tried for 
 lowering the wages in Kent, or Essex, or Sussex, by 
 the planters there, who are always complaining of their 
 high rents and low profits. Suppose in that county, 
 happy under the mild government of my noble 
 friend,* the rumour should spread of 3000 or 4000 
 Coolies being expected there, men who could work 
 for two-pence and three-pence a day, and be better off 
 than in their own country that the Colonial Office 
 were petitioned by the Sussex farmers to give such 
 facilities as were necessary to make this importation 
 practicable that the farmers were persuading the 
 Secretary of State and his Under Secretaries, of the 
 benefit this help must prove to the over-worked day 
 labourers of the county and that the measures re- 
 quired by the speculators were about to be adopted 
 so as to make the operation feasible I won't say that 
 the Sussex peasantry would instantly meet and mob 
 and riot and threaten the Castle of my noble friend, 
 and the Office in Downing-street ; but I venture to 
 assert that my noble friend, with a train of all his 
 deputy Lieutenants, and Magistrates, and Squires, 
 and Clergy, would speedily darken the doors of that 
 department, and that to issue the dreaded order would 
 become an absolute impossibility. Nothing could 
 ever make its issuing possible but its being secretly 
 agreed upon and passed without any publication in 
 
 * The Duke of Richmond. 
 VOL. II. It
 
 258 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the Gazette; and as soon as its existence became 
 known, its recall would be matter of perfect certainty. 
 Surely, surely, the unhappy African has been treated 
 at all times as never race under the sun was suffered 
 by Providence to be treated. All men and all things 
 conspire to oppress him. After enduring for ages the 
 most bitter miseries of Slavery, privations unexampled, 
 hardships intolerable, unrequited toil, he is at last 
 relieved from his heavy burthen, and becomes a free 
 labourer, ready to work for wages on his own account. 
 Straightway he is met by myriads of other labourers 
 not naturally belonging to the soil or climate, and habi- 
 tuated to the lowest hire and the scantiest and the 
 worst sustenance ; and after having been so long kept 
 out of the hire he earned by the bondage of his con- 
 dition, he is now defrauded of it by the craft of his 
 former master, in revenge for his tyranny being at an 
 end. 
 
 But this is the very least part of the evil inflicted 
 by the measure ; this is taking the argument on the 
 lowest ground. Look to the inevitable consequences 
 of the system upon the Eastern coast of Africa, and 
 all our Indian dominions. The language used by its 
 patrons and their abettors in Downing Street, is just 
 what used to be heard in the days of open Slave 
 trading. " We wish to bring over a number of labour- 
 people from Asia," says one Planter " We contem- 
 plate drawing a supply of labourers for our estates," 
 say others respectable men, whom I personally 
 know. It is " the engaging of labourers," according 
 to the President of the Board of Control, under whose 
 protection India is placed ; while the Colonial Secre- 
 tary, under whose care all our other settlements re- 
 pose, speaks of the " Emigration from India" and 
 " East India Emigrants." The voyage which brings 
 these poor creatures from the indolence of their native
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADK. 250 
 
 plains to the hard and unwholesome toils of Guiana, 
 can hardly yet be described as proving an agreeable 
 passage, for time has not yet been allowed to carry 
 any over. But the experiment already made in the 
 Mauritius furnishes the means of commendation, and 
 that passage has been distinctly termed by the schemers 
 one of no suffering, but of sufficient ease and comfort 
 to the cargoes. So they have described the change of 
 the Coolie's situation as beneficial to him. " They 
 are represented," it is said (p. 23,) " to be much 
 pleased with their new situation, it being considered 
 by them as more desirable and beneficial than that 
 from which they have been removed" in the very 
 language, your Lordships observe, of the Slave traders 
 and their defenders fifty years ago. The experience 
 of the Mauritius Planters is in these papers cited at 
 large, and paraded through many a long page, to shew 
 how happy is the lot of the transported labourer in 
 the bondage of that blissful land. The queries sent 
 to various proprietors are given at length, with the 
 answers returned by them. The fourth question, as 
 to the comforts and happiness of the imported appren- 
 tices, is answered alike by all but one, from whom the 
 truth escapes. The others say, the men are quite 
 contented and happy, exactly as Sir William Young 
 found the African Slaves in the Leeward Islands. 
 They represent, too, the Mauritius Negroes as quite 
 pleased with their new helpmates ; and in short, never 
 was such a picture of felicity in that island, since those 
 halcyon days when 25,000 capital felonies were per- 
 petrated by the importation of as many labourers 
 clays which it was feared had been gone never to 
 return, but which this Order in Council fills the 
 Mauritian bosom with hopes of once more living to 
 see restored. That one Planter, however, gives a 
 somewhat different account of the matter. " Has any
 
 260 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 feeling of uneasiness and discontent been observable 
 among the Indian labourers on your estate as arising 
 out of separation from their families, or from any 
 other similar cause ?" The answer is signed Bickagee ; 
 and this name seems to indicate a Malabar origin ; so 
 that probably the reason why the account is so diffe- 
 rent from that of other proprietors may be, that 
 Bickagee could converse with the poor Indians in 
 their own language, as another witness who gives a 
 similar account certainly could. The answer is " Yes ; 
 and for these reasons In their country they live 
 happy and comfortable with their wives and families, 
 on three or four rupees a month. They engage to 
 leave their native country on a small increase of salary, 
 say five rupees and rations, in the hope of receiving 
 the same comfort here, but experience has proved the 
 reverse. Uneasiness and discontent arise from these 
 privations, besides their being deprived of the holidays 
 their religion entitles them to." (p. 83.) So Mr. 
 Scott, a gentleman resident in Bengal, and acquainted 
 with the people, their language, and habits, plainly 
 says, that " with very rare exceptions, he doubts if 
 there are any who congratulate themselves on the 
 bargain they have made." (125.) He makes an ob- 
 servation of much wisdom upon the inefficacy of all 
 regulations respecting treatment, and of all conditions 
 in contracts for apprenticeship. " The main result 
 of my enquiry," says he, " leads me to the conclusion, 
 that the condition of the labourer practically depends 
 on the individual character of his employer, and that 
 the terms of the agreements are trifling compared 
 with the spirit in which they are interpreted." 
 
 But let us look to the far more pressing considera- 
 tion of the way in which these poor people are brought 
 over from their own country ; for upon that, two very 
 important matters arise out of these papers, and espe-
 
 EASTERN SLAVE THADE. 261 
 
 cially Mr. Scott's report. I must, however, first turn 
 aside for a moment to show your lordships that the 
 abuses of the measure had not been unforeseen. My 
 noble friend himself at one time was awake to this 
 important consideration. He could sec it in the 
 measures of others, but in his own, all such suspicions 
 are lulled asleep. When ho first received the ordi- 
 nance made by the Court of Policy in Demerara, he 
 at once warned them against letting it become the 
 cover for Slave dealing, describing it as essential that 
 no apprentice from Africa should be brought over. 
 His words are remarkable, and I apply them dis- 
 tinctly to the measure of my noble friend himself, now 
 under your consideration. " If, (said he, in a despatch 
 dated October 3, 1836, p. 11,) labourers should be re- 
 cruited on any part of the African coast, the conse- 
 quence would inevitably be direct encouragement to 
 the Slave trade in the interior, and a plausible, if 
 not a just, reproach against this country of insin- 
 cerity in our professions on that subject." A plau- 
 sible, if not a just reproach ! Truly the reproach is 
 still more just than it is plausible ; and so my noble 
 friend's colleague,* under whom the foreign concerns 
 of this country flourish as much as our colonial affairs 
 do under himself, will find in the first attempt which 
 he may make to treat for the abolition of the foreign 
 Slave traffic. I can tell him that far less ingenuity than 
 falls to the lot of Spanish, and above all Portuguese 
 negotiators, will be required to shut his mouth with 
 this Order in Council, as soon as he tries to open it 
 against the Portuguese or Spanish enormities which 
 all England, and both Houses of its Parliament, are 
 vociferously urging him to put down. They will 
 hold, and truly, that they have a just right to tax us 
 
 * Lord Palmerston.
 
 2G2 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 with insincerity, and with fraud and dishonesty, if, 
 while we affect to reprobate Slave trading in them 
 under its own name, we continue to carry it on our- 
 selves, under false pretences, and by a false and bor- 
 rowed title. As long as Africans are brought over 
 under the vile Order by the name of apprenticed 
 labourers, it is still more just than it is plausible to 
 accuse us of that insincerity and those frauds ; and 
 how does my noble friend* escape the charge ? By a 
 regulation which he adds to the ordinance, and which 
 I pledge myself instantly to demonstrate does nothing- 
 whatever to prevent the very thing here denounced. 
 Nothing of the kind, absolutely nothing has been done 
 by the additional provision of my noble friend. For 
 what is that provision? You will find it in page twenty- 
 one, and it only makes indentures of apprenticeship 
 void if executed in Africa, or the adjacent islands 
 inhabited wholly or in part by the Negro race. Why, 
 what signifies that ? Who is prevented by such a 
 flimsy folly as that article, from carrying over as many 
 Africans as he pleases, and in whatever way he likes ? 
 To escape this most ridiculous check, the Slave trader 
 (my noble friend himself calls him by this name) has 
 only to take the Negroes on board of the Slave-ships, 
 and there execute their indentures, or to Brazil, or to 
 Cuba, or to Monte Video, or, indeed, to Guiana itself; 
 and then he complies with the conditions of this incon- 
 ceivable restriction, and imports as many Negroes as 
 he pleases, and can afford to buy. To be sure, there 
 is added another provision of the same notable kind, 
 requiring that all contracts be made and witnessed 
 before two justices, or, it is added, magistrates. What 
 then ? The Slave trader has only to carry his prey, 
 his human victims, to the Mauritius, where he will 
 
 * Lord Glenclg.
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. "2G3 
 
 find two, aye, twenty, magistrates full ready to help 
 him, and to do any thing for the encouragement of the 
 business there most popular, the Slave trade ; or if it 
 be the western coast of Africa which he has been 
 desolating with his traffic, under the encouragement 
 of this Order in Council, he has only to touch at the 
 Brazils, where all Slave traders are at home ; or at 
 Monte Video, where the governor took a bribe of 
 10,000 to allow, in the teeth of the Spanish law, 
 two thousand Slaves, which he termed, in the language 
 of these papers, and this Order in Council, labourers, 
 to be introduced ; or at Cuba, where the governor 
 does not suffer the sailing of Slave ships to be an- 
 nounced in the newspapers, for fear of our cruisers 
 being thereby warned and stopping them. In all these 
 Slave trading ports, justices, and magistrates, and 
 governors too, will ever be ready to witness indentures 
 for Guiana, and make this most ludicrous provision 
 utterly void and of no effect. 
 
 But the despatches of my noble friend are not the 
 only documents which show that the abuses of this 
 intercourse have been alluded to before now though 
 no precautions whatever have been adopted to prevent 
 them. Some few years ago, a Mr. Letord propounded 
 to the governor of the Mauritius a plan for importing 
 twenty thousand African labourers, as he called them, 
 in the phraseology of the Order in Council so familiar 
 to all Slave traders. He was to obtain them by nego- 
 tiation with the chiefs of the country, and to appren- 
 tice them for a limited time. His plan was circum- 
 stantially and elaborately framed, and reminds me of 
 what a learned friend of mine, now Advocate-general 
 in Bengal,* used to say at Guildhall, on such esti- 
 mates, that with a little pen and ink he would under- 
 
 * Mr. Pearson.
 
 26* EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 take by figures to pay the national debt in half an 
 hour. The ingenious projector, (who I understand 
 was one of those most deeply concerned in the Mauri- 
 tian Slave-trading some time ago, and therefore well 
 versed in the subject,) gave his plan the name of 
 " Projet d'Emancipation Africane" for he was of 
 course to liberate all the Slaves he bought of the 
 chiefs, or kidnapped on his own account, and to con- 
 vert them, as the plan of our government proposes, 
 into Indentured Apprentices. Your lordships smile 
 at the plan and its title, because you see through the 
 trick at once so did the worthy Governor General 
 Nicolay whose answer was shork whose refusal was 
 flat and unqualified just such as the Government at 
 home should have given to the Letords of Guiana. He 
 said he had read the details of the plan " with much 
 interest, and felt bound to give it his unqualified 
 refusal, considering it, however speciously coloured, 
 as neither more nor less than a renewal of the Slave 
 trade, and therefore entirely inadmissible," p. 24. 
 And so to be sure it was. Your lordships saw through 
 the cunning trick and its flimsy disguise at once, and 
 you smiled when I stated it. But I now ask if there 
 is one single tittle of the plan thus instantly seen 
 through, which differs from the present project for 
 Guiana ? I defy the most ingenious, subtle, and astute 
 person who now hears me to show any one thing that 
 could have been done under Letord's plan, denounced 
 by Sir W. Nicolay, as common Slave-trading in 
 other words felony which may not be done exactly 
 in the same manner if this Order in Council is suffered 
 to continue in operation. My noble friend will answer 
 me and defend or explain his measure. I call upon 
 him to point out, if he can, one single particular in 
 which the project rejected as felonious by Governor 
 Nicolay, with the entire approval of the Government
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 265 
 
 at home, differs from the project aided and sanctioned 
 by that same Government, and under their auspices 
 inflicted upon Africa and Asia too, for the benefit of 
 the Guiana planters and their Slave trading captains. 
 My noble friend is now challenged to this comparison, 
 and having given him ample notice, and in very dis- 
 tinct terms, I expect I am entitled to expect that 
 he shall point out wherein the two schemes differ, 
 and what act of Slave-trading that is of felony can 
 be perpetrated under the one, which may not, with the 
 most perfect ease and safety, be perpetrated under 
 the other. 
 
 Here, my lords, I might rest, and safely rest, my case. 
 For if I have shown to demonstration not only that 
 abuse is inevitable that no regulation can prevent it, 
 but also that none have ever been attempted if I 
 have further shown, out of my noble friend's own 
 mouth, and that of the Mauritius government, whose 
 proceedings he wholly approved and adopted, that 
 without precautions, which never have been taken or 
 thought of, the project is one of disguised, and but 
 thinly disguised, Slave-trading : surely I am not bound 
 to go further, and prove that already, and while in 
 its infancy, the results proved to be inevitable have 
 actually flowed from it ; that kidnapping has filled 
 our vessels, and that waste of life, and misery has 
 been endured on the middle passage. Nevertheless, 
 I am prepared to prove this likewise, superfluous 
 though it be ; and thus to remove the very last 
 vestige of doubt, to preclude every opening through 
 which a cavil can enter into the discussion. 
 
 I here again revert, in the first place, to the report 
 of the only persons, or one of the only two persons, 
 who were capable of giving information on the sub- 
 ject, by their knowledge of the language in which 
 alone these poor Hindoos can converse. Mr. Scott
 
 266 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 gives this truly remarkable statement ; his words are 
 few, but the single sentence speaks volumes. " They 
 all stated (says he, page 125) that they left Calcutta 
 under the impression that they were going to the 
 Company Babustie (Company's Village), the name by 
 which the Mauritius is designated" but by whom? 
 In the vernacular tongue of India ? By all men in 
 common parlance? Oh no, nothing of the kind! 
 But " by the agents in India !" by the Slave trader's 
 agents ; by his crimps, his inveiglers, his kidnappers. 
 Mr. Scott adds, " How far the term was complimen- 
 tary or compulsory I cannot say ;" so that he has his 
 suspicions of these poor ignorant people being made 
 to believe that they might be compelled to go to the 
 Mauritius as a part of the Company's territory. He 
 adds this remarkable observation : " While I make 
 no charge of misrepresentation, I am bound to 
 acknowledge the difficulty of correctly and intelligibly 
 describing an island in the Indian Ocean to a person 
 who had never seen the sea, or knew what an island 
 was." Some there may doubtless be who will say, 
 that this representation of the Mauritius, where the 
 powers of Leadenhall-street have not one servant, and 
 possess not one yard of ground, being a village of 
 the Company, was plausibly rather than justly made. 
 For my part I hold it to have been wickedly, deceit- 
 fully, fraudulently, crimpingly, kidnappingly done, and 
 with the purpose of inveigling, and cheating, and 
 carrying away the natives of Asia, after the most 
 approved practices of Slave trading, in their nefarious 
 proceedings on the African coast. My noble friend 
 must have turned his attention to this subject as well 
 as Mr. Scott. He long presided at the India Board, 
 he had under his protection the natives of the 
 country, to whom he and his respected family have 
 long been the friends ; he had studied their temper
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 267 
 
 and their habits from his youth ; ho had an acquain- 
 tance possessed by few, an hereditary acquaintance 
 with all that belongs to this subject ; and, before 
 he issued an order for the emigration of these poor 
 creatures, he must have well weighed all its conse- 
 quences, having regard to their nature, and their 
 knowledge. This matter is not one that arises indi- 
 rectly, or unexpectedly, or by any unforeseen accident, 
 out of the scheme. On the front of that scheme it is 
 graven in legible letters ; it is A Plan for enabling 
 planters in the West to import natives of the East 
 into their Colonies. Then my noble friend must have 
 often asked himself the natural and indeed unavoid- 
 able question which I now ask him, as Mr. Scott has 
 suggested it from a knowledge of Indian affairs far 
 less extensive than his own What hopes can we 
 entertain of ever being able to make a Hindoo, a 
 Coolie from the inland territory of the Company, a 
 poor native who has never seen the ocean, or any 
 sheet of water larger than the tank of his village, or 
 the stream in which he bathes comprehend the nature 
 of a ship and a voyage, the discomforts of a crowded 
 hold, the sufferings of four months at sea, the labours 
 of a sugar plantation, the toils of hoeing, and cutting, 
 and sugar boiling under a tropical sun toils under 
 which even the hardy Negro is known to pine, and 
 which must lay the feeble and effeminate Asiatic 
 prostrate in the scorched dust ? But will my noble 
 friend really take upon him to say that one single 
 Hindoo is embarked for Guiana, who can form the 
 idea of what the voyage alone must expose him to ? 
 We are here not left without proof. Experience has 
 already pronounced upon the voyage from Hindostan 
 to the Mauritius ; these papers paint it as a worthy 
 companion for the middle passage. I hold in my 
 hand the despatch from the Mauritius Government of
 
 268 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 April last, in which three vessels are said to have 
 carried over, one of them two hundred and twenty- 
 four, the other, two hundred, and the third, seventy- 
 two labourers, as you are pleased to term, what I 
 plainly name Slaves. Each had a full cargo of rice 
 besides so that the despatch says, they could not have 
 proper accommo,dation for the Indians, nor protection 
 from the weather, nor had any one of the three a 
 medical officer. The William Wilson, out of two 
 hundred and twenty-four, lost thirty-one on the 
 voyage a sacrifice to the pestilential hold in which 
 they were compelled to breathe. The Adelaide, still 
 worse, lost twenty-six out of seventy-two between 
 a third and a half in five or six weeks. The statements 
 I have given from the Slave-trader's arguments in 
 J788 and 1791 were absurd enough when they repre- 
 sented the mortality of the middle passage as one in 
 the hundred. But never did I hear it put higher 
 than this, of thirty or forty per cent. Only see once 
 more how the record of your own Statute Book rises 
 up in judgment against your own conduct ! While 
 you not merely allow, but encourage and stimulate 
 the carrying away of untutored Indians and savage 
 Africans from the desolate shores of Malabar and Cey- 
 lon and Mosambique, giving free scope to all the prac- 
 tices of fraud and treachery, which the arts of wicked 
 ingenuity can devise to entrap them, and bear them 
 into bondage, that the sordid desires of a few grasping 
 planters may be gratified, read the wise and humane 
 words on the front of the British statute read them 
 and blush for shame ! " Whereas in various parts" Of 
 Hindostan ! Of the Indian Archipelago ! Of the 
 Mosambique and Sofala coasts ? No but " of the 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, per- 
 sons have been seduced to leave their native country 
 under false representations, and have suffered great
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 2G9 
 
 hardships for want of provisions and proper accommo- 
 dation, and no security whatever being- afforded that 
 they shall be carried to the ports for which they have 
 agreed be it therefore enacted." Has the faintest 
 attempt been made to afford such security to the 
 Indian and the African, as this statute anxiously pro- 
 vides for the free and enlightened native of our own 
 island ? any precaution against his being trepanned, 
 and seduced on board, under representations that he 
 is only going to another village of his own country, 
 where he will enjoy his own ease, work in his own 
 way, and worship according to his own religion ? 
 any precautions against being hurried away by 
 force, while others are decoyed by fraud ? 'any pre- 
 cautions against being scantily provided and pestilen- 
 tially lodged ? any precaution against his being 
 carried to one destination, after bargaining for ano- 
 ther? Nothing whatever of the kind. But indeed 
 such precautions, though practicable where they are 
 little wanted on the coasts of this country, studded 
 with custom-house establishments, and round which 
 a cordon of revenue officers is drawn by day and by 
 night, must prove wholly ineffectual where they are 
 most wanted on the desert strands of the Eastern 
 Ocean. And you see the results in the documents I 
 have just read ; where the frauds and the force of the 
 embarkation, and the dreadful mortality of the voyage, 
 are recorded in imperishable proofs of the crimes you 
 have dared to encourage. 
 
 Therefore it is, my lords, that I have deemed it 
 my indispensable duty to drag before you this iniquit- 
 ous measure ; therefore it is that I have yielded to the 
 sacred obligation of going through a subject as painful 
 to handle as it was necessary to be examined ; there- 
 fore it is that I have waded, at extreme suffering to 
 myself, through the agonizing detail of the Slave
 
 270 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 traffic ; and therefore it is that I have, with- unspeak- 
 able anxiety but an anxiety occasioned far more by 
 the importance of the question than by its difficulty 
 or any disinclination to grapple with it laid bare the 
 enormities of this proceeding, and set forth its glaring 
 inconsistency with the great Act of Abolition, from 
 the principles of which, I had fondly hoped, no Eng- 
 lish statesman Avould ever be found daring enougli 
 to swerve. My lords, I have for more than a quarter 
 of a century been the supporter in Parliament of that 
 great measure of justice. But at every period of my 
 life since I reached man's estate, I have been its 
 active, zealous, eager, though, God knows, feeble sup- 
 porter, wherever I could hope to lend it assistance. 
 For this holy cause I have been a fellow-labourer with 
 the greatest men this country ever produced, whether 
 in the Senate, in the Courts, or at the Bar elevated 
 to the ermine, or still practising in the forum. With 
 them I have humbly though fervently fought this good 
 fight, and worked at this pious work with them who 
 are gone from hence, as with those who yet remain. 
 And we had indeed well hoped they who are no 
 more, and they who still survive to venerate the names 
 of the forerunners, and tread if it be possible in their 
 footsteps that we had succeeded in putting down for 
 ever the monstrous traffic in human flesh. Could I 
 then see this attempt to revive it, and hold my peace? 
 I could not have rested on my couch and suffered this 
 execrable work to be done uninterrupted to be done. 
 I required not to be visited by those surviving friends 
 of whom I just now spake required not to be roused 
 by the agitation of public meetings required not the 
 countless applications of those whose disinterested 
 patriotism, whose pure benevolence, whose pious phi- 
 lanthropy, endearing them to my heart, have won for 
 them the universal confidence of mankind. No ! my
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 2?1 
 
 lords ; I could not slumber without seeing before me 
 in visions of the night the great and good men who 
 have passed away, seeming as if they could not taste 
 their own repose, while they forbade me the aid of 
 rest, until I should lend my feeble help, and stretch 
 forth this hand to chase away the monster Slave-trade 
 from the light he once more outrages, back to the den 
 where he had been chained up by their mightier arms. 
 Justly famous of other times ! If it be not given us 
 to emulate their genius, to tread the bright path of 
 their glory, to share in the transcendent virtue which 
 formed their chief renown let us at least taste that 
 joy which they valued above all others for that en- 
 joyment we too can command to bask in the inward 
 sunshine of an approving conscience, athwart which 
 no action of their illustrious lives ever cast a shade ! 
 
 I move you to resolve that the Order in Council of 
 the 12th July 
 
 " 1. That the Order in Council of the 12th of July, 
 1837, was passed for the purpose of enabling the pro- 
 prietors of Guiana to import into that Colony, as 
 apprenticed labourers, the natives of countries within 
 the limits of the East India Company's Charter, before 
 it was known that any law had been enacted in India 
 for their protection, and has been suffered to remain 
 in force after it was known that the law enacted in 
 India on the 1st of May, 1837, and transmitted by a 
 despatch of the 7th of June, is wholly insufficient to 
 afford them such protection as is required, and to pre- 
 vent the evils to which such traffic is exposed, while 
 there are no means of preventing the greatest abuses 
 from being practised, both in Asia and in Africa, 
 under colour of the traffic, which it is the professed 
 object of the Order in Council to facilitate and en- 
 courage : 
 
 "2. That the said Order in Council of the 12th of
 
 272 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 July, 1837, was improperly issued and ought to be 
 recalled." 
 
 THE REPLY. 
 
 The masterly speech which has just been delivered 
 by my noble friend,* while it calls for my cordial 
 thanks, relieves your Lordships from hearing many 
 points, which he has handled, discussed far less effec- 
 tively by me, in availing myself of the right of reply, 
 which your courtesy bestows. But a few words of 
 explanation are required by one or two things which 
 have fallen from the noble Duke,f for whom I enter- 
 tain the most unqualified respect, and whose authority, 
 as a practical Statesman, I place in the foremost rank. 
 
 First, however, I must express my unbounded 
 astonishment at the Speech of my noble friend. t 
 Not only has he left wholly unnoticed my distinct and 
 formal challenge, to show wherein this measure differs 
 from the scheme of Letord, which all the authorities, 
 both in the Mauritius and at home, stigmatised as a 
 mere blind for a Slave trading adventure ; but he has 
 argued the whole question as if there were no Madras 
 on the map of Asia no Bombay no Ceylon, for 
 which no rules are made no Pondicherry belonging 
 to France, for which we cannot make any rule no 
 Goa in the hands of Slave trading Portugal no Afri- 
 can Coast within the Company's limits and for which 
 there exists not an authority on earth that can make 
 a single rule, or watch a mile of the sea board. The 
 whole reliance has been placed on the law made at 
 Calcutta by my noble kinsman, the Governor Gene- 
 ral in Council^ a law of no kind of value, had it 
 comprehended all Asia and Africa too a law in 
 which my noble relation attempted little and effected 
 
 Lord Ellenborough. f The Duke of Wellington. 
 
 Lord Glenclg. Lord Auckland.
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 273 
 
 less pretending 1 to prevent hardly anything, and 
 really preventing nothing at all feeble in its provi- 
 sions impotent in its enactments insignificant in its 
 rubric a blank in its body when every one knows, 
 and I had expressly so argued it, that no law made 
 by the Governor in Council (if in Council the poten- 
 tate who made such a thing can be said to sit) has 
 any force or effect whatever, were it as omnipotent as 
 it is inefficient, beyond the presidency of Fort Wil- 
 liam, and never could affect a single atom of the 
 traffic which most of all this measure is intended to 
 encourage, and which most requires regulation and 
 control. But in overturning the whole speech of my 
 noble friend, I have also disposed of the noble 
 Duke's. For his only reason for resisting the motion 
 and offering the Government an escape through the 
 Previous Question is their acceptance of his offer to 
 pass certain regulations. Suppose the noble Duke's 
 system were adopted to-morrow and I think I am 
 using sufficiently complimentary language when I call 
 it a system, for assuredly I do not profess to admire it 
 as much as I have hitherto been wont to admire all 
 its author's productions, whether as a soldier or as a 
 statesman Suppose my noble kinsman* had enacted 
 every tittle of it in Council, instead of his own puny 
 regulation of the first of July still it would have 
 been confined to Bengal. 
 
 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. All arc included. 
 
 LORD BROUGHAM. No not Pondicherry, for 
 there you cannot legislate not Goa, for that is Por- 
 tuguese not any part of the African Coast, over the 
 whole of which this measure of July sweeps, envelop- 
 ing all in the Slave trade. That measure, our Order 
 in Council, is now given up it cannot for an instant 
 
 * Lord Auckland. 
 VOL II. S
 
 274 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 stand for every argument urged in its defence as- 
 sumes that it must be accompanied or followed by 
 other regulations, some of which have not been, others 
 of which never can be made. The noble Duke ad- 
 mits this as distinctly as my noble friend. Then I 
 shew you places without number, where no regula- 
 tions whatever can be made by all the powers and 
 authorities existing in the empire, and that is decisive 
 against the Order in Council. I have waited, and in 
 vain, for any answer to this main branch of the argu- 
 ment from the noble Secretary of State I put it to 
 him in every form, and he makes no sign. Therefore 
 that Order stands convicted namely, by confession 
 it stands convicted of leaving the door ajar to the 
 African Slave trader, under the fairer name of en- 
 couraging the trade in apprentices for I call it as 
 bad as leaving the door ajar, to affect shutting the 
 main gate while you leave half a yard to the one side, 
 a door wide open, through which the whole body of it 
 may enter, and which there exists no power within 
 your reach, nay, no power on this earth, that can 
 shut it. 
 
 Much was said by the noble Duke of the value of 
 Colonial possessions, the necessity of more hands to 
 cultivate our plantations, and the tendency of these 
 Resolutions to prevent their importation. But here 
 it is that the noble Duke has entirely mistaken both 
 the tenor of my opinions, and the scope of the Resolu- 
 tions. I am not one of those who object to Colonial 
 establishments. Many men for whom I have a great 
 and just respect do go this length. My opinion dif- 
 fers from their's. I lately stated how I draw the line. 
 I make a great distinction between such Colonies as 
 those on the main land of North America, where men 
 settle without the plan of returning home, where the 
 property is in the hands of personal residents, and
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 275 
 
 which are extensive enough to defend themselves. 
 When these are able to stand alone, when it is no 
 longer of mutual benefit that the colonial relation 
 should continue, the separation is advantageous to 
 both parent state and settlement. But as I lately 
 stated in the argument I held with my noble friend,* 
 now absent, unfortunately, from a domestic affliction, 
 the Slave Colonies are differently circumstanced ; and 
 no one can doubt the mutual benefits of their con- 
 tinued dependance upon the mother country. They 
 are important to our commerce, and still more to our 
 income and wealth we are of use towards their 
 defence and in a military point of view the connexion 
 may be exceedingly material. I have not therefore 
 a word to say against the noble Duke's high value 
 which he sets upon such possessions. How far their 
 cultivation, after the Emancipation Act comes into 
 full play, will require an importation of labourers from 
 the East, is quite another question. But then it is 
 one on which these Resolutions pronounce no opinion 
 whatever. I defy any man to point out one line of 
 either Resolution which even looks in that direction. 
 Why do I thus confidently say so ? Because I pur- 
 posely framed them so as to keep quite clear of a 
 subject on which I knew men might differ widely, 
 while they all agreed in the main object of censuring 
 the Order in Council. But says the noble Viscount,f 
 following the noble Duke, whose unwillingness to 
 remove him from the office holden at his Grace's 
 pleasure seems to have excited a just feeling of thank- 
 fulness, a great experiment is about to be made. We 
 cannot tell, he says, what may happen in 1840 I 
 hope and trust that will be all known two years earlier 
 therefore, he adds, let us be on our guard. Why 
 
 * Lord Ashburton.. t Lorcl Melbourne.
 
 276 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 not ? Certainly let us bo on our guard but do you 
 say a single word to shew that this Order in Coun- 
 cil for importing more Apprentices puts us more 
 on our guard ? What will betide us, says the noble 
 Duke, should the emancipated Negroes refuse to work 
 for hire ? How will your estates then be cultivated ? 
 and how can you tell that they will pass from the 
 state of Slavery to that of industrious workmen? 
 How can I tell ? Why, by looking at what they are 
 already doing in Jamaica and Barbadoes, where 
 they work every spare hour voluntarily for wages 
 in Antigua and Bermuda, where they have been as 
 free as the peasantry of Hampshire for near three 
 years, and have worked as hard and behaved themselves 
 as well. On this head, then, I have not the shadow 
 of a doubt, nor am I entitled to have if experience 
 can be trusted as a safe guide. But furthermore 
 suppose me quite wrong suppose the whole expe- 
 rience of the past belied by the future, and that all 
 the Negroes refuse to work the moment the hour of 
 their liberation strikes here are eight hundred thou- 
 sand idle and dissolute, and restless and rebellious 
 Negroes (for there can be no middle state between 
 peace with industry, and idleness with revolt) and 
 the noble Duke would keep all quiet, and reclaim all 
 from idleness, by sprinkling over this vast mass three 
 or four thousand Coolies from Asia. The supposition 
 is that all the West Indies are in a state of inaction 
 first presently after of insurrection and confusion 
 no work done but that of mischief no labour, no 
 quiet, no subordination all is a mass of confusion, 
 and every portion of the vast population is in a fer- 
 ment when sprinkling over the boiling mass a few 
 peaceful and indolent natives of Hindostan will at once 
 restore universal quiet, and all will suddenly sink 
 down to rest !
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 2? 7 
 
 Hi motus animorum, atquc lirec ccrtamiua tanta 
 Pulveris cxigui jactu comprcssu quiescent ! 
 
 But I have said, my lords, that these resolutions 
 pronounce no judgment whatever upon the policy of 
 importing new hands. All my opinions on this sub- 
 ject may be as erroneous as you please the noble 
 Duke's and the Government's under his protection, as 
 well grounded as possible whatever may be my pri- 
 vate opinion, you are to vote on the Resolutions, and 
 not on the speech that introduces and defends them ; 
 and he who holds as high, as the noble Duke, the neces- 
 sity of introducing new labourers, may most correctly 
 and earnestly join with him who has no opinion of the 
 kind, in supporting resolutions which leave the ques- 
 tion wholly untouched. Nay, the more I was of the 
 noble Duke's opinion the higher I valued the impor- 
 tation as a resource the more should I vote for these 
 Resolutions because they go only to condemn a most 
 erroneous mode of trying this experiment a mode 
 which its authors shrink from defending, and which the 
 noble Duke and every one else join in condemning, as 
 not giving the experiment fair play. Can any thing 
 indeed be more unfair towards that experiment than 
 trying it in such a clumsy, bungling manner, as to 
 bring upon it the odium of being a new Slave trade ? 
 
 While, however, this is the clear and undeniable 
 posture of the question in debate, I cannot at all aban- 
 don the jealousy and indeed the aversion with which 
 I regard all plans whatever of wholesale shifting of 
 population. Nor am I in the least degree won over 
 to such plans by hearing their defence clothed in 
 language drawn from the science of political economy. 
 My noble friend calls it " a free circulation of labour," 
 and professes his reluctance to abandon on this subject 
 his tenets as an Economist. I have heard the terms 
 and the doctrines of political economy turned to many
 
 278 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 uses in my time. They have been used to defend 
 state lotteries insurances in the lottery stock job- 
 bing time-bargains in the funds. Why, it is said, 
 should there be any interference with the free use of 
 capital, or of skill and of labour in these departments 
 of industry? On the Continent it has been applied 
 to even baser uses and made to defend the establish- 
 ment of public stews, under due regulations for the 
 benefit of the subject. But I own I have never yet 
 heard those principles applied where they were more 
 out of place and season than to the subject of the 
 Slave trade. Can any man in his sober senses think 
 of calling the wholesale embarking of Hindoos, and 
 then transporting them to the antipodes, to work in 
 ways wholly unknown to them and foreign to their 
 nature and habits, and pretend that giving it facilities 
 encouragement stimulants is furthering the free 
 circulation of labour ? The argument against all this 
 plan is, that there is mere Slave trading in every part 
 of it that a felony lurks under each of its arrange- 
 ments. Then do the political economists and my 
 noble friend, who is so vigorous a stickler for their 
 doctrines, hold that the circulation of labour is inter- 
 rupted by preventing the Slave trade ? If they do 
 nor can they stop a hair's-breadth short of this then 
 I am for abiding by the law of God and the law of 
 the land, let their laws of political economy fare how 
 they may. 
 
 The noble Duke has proposed certain terms to the 
 Government, as the price of his support " Promise 
 me you will adopt my code of regulations," says he, 
 " and you shall not be condemned by a vote of censure 
 this time." The hook so baited was sure to take 
 the Ministers bit immediately but they were not 
 caught. " Oh yes by all means'" Any thing you 
 please," says the noble Viscount " we agree at
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 279 
 
 once" to what ? Not to the proposal made ; but 
 only to consider of it " We will take it into our 
 best consideration." I don't much think this kind of 
 acceptance will catch the noble Duke. He saw the 
 noble Viscount swallow the bait but he had not 
 caught his fish away it ran with the line in its 
 mouth, down the stream, and buried itself in " serious 
 consideration." Why, I defy the noble Duke to 
 propose any one thing on any one subject, which the 
 Government, and all the House, and the country too, 
 will not, as a matter of course, take into serious and 
 respectful consideration. The noble Viscount will 
 consider of it ; so shall I ; but very possibly he 
 may end by thinking as little of it as I do. Consi- 
 dering of it proves no assent Le Roi iavisera, is the 
 form of rejecting bills the Sovereign lias only once 
 or twice taken any measure into consideration since 
 the Revolution, though he has assented to some thou- 
 sands; and the Minister, too, may consider and 
 reject. The nature of the noble Viscount's answer, 
 then, was, to use the phraseology of a witness on a 
 memorable occasion at that Bar, More no than yes. 
 So, as the noble Duke failed to catch the noble 
 Viscount, the noble Viscount must not expect to 
 catch the noble Duke anxious as he is to be taken 
 upon the present occasion. 
 
 I hear it said by my noble friend,* that there is 
 a wide difference between his plan and Mr. Barham's 
 in 1811, inasmuch as Slavery then existed, and the 
 Chinese were to be brought over as free labourers 
 whereas, Apprenticeship is now the law, and the 
 Hindoos are to come into a colony of apprenticed 
 labourers. That is precisely my argument to show 
 how much worse this plan is than that ; and yet that 
 
 * Lord Glcnelg.
 
 280 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 was not endured by any one who knew the subject 
 ever so imperfectly. No one would have listened to 
 Mr. Barham's proposition, but that he was to make 
 all the labourers he brought over free at once ; they 
 were to be free from every shackle imposed upon the 
 Negroes. Here the Hindoos are to be subject to 
 every restraint which the Negroes endure nay, this 
 plan is to continue for years after the Negroes are 
 set free. 
 
 But a new argument is raised by the noble 
 Viscount.* " Take care," says he, " how you set 
 men's interests against their duty, and raise their 
 strongest prejudices against Negro freedom. The 
 Slavery of the ancient world was only extinguished 
 by it becoming men's interest to prefer free labour 
 to Slave labour ; therefore, if you make free labour 
 so scarce in the West Indies as to make it dear, 
 Slavery never can cease." I am not sensible of ever 
 in my life having heard a piece of reasoning more 
 absurd in all its parts one in which the incorrectness 
 of the facts assumed, more strove for the mastery 
 with the thoughtlessness of the inferences drawn from 
 them. What ! Slavery in Europe extinguished by 
 the high price of Slave labour, or any other calcula- 
 tion of profit and loss ! Why, I had always believed 
 that it was the mild spirit of the Gospel of Christ 
 which worked by slow degrees this happy change. 
 I state the sentiments I have always heard accounted 
 just, and not out of deference to the Right Reverend 
 Prelates in whose presence I speak, and who, to their 
 immortal honour, have never once refused their sup- 
 port to any one proposition adverse to the Slave 
 Trade. But never before did I hear it doubted that 
 first the spirit of Christianity, hostile to all cruelty 
 
 * Lord Melbourne.
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 281 
 
 and oppression ; and afterwards the efforts of zealous 
 priests, even refusing the rites of the Church to men 
 unless they would free their bondsmen, gradually 
 wrought the happy change which the noble Lord 
 ascribes to a calculation of interest. But grant him 
 his facts ; how do they prove the emancipation to 
 be in any danger from a rise in the wages of labour ? 
 He talks as if the Act had never passed, and we were 
 trusting to men's interests for setting their Slaves free. 
 Happily, longer than August 1840 they cannot be 
 retained in any form of servitude. Does ho dread 
 that high wages will bring back the chain and the 
 cart-whip ? I have no share in his chimerical appre- 
 hensions. I defy all the combinations which cruelty 
 can effect with avarice to restore that hideous state 
 of society of which the knell sounded over the Atlan- 
 tic in 1833. No, no ! I will trust the Negro people 
 for that. They will keep what they have got. Trust 
 me they will set at defiance all the noble Lord's 
 calculations, and all the wishes of their former mas- 
 ters, and never more consent to work one spell of 
 work, but for their own behoof be the terms of 
 their employment ever so distasteful to their white 
 neighbours be their desire for a restoration of the 
 yoke, and the chain, and the cart whip ever so intense. 
 The renewal of the Slave Trade is a very different 
 thing. On that my fears are indeed grave and per- 
 plexing for I know the Indian crimp and the African 
 trader the inexhaustible perfidies of the dealers in 
 men, and the scope which those frauds have among 
 hordes of uncivilized men, many of them in their own 
 country Slaves the comfort and aid which those 
 wretches may reckon upon receiving from accomplices 
 ready made, such as the bribed governor on the 
 Spanish Main, and the friendly authorities of Cuba. 
 But I am told to be of good courage, and not to
 
 282 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 despond -there is no fear of abuse no prospect of 
 the horrible traffic so much condemned ever taking 
 root in our islands. I am bid to look at the influence 
 of public opinion the watchfulness of the Press the 
 unceasing efforts of all the societies the jealous vigi- 
 lance of Parliament. Am I then to stand by and 
 suffer the t traffic to be revived, in the hope that we 
 shall again be able to work its extirpation? Trust, 
 say the friends of this abominable measure, trust to 
 the force which gained the former triumph. Expect 
 some Clarkson to arise, mighty in the powers of per- 
 severing philanthropy, with the piety of a saint and 
 the courage of a martyr hope for some second Wil- 
 berforce who shall cast away all ambition but that of 
 doing good, scorn all power but that of relieving his 
 fellow -creatures, and reserving for mankind what 
 others give up to party, know no vocation but that 
 blessed work of furthering justice and freeing the 
 Slave reckon upon once more seeing a Government 
 like that of 1806 alas, how different from any we 
 now witness ! formed of men who deemed no work of 
 humanity below their care or alien to their nature, 
 and resolved to fulfil their high destiny, beard the 
 Court, confront the Peers, contemn the Planters 
 and in despite of Planter, and Peer, and Prince, crush 
 the foreign traffic with one hand, while they gave up 
 the staff of power with the other, rather than be 
 patrons of intolerance at home ! These are the views 
 with which it is sought to console us and gain us over 
 to the ill-starred measure before you. 
 
 I make for answer If it please you No by no 
 means nothing of all this. The monster is down, 
 and I prefer keeping him down to relying upon all 
 our resources for gaining a second triumph. I will 
 not suffer the Upas tree to be transplanted, on the 
 chance of its not thriving in an ungenial soil, and in
 
 EASTERN SLAVE TRADE. 283 
 
 the hope that, after it shall bo found to blight with 
 death all beneath its shade, my arm may be found 
 strong enough to wield the axe which shall lay it low. 
 I thank you for the patience with which you have 
 listened to me, and on which I have unwillingly 
 trespassed so long. My bounden duty could not 
 otherwise have been performed ; and I had no choice 
 but to act now as I have acted ever through the whole 
 of my life maintaining to the end the implacable 
 enmity with which I have at all times pursued this 
 Infernal Trade.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 LAW REFORM MR. BENTIIAM MR. DUMONT MR. 
 
 MILL SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 
 
 THE age of Law Reform and the age of Jeremy Ben- 
 tham are one and the same. He is the father of the 
 most important of all the branches of Reform, the lead- 
 ing and ruling department of human improvement. 
 No one before him had ever seriously thought of 
 exposing the defects in our English system of Juris- 
 prudence. All former students had confined them- 
 selves to learn its principles, to make themselves 
 masters of its eminently technical and artificial rules ; 
 and all former writers had but expounded the doctrines 
 handed down from age to age. Men, by common con- 
 sent, had agreed in bending before the authority of for- 
 mer times as decisive upon every point ; and confound- 
 ing the question of, what is the law, which that authority 
 alone could determine, with the question, what ought
 
 288 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to be the law, which the wisdom of an early and an 
 unenlightened age was manifestly unfit to solve, they 
 had taken it for granted that the system was perfect, 
 because it was established, and had bestowed upon 
 the produce of ignorance and inexperience their 
 admiration in proportion as it was defective. He it 
 was who first made the mighty step of trying the 
 whole provisions of our jurisprudence by the test of 
 expediency, fearlessly examining how far each part 
 was connected with the rest ; and with a yet more 
 undaunted courage, inquiring how far even its most 
 consistent and symmetrical arrangements were framed 
 according to the principle which should pervade a 
 Code of Laws their adaptation to the circumstances 
 of society, to the wants of men, and to the promo- 
 tion of human happiness. 
 
 Not only was he thus eminently original among the 
 lawyers and the legal philosophers of his own country; 
 he might be said to be the first legal philosopher that 
 had appeared in the world. For Justinian, when he 
 undertook his great work of abridging and digesting the 
 Roman law, in truth only methodised existing laws, 
 and brought into a compendious and manageable form 
 those rules which lay scattered over so many volumes, 
 that they were said to be " the load of many camels? 
 Whatever he found, or rather whatever Tribonian and 
 his coadjutors employed by the Emperor found, in the 
 edicts of Praetors,* the laws of the popular assemblies,! 
 the rescripts of former Emperors,:}: or the opinions and 
 other writings of lawyers,^ was deemed to be fixed 
 
 * Edicta Proetorum. t Leges et Plebiscita. 
 
 \ Rescripta^rincipum. Rcsponsa Prudcntum.
 
 LAW REFORM. 289 
 
 law; and accordingly the Pandects, (or Digest,) any 
 more than the Code and the Novels, contain nothing 
 which is not specially avouched by the authority upon 
 which it is given as law, and the Institutes, a work of 
 matchless beauty as an abstract or summary of prin- 
 ciples, is wholly drawn from the same sources. The like 
 may be said of the modern Codes, of which the 
 Frederician or Prussian is the most important that 
 had been compiled before Mr. Bentham's time ; and 
 although that of Napoleon, the most perfect of them 
 all, from being the growth of an age that had already 
 profited largely by Mr. Bentham's labours, contains 
 very considerable changes and improvements upon the 
 former laws ; yet these bear but a very insignificant 
 proportion to the whole mass, which is in the main 
 a digest of existing jurisprudence, and derives its 
 principal claim to the public gratitude from its 
 abolishing the local differences of the provincial 
 systems, and giving one law to the whole empire. 
 Mr. Bentham, professing to regard no existing law as 
 of any value unless it was one which ought to have 
 been made, wholly unfetters himself from any deference 
 to authority bringing the fundamental principles, as 
 well as the details of each legislative rule, to the test 
 of reason alone trying all by the criterion of their 
 tendency to promote the happiness and improve the 
 condition of mankind not only shewed in detail the 
 glaring inconsistencies and the radical imperfections 
 of the English system, but carrying his bold and 
 sagacious views to their amplest extent, investigated 
 the principles upon which all human laws should 
 be constructed, and showed how their provisions should 
 be framed for the better accomplishment of their great 
 
 VOL. II. T
 
 290 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 purpose the well-being of civil society, both as regards 
 the enjoyment of civil rights, the prevention of crimes, 
 and the encouragement of virtue. The adaptation of 
 these principles to the particular circumstances of any 
 given state, can only be ascertained by a careful exami- 
 nation of those circumstances, and, above all, by an 
 accurate attention to the laws already existing in the 
 country, and which, how ill soever contrived in many 
 respects, have always, more or less, arisen out of those 
 very circumstances. This is the business of Codifica- 
 tion, which consists in not only reducing to a system 
 and method the existing laws, but in so amending them 
 as to make them capable of accomplishing their cardinal 
 object the happiness of the community. 
 
 In thus assigning to Mr. Bentham, not merely the 
 first place among Legal Philosophers, but the glory of 
 having founded the Sect, and been the first who 
 deserved the name, it cannot be intended to deny 
 that other writers preceded him, who wisely and fear- 
 lessly exposed the defects of existing systems. Voltaire, 
 for example, great and original in whatever pursuit, whe- 
 ther of letters or of science, whether of gay or of grave 
 composition, was enlightened by his extraordinary 
 genius, had, with his characteristic vigour and sagacity, 
 attacked many false principles that prevailed in the 
 judicial systems of all nations. Filangieri, who of all 
 Avriters before Bentham comes nearest to the character 
 of a Legal Philosopher, had exposed, with the happiest 
 effect, the folly as well as cruelty of severe penal 
 inflictions ; Montesquieu, whose capacity as w r ell as 
 his learning, is unquestionable, notwithstanding his 
 puerile love of epigram, and his determination to 
 strain and force all facts within the scope of a fantas-
 
 LAW REFORM. 2.91 
 
 tical theory, had discussed with success many important 
 principles of general jurisprudence ; and Mr. Locke, 
 a far more illustrious name, had treated with his 
 wonted profoundness and accurate reflection, many of 
 the principles which bear upon the political branches 
 of legislation. But none of those great men, nor any 
 of the others through whose writings important and 
 useful discussions of legislative principles are scat- 
 tered, ever embraced the subject in its wider range, 
 nor attempted to reduce the whole of jurisprudence 
 under the dominion of fixed and general rules. None 
 ever before Mr. Bentham took in the whole depart- 
 ments of legislation. None before him can be said to 
 have treated it as a science, and by so treating, made 
 it one. This is his pre-eminent distinction ; to this 
 praise he is most justly entitled ; and it is as proud a 
 title to fame as any philosopher ever possessed. 
 
 To the performance of the magnificent task which he 
 had set before him, this great man brought a capacity, 
 of which it is saying every thing to affirm, that it was 
 not inadequate to so mighty a labour. Acute, saga- 
 cious, reflecting, suspicious to a fault of all outward 
 appearances, nor ever to be satisfied without the most 
 close, sifting, unsparing scrutiny, he had an industry 
 which no excess of toil could weary, and applied him- 
 self with as unremitting perseverance to master every 
 minute portion of each subject, as if he had not pos- 
 sessed a quickness of apprehension which could at a 
 glance become acquainted with all its general features. 
 In him were blended, to a degree perhaps unequalled in 
 any other philosopher, the love and appreciation of 
 general principles, with the avidity for minute details ; 
 the power of embracing and following out general
 
 292 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 views, with the capacity for pursuing each one of num- 
 berless particular facts. His learning was various, 
 extensive, and accurate. History, and of all nations 
 and all ages, was familiar to him, generally in the 
 languages in which it w r as recorded. With the poets 
 and the orators of all times he was equally well ac- 
 quainted, though he undervalued the productions of 
 both. The writings of the philosophers of every 
 country, and of every age, were thoroughly known to 
 him, and had deeply occupied his attention. It was 
 only the walks of the exacter sciences that he had 
 not frequented ; and he regarded them, very erro- 
 neously, as unworthy of being explored, or valued 
 them only for the inventions useful to common life 
 which flowed from them, altogether neglecting the 
 pleasures of scientific contemplation which form their 
 main object and chief attraction. In the laws of his 
 own country he was perfectly well versed, having 
 been educated as a lawyer, and called to the English 
 Bar, at which his success would have been certain, 
 had he not preferred the life of a sage. Nor did he 
 rest satisfied with the original foundations of legal 
 knowledge which he had laid while studying the 
 system ; he continually read whatever appeared on the 
 subject, whether the decisions of our courts or the 
 speculations of juridical writers; so as to continue 
 conversant with the latest state of the law in its 
 actual and practical administration. Though living 
 retired from society, he was a watchful and accurate 
 observer of every occurrence, whether political, or 
 forensic, or social, of the day ; and no man who lived 
 so much to himself, and devoted so large a portion of 
 his time to solitary study, could have been supposed
 
 LAW REFORM. 2<J3 
 
 to know so perfectly, even in its more minute details, 
 the state of the world around him, in which he hardly 
 seemed to live, and did not at all move. 
 
 But of all his qualities, the one that chiefly distin- 
 guished Mr. Bentham, and was the most fruitful in 
 its results, was the boldness with which ho pursued 
 his inquiries. Whatever obstacle opposed his course, 
 be it little or be it mighty from what quarter soever 
 the resistance proceeded with what feelings soever 
 it was allied, be they of a kind that leave men's judg- 
 ment calm and undisturbed, or of a nature to suspend 
 the reasoning faculty altogether, and overwhelm oppo- 
 sition with a storm of unthinking passion all signified 
 nothing to one who, weighing principles and arguments 
 in golden scales, held the utmost weight of prejudice, 
 the whole influence of a host of popular feelings, as 
 mere dust in the balance, when any the least reason 
 loaded the other end of the beam. And if this was at 
 once the distinguishing quality of his mind, and the 
 great cause of his success, so was it also the source of 
 nearly all his errors, and the principal obstacle to the 
 progress of his philosophy. For it often, especially in 
 the latter part of his life, prevented him from seeing 
 real difficulties and solid objections to his proposals ; 
 it made him too regardless of the quarter from which 
 opposition might proceed ; it gave an appearance of 
 impracticability to many of his plans ; and, what was 
 far more fatal, it rendered many of his theories wholly 
 inapplicable to any existing, and almost to any pos- 
 sible state of human affairs, by making him too gene- 
 rally forget that all laws must both be executed by, 
 and operate upon, men men whose passions and feel- 
 ings are made to the lawgiver's hand, and cannot all at
 
 294 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 once be moulded to his will. The same undaunted 
 boldness of speculation led to another and a kindred 
 error. He pushed every argument to the uttermost ; 
 he strained each principle till it cracked ; he loaded 
 all the foundations on which his system was built, 
 as if, like arches, they were strengthened by the 
 pressure, until he made them bend and give way be- 
 neath the superincumbent weight. A provision, 
 whether of political or of ordinary law, had no merit 
 in his eyes, if it admitted of any exception, or betokened 
 any bending of principles to practical facilities. He 
 seemed oftentimes to resemble the mechanician who 
 should form his calculations and fashion his machinery 
 upon the abstract consideration of the mechanical 
 powers, and make no allowance for friction, or the re- 
 sistance of the air, or the strength of the materials. 
 Among the many instances that might be given of this 
 defect, it may be sufficient to single out one from his 
 juridical, and one from his political speculations. Per- 
 ceiving the great benefits of individual responsibility in a 
 Judge, he peremptorily rejected all but what he termed 
 Single-seated Justice, and would allow no merit what- 
 ever to any tribunal composed of more, either for 
 weighing conflicting evidence, assessing the amount 
 of compensation, or reversing the judgments of a 
 single inferior judge. Holding also the doctrine of 
 Universal Suffrage, he would have no exception what- 
 ever, and argued not only that women, but that per- 
 sons of unsound mind, should be admitted to vote in 
 the choice of representatives. 
 
 The greater qualities of Mr. Bentham's understand- 
 ing have been described ; but he also excelled in the 
 light works of fancy. An habitual despiser of eloquence.
 
 LAW REFORM. 295 
 
 he was one of the most eloquent of men when it 
 pleased him to write naturally, and before he had 
 adopted that harsh style, full of involved periods and 
 new made words, which, how accurately soever it con- 
 veyed his ideas, was almost as hard to learn as a foreign 
 language. Thus his earlier writings are models of 
 force as well as of precision ; but some of them are 
 also highly rhetorical ; nor are the justly celebrated 
 " Defence of Usury" and " Protest against Law Taxes? 
 more finished models of moral demonstration, than the 
 Address to the French National Assembly on Colonial 
 Emancipation is of an eloquence at once declamatory 
 and argumentative. The peculiar manner of scrutinizing 
 every subject, into which he latterly fell, which, indeed, 
 he adopted during the greater portion of his life, and 
 which has been happily enough termed the " exhaus- 
 tive mode" was little adapted to combine with elo- 
 quence, or with any kind of discussion calculated to 
 produce a great popular effect ; for it consisted in a 
 careful examination of every circumstance which could 
 by any possibility affect either side of a given question, 
 and it gave the same expansion to all considerations, 
 however varying in point of importance ; whereas, to 
 convince or to strike an audience, or a cursory reader, 
 nothing can be more essentially necessary than the 
 selection of the more important objects, and making 
 them stand boldly out in relief above the rest. Another 
 consequence of his addiction to this method was, that 
 it impaired his strength both of memory and of reason- 
 ing. He investigated with a pen in his hand, trusted 
 to his eye as much as to his recollection, and enfeebled 
 his powers of abstract attention pretty much as analysts 
 are apt to become less powerful reasoners and inves-
 
 296 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tigators than geometricians. It thus happened that 
 although he disliked conversation in which more than 
 one joined, confining himself to a tete-a-t<?te, or what he 
 termed " single-fianded conversation " he exceedingly dis- 
 relished, at least for the last thirty years of his life, any- 
 thing like argument, preferring anecdote, or remark, 
 or pleasantry, in which last he was, though sometimes 
 happy, yet often unsuccessful. But, as not unfrequently 
 happens, he felt far more jealous of any disrespect shown 
 to the jokes with which his later writings were filled, 
 than of any dissent from his reasonings, although the 
 former were for the most part overlaboured, far- 
 fetched, and lumbering. 
 
 It was a result of similar prejudices that made him 
 undervalue not only eloquence, but poetry ; and he 
 was wont to express his thankfulness that we should 
 never see any more Epic poems. That he might 
 greatly prefer other exertions of original genius to 
 those which have produced the wonders of song, is 
 easily understood. But that he should deny the exis- 
 tence of the pleasure derived from works of imagina- 
 tion, or question the reality of the desire, or refuse it 
 gratification, seems wholly incomprehensible, and only 
 the more so, because his whole theory of motives pro- 
 ceeds upon the assumption, that man's constitution 
 leads him to take delight in certain enjoyments ; arid 
 no one surely can doubt the fact of the fine arts giving 
 pleasure pleasure, too, of a refined, not of a gross de- 
 scription. Nor could the devotion of some men's talents 
 to poetry be rationally grudged, when it was considered 
 how few those are whom such pursuits can ever withdraw 
 from severer studies, and how often they are persons in 
 whom such studies would find ungenial dispositions.
 
 LAW REFORM. 297 
 
 The moral character of this eminent person was, in the 
 most important particulars, perfect and unblemished. 
 His honesty was unimpeachable, and his word might, 
 upon any subject, be taken as absolutely conclusive, 
 whatever motives he might have for distorting or exag- 
 gerating the truth. But he was, especially of late 
 years, of a somewhat jealous disposition betrayed 
 impatience if to another was ascribed any part 
 whatever of the improvements in jurisprudence, 
 which all originated in his own labours, but to effect 
 which different kinds of men were required and even 
 showed some disinclination to see any one interfere, 
 although as a coadjutor, and for the furtherance of his 
 own designs. It is said that he suffered a severe mor- 
 tification in not being brought early in life into Par- 
 liament ; although he must have felt that a worse 
 service never could have been rendered to the cause 
 he had most at heart, than to remove him from his own 
 peculiar sphere to one in which, even if he had excelled, 
 he yet never could have been nearly so useful to man- 
 kind. It is certain that he shewed, upon many occa- 
 sions, a harshness as well as coldness of disposition 
 towards individuals to whose unremitting friendship 
 he owed great obligations ; and his impatience to sec 
 the splendid reforms which his genius had projected, 
 accomplished before his death, increasing as the time 
 of his departure drew nigh, made him latterly regard 
 even his most familiar friends only as instruments of 
 reformation, and gave a very unamiable and indeed a 
 revolting aspect of callousness to his feelings towards 
 them. For the sudden and mournful death of one old 
 and truly illustrious friend, he felt, as he expressed, no 
 pain at all ; towards the person of a more recent friend
 
 298 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 he never concealed his disrespect^ because he disap- 
 pointed some extravagant hopes which he had formed 
 that the bulk of a large fortune, acquired by honest 
 industry, would be expended in promoting Parlia- 
 mentary influence to be used in furthering great poli- 
 tical changes. Into all these unamiable features of his 
 character, every furrow of which was deepened, and 
 every shade darkened by increasing years, there 
 entered nothing base or hypocritical. If he felt little 
 for a friend, he pretended to no more than he felt. If 
 his sentiments were tinged with asperity and edged 
 with spite, he was the first himself to declare it ; and 
 no one formed a less favourable or a more just judg- 
 ment of his weaknesses than he himself did, nor did 
 any one pronounce such judgments with a severity 
 that exceeded the confessions of his own candour. 
 Upon the whole then, while, in his public capacity, 
 he presented an object of admiration and of gratitude, 
 in his private character he was formed rather to be 
 respected and studied, than beloved. 
 
 Among those who have been described as coad- 
 jutors to whom he and his system owed much, and 
 who were not requited by him according to their 
 deserts, M. Dumont clearly occupied the foremost 
 place. He was one of those active-minded, acute, and 
 amiable men, so well calculated to serve the cause of 
 science, and whom Geneva not unfrequently produces to 
 her great illustration men, who, endowed with facul- 
 ties that fit them for original speculation, yet devote 
 themselves, from sincere love of some important sub- 
 ject, to act as disseminators of the truths discovered by 
 others aiding them in their researches diffusing 
 knowledge which would otherwise lie hid, even after it
 
 LAW REFORM, 290 
 
 was once brought to light making it bear new and 
 often unexpected fruit, by their own culture and thus 
 acting rather the part of coadjutors and allies, than of 
 mere pioneers to the march of discovery. Among this 
 class, M. Dumont may well be reckoned the first ; and 
 he possessed all that didactic power by which it is so 
 eminently distinguished. Of extraordinary industry, of 
 great acuteness, enthusiastically devoted to the object 
 of his elucidations, gifted with a rare power of illus- 
 tration, no less able to methodise than to abridge he 
 not only thoroughly mastered all the views and all the 
 details connected with his subject, but could at once 
 perceive all its more remote connections, and all the 
 capabilities which it possessed of leading to results 
 often new to the original investigator. Whoever 
 should suppose that the process by which Mr. Ben- 
 tham's greatest works were given , to the world in 
 their present state, consisted merely in his manu- 
 scripts being entrusted to M. Dumont, and their 
 contents by him abstracted or drawn out into the form 
 of printed treatises, would commit a very great mis- 
 take. It was much more that the latter learnt the 
 subject from the notes of the former, and composed 
 the treatises as he would have done had he been the 
 discoverer of the matter, or as Mr. Bentham would 
 have done had he possessed the same talent for 
 explaining the results of his inquiries as for pursuing 
 those investigations. It is perhaps more accurate to 
 say that Mr. Bentham had abandoned, than that he 
 never possessed this power of explaining; for his 
 earliest works plainly show that he had the gift when 
 he thought fit to cultivate it. Of late years, however, 
 he never could stoop to make his speculations level to
 
 300 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the capacity of ordinary readers, independently of the 
 repulsive style which he had acquired, which must 
 have been even of laborious acquisition, and which 
 grew into an inveterate habit of writing. It may, 
 however, well be doubted, if, at any time of his life, 
 he could have produced so finished a specimen of the 
 didactic art as M. Dumont gave in his principal work, 
 the " Traite de Legislation" The most celebrated of 
 his other writings are the " Theorie de Peines et de 
 Recompenses," and the " Tactique des Assemblies 
 PMiques" 
 
 M. Dumont's eloquence as an author, the singular 
 clearness of his statements, and the felicity of his 
 illustrations, at once carried the system of Mr. Ben- 
 tham into all the literary, and, after a short interval, 
 into all the political circles also, of the Continent. 
 The accidental circumstance of the language in which 
 he wrote being that of France, served to render the 
 subject more familiar abroad, than it was, for many 
 years in the country adorned by the illustrious philo- 
 sopher's nativity and residence. But for the last 
 thirty years of his life, his speculations had become 
 quite familiar to his own fellow-citizens ; his doc 
 trines found numerous followers ; his general systei 
 was adopted by political as well as legal reformers, 
 who received the fundamental principles, while thej 
 often refused to admit the practical consequences 
 or to adopt some of the details ; and, long before 
 his death, Mr. Bentham was the acknowledged head 
 of a large and powerful sect. The light which its 
 labours have thrown upon all subjects of jurispru- 
 dence, practical as well as speculative, is of incal- 
 culable value. The tone which has been given to
 
 LAW REFORM. 301 
 
 the public mind 1ms been sound and wholesome. 
 The influence exerted upon the minds of states- 
 men has been most perceptible. The prejudice 
 against all departure from established arrangements, 
 which the optimism of even the most liberal of former 
 inquirers had rooted in men's habits of thinking-, has 
 been destroyed. The reign of reason has dethroned the 
 usurped power of mere authority ; and the advocate 
 of an existing law, found inconvenient or detrimental, 
 has cast upon him the task of defending it by 
 argument, as much as he who would propound a new 
 one. All the great improvements in our system of 
 jurisprudence which have been made during the last 
 twenty years (for it is within this period that even 
 the Taxes on Law Proceedings have been abolished,) 
 may easily be traced to the long, and unwearied, and 
 enlightened labours of Mr. Bentham and his school. 
 
 It has been already remarked that this great Re- 
 former by no means confined his attention to those 
 subjects, paramount as their importance is. He was 
 a strenuous advocate of all political reform, and 
 devoted much of his time to the discussion of it. 
 But, though whatever he did was sure to be marked 
 by his characteristic boldness and sagacity, it must 
 be allowed that his purely political speculations are 
 of a very inferior kind, when compared with those 
 which formed the principal subjects of his labours ; 
 and those which among his political speculations gave 
 the least satisfaction, were his inquiries concerning 
 ecclesiastical polity. They displayed his wonted 
 acuteness, extraordinary ingenuity, great fertility of 
 illustration ; but they were not marked by the same 
 depth of reflection which distinguished his other
 
 302 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 writings. Their prolixity was also matter of just 
 complaint ; and yet such is the power of genius, 
 even when most misapplied, that his huge volume 
 upon the Liturgy and Catechism of the Church of 
 England, though abounding in bitterness unsuited 
 to the subject, and deformed by such absurdities 
 as could scarcely be believed, is, nevertheless, found 
 by all who have had the courage to undertake the 
 perusal of it, one of the most entertaining works 
 in the world.* These, and other writings upon 
 subjects still less connected with the ordinary 
 course of his studies, were the fruits of a weak- 
 ness into which he was apt to fall during the latter 
 period of his life. After labouring at a subject for 
 a length of time, he became tired of it, and to this 
 lassitude succeeded a disgust which made it hardly 
 possible for him to resume it. He then sought relief 
 and relaxation in the variety of some very different 
 inquiry, and would often be led away to pursue it be- 
 yond all reasonable bounds. Thus his friends were at 
 one time apprehensive that the Law of Evidence (his 
 most important work next to the General Treatise,) 
 would have been wholly abandoned when half finished, 
 and the rest of his life given up to Parliamentary and 
 Church Reform. Nay, a trifling incident, as the pub- 
 lication in 1813 of the questions put to the witnesses 
 on the secret inquiry respecting the Princess of Wales 
 in 1806, so engrossed the attention of one who 
 
 * As a specimen of the absurdities alluded to above, may be given 
 the proposal to substitute feet-washing for the Sacrament of the Sup- 
 per, from one of the charities in our Saviour's history, and to have 
 divine service read by charity school boys as being cheaper than 
 ministers.
 
 LAW REFORM. 303 
 
 never could do things by halves, that for a considerable 
 time he was absorbed in the discussion of that exami- 
 nation, and the principles that should have governed 
 it. The refusal of the House of Commons to receive 
 printed petitions, some years afterwards, turned him 
 aside from all other pursuits, and produced a copious 
 treatise upon a very trivial subject, in which, too, it 
 may be observed, that he entirely misconceived the 
 the real gist of the question. It was when he had 
 become weary, and, as it were, sick of some truly im- 
 portant inquiry, and could not be got to resume it, 
 that the kindly influence of such firm and attached 
 friends as Romilly and Dumont was most wanted and 
 most beneficially exerted ; and the latter being always 
 ready to lend his useful assistance, as well as to apply 
 the stimulus of his entreaties and councils, was pro- 
 bably the means of preventing many an important 
 inquiry from coming to an untimely end. 
 
 M. Dumont was as amiable in private life as 
 he was ever justly admired in his writings, and 
 had originally been for his singular eloquence as a 
 preacher. His manners were as gentle as they were 
 polished and refined. His conversation was a model of 
 excellence ; it was truly delightful. Abounding in the 
 most agreeable and harmless wit fully instinct with 
 various knowledge diversified with anecdotes of 
 rare interest enriched with all the stores of modern 
 literature seasoned with an arch and racy humour, 
 and occasionally a spice of mimicry, or rather of act- 
 ing, but subdued, as to be palatable it must always be, 
 and giving rather the portraiture of classes than of 
 individuals marked by the purest taste enlivened 
 by a gaiety of disposition still unclouded sweetened
 
 304 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 by a temper that nothing could ruffle presenting, 
 especially, perhaps the single instance of one distin- 
 guished for colloquial powers never occupying above 
 a few moments at a time of his company's attention, 
 and never ceasing to speak that all his hearers did 
 not wish him to go on it may fairly be said that his 
 conversation was the highest enjoyment which the 
 more refined society of London and of Paris afforded. 
 No man, accordingly, was more courted by all classes ; 
 no loss was ever felt more severely than his decease ; 
 and no place in the most choice circles of literary 
 and political commerce is so likely long to remain 
 vacant. 
 
 The school of Mr. Bentham has numbered among 
 its disciples, apostles of his doctrine, others of emi- 
 nent merit, of whom unhappily death, by removing 
 one of the chief, enables us to speak, however difficult 
 it may be to speak of him as his great merits deserve. 
 When the system of legal polity was to be taught, 
 and the cause of Law Reform to be supported in this 
 country, no one could be found more fitted for this 
 service than Mr. Mill ; and to him more than to any 
 other person has been owing the diffusion of those im- 
 portant principles and their rapid progress in England. 
 He was a man of extensive and profound learning; 
 thoroughly embued with the doctrines of metaphysical 
 and ethical science ; conversant above most men with 
 the writings of the ancient philosophers, whose language 
 he familiarly knew ; and gifted with an extraordinary 
 power of application, which had made entirely natural 
 to him a life of severe and unremitting study. His 
 literary pursuits had originally directed him chiefly to 
 subjects connected with moral and political philosophy;
 
 LAW REFORM. 305 
 
 but his attention being drawn, somewhere about thirty 
 years* ago, to the writings of Mr. Bentham, he speedily 
 devoted to their study the greater part of his time ; 
 and, becoming acquainted with their celebrated author, 
 was soon received into his entire confidence, and co- 
 operated with him until his decease in the propaga- 
 tion of his philosophy.f It is in the valuable disserta- 
 tions which. Mr. Mill contributed to the Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica that the fruits of his labours in this 
 field are stored for public use ; and no one can rise 
 from the perusal of them without being convinced 
 that a more clear and logical understanding was never 
 brought to bear upon an important subject, than he 
 lent to the diffusion of his master's doctrines. His 
 admirable works on the Principles of Political Eco- 
 nomy, and of Moral Philosophy, entitle him perhaps 
 to a higher place among the writers of his age ; 
 but neither these nor his History of British India, 
 the greatest monument of his learning and industry, 
 can vie with his discourses on Jurisprudence in use- 
 fulness to the cause of general improvement, which 
 first awakened the ardour of his vigorous mind, .and 
 on which its latest efforts reposed. His style was 
 better adapted to didactic works, and works of abstract 
 science, than to history ; for he had no powers of nar- 
 rative, and was not successful in any kind of orna- 
 mental composition. He was slenderly furnished 
 with fancy, and far more capable of following a train 
 
 * 1808 or 1809. 
 
 t To his son, Mr. John Mill, we owe the preparation of Mr. 
 Bentham's second work, the Rationale of Evidence, which is ad- 
 mirably executed. 
 
 VOL. II. U
 
 306 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of reasoning, expounding the theories of others, and 
 pursuing them to their legitimate consequences, than 
 of striking out new paths, and creating new objects, 
 or even adorning the creations of other men's genius. 
 With the single exception that he had something of 
 the dogmatism of the school, he was a person of most 
 praiseworthy candour in controversy, always of such 
 self-denial that he sunk every selfish consideration in 
 his anxiety for the success of any cause which he 
 espoused, and ever ready to the utmost extent of his 
 faculties, and often beyond the force of his constitu- 
 tion, to lend his help for its furtherance. In all the 
 relations of private life he was irreproachable ; and he 
 afforded a rare example of one born in humble circum- 
 stances, and struggling, during the greater part of his 
 laborious life, with the inconveniences of restricted 
 means, nobly maintaining an independence as absolute 
 in all respects as that of the first subject in the land 
 an independence, indeed, which but few of the 
 pampered children of rank and wealth are ever seen 
 to enjoy. For he could at all times restrain his wishes 
 within the limits of his resources ; was firmly resolved 
 that his own hands alone should ever minister to his 
 wants ; and would, at every period of his useful and 
 virtuous life, have treated with indignation any project 
 that should trammel his opinions or his conduct with 
 the restraints which external influence, of whatever 
 kind, could impose. 
 
 In Parliament the principles of Law Reform made 
 at first a slower, but afterwards a rapid progress. 
 Although Sir Samuel Romilly had at all times 
 habitually applied his mind to the abuses in our sys- 
 tem, had been all his life a student of general juris-
 
 LAW REFORM. 30? 
 
 prudence, and had accordingly been always a Law 
 Reformer, yet he never hesitated in admitting his deep 
 obligations to Mr. Bentham, whose friendship he had 
 so long and so intimately enjoyed; and he would have 
 at once acknowledged himself to be of his school, 
 although his speculations, independently of Mr. Ben- 
 tham, had taken their natural course. With Mr. 
 Dumont his habits of intercourse through life were still 
 more constant and close ; they might, in fact, be said 
 to have passed the greater part of their lives together. 
 When the world sustained the irreparable loss of Sir 
 Samuel's untimely death, his labours in improving 
 the criminal code were most happily continued by Sir 
 James Mackintosh ; and it becomes a matter of duty 
 to pass no occasion which presents itself for rendering 
 justice to the exertions strenuously and successfully 
 made by this distinguished and excellent person. There 
 are, however, prudential reasons which might seem to 
 dissuade any one from attempting to sketch a cha- 
 racter that has already been touched by the master- 
 hands of those to whom the features of the original 
 were so familiarly known.* Nor could anything 
 excuse such temerity, but the consideration that the 
 historical nature of the present work at once requires 
 such an addition, and forbids its being made by resort- 
 ing to writings more or less professedly panegyrical. 
 
 To the great subject of the Criminal Law, Sir James 
 Mackintosh brought a mind well versed in the general 
 principles of legal science ; an acquaintance with 
 ethical philosophy, indeed with every department of 
 philosophy, perhaps unequalled among his contom- 
 
 * Lord Abingcr, Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Sydney Smith.
 
 308 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 poraries; and the singular advantage of having devoted 
 the best years of his life to the administration of jus- 
 tice. His mind was, besides, stored with various 
 knowledge, as well practical as scientific, and, al- 
 though he had never cultivated the exacter sciences 
 since his early years, yet his original profession of a 
 physician made the doctrines of Natural Philosophy 
 familiar to him ; and if it has been said, and justly said, 
 that no man can be thoroughly acquainted with any 
 one branch of knowledge without having some skill 
 in the others also, to no department of study is this 
 remark so applicable as to that of jurisprudence, which 
 pushes its roots into all the grounds of human science, 
 and spreads its branches over every object that con- 
 cerns mankind. He was the better prepared for suc- 
 cessfully accomplishing the task which he undertook, 
 by the singular absence of all personal virulence, and 
 even factious vehemence, which had uniformly marked 
 his course both in public and private life : it recon- 
 ciled to him those from whom he most widely differed 
 in his opinions, and tended greatly to disarm the 
 opposition with which his efforts as a Reformer were 
 sure to meet, especially among the members of his own 
 profession. This quality, together with his long ex- 
 perience as a Criminal judge, more than compensated 
 for his inferiority in weight as a legal authority, to his 
 illustrious predecessor, who, although he stood so far 
 at the head of the Bar as to have nothing like a com- 
 petitor, had yet confined his practice chiefly to the 
 Courts of Equity, and whose superior influence as a 
 statesman and a debater, might suffer some dimi- 
 nution from the opposition his more severe demeanour 
 apt to raise.
 
 LAW REFORM. 309 
 
 On the opposite side of tlio account were to be set 
 the weaknesses, most of them amiable or accidental in 
 their origin, some of which enfeebled his character, 
 while others crippled his exertions. His constitution, 
 never robust, had suffered materially from his resi- 
 dence in India. He entered Parliament late in life, 
 and, although always a most able and well-informed 
 speaker, occasionally capable of astonishing his audi- 
 ence by displays of the most brilliant kind, he never 
 showed any powers as a debater, and, being more of 
 a rhetorician than an orator, was not even calculated 
 to produce the impression which eloquence alone 
 makes ; while, as a practical man of business, in all 
 that related to the details of measures, or the con- 
 ducting them through Parliament, he was singularly 
 helpless and inefficient. It must also be admitted 
 that his mild deportment, his candid turn of mind, 
 and the gentleness of his nature, while they might 
 disarm the anger of some adversaries, were calcu- 
 lated to relax the zeal of many friends ; and he was 
 extremely deficient both in that political courage 
 which inspires confidence in allies, while it bears 
 down the resistance of enemies, and in that prompti- 
 tude, the gift of natural quickness, combined with 
 long practice, which never suffers an advantage to be 
 lost, and turns even a disaster to account. His style 
 of speaking, too, was rather of the epideictic, or exhibi- 
 tory, than of the argumentative kind ; and, as his habi- 
 tual good nature led him not only to avoid vehement 
 attacks, but to indulge in a somewhat lavish measure of 
 commendation, offence was given to friends more than 
 ever enemies were won over. Even his most celebra- 
 ted performances were less remarkable for reasoning
 
 310 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 than for dissertation; and the greatest speech he ever 
 made nor was there ever one more eminently striking 
 and successful delivered in Parliament the speech on 
 the Foreign Enlistment Bill in 1 8 1 9 although abound- 
 ing in the most profound remarks, and the most enlar- 
 ged views of policy and of general law, clothed in the 
 happiest language, and enlightened by the most felici- 
 tous illustration, was exposed to the criticism of some 
 judges of eloquence, as defective in the grand essential 
 of argument, and of that rapid and vehement decla- 
 mation which fixes the hearer's attention upon the 
 subject, making the speaker be forgotten, and leaving 
 his art concealed. 
 
 Against the purity of this eminent person's public 
 conduct, no charge whatever was ever fairly brought. 
 Few men, indeed, ever made greater sacrifices to his 
 principles while his party was excluded from power, 
 or were less rewarded for them when that party was 
 admitted to office. He had early joined with those 
 whose sanguine hopes led them to favour the French 
 Revolution, and kept them blind for a season to the 
 enormities of its authors. His " Vindicice Gallicce? 
 a work of consummate ability, was the offering which 
 he then made on the altar of the divinity whom he 
 worshipped. With most good men, he afterwards 
 agreed in repudiating indignantly, and as if ashamed 
 of his former friendship, all alliance with the Jacobin 
 party ; nor, although he perhaps went somewhat far- 
 ther in his recantation than others who never had 
 bowed at the same shrine, could he be said ever to 
 have swerved from those liberal principles which were 
 the passion of his early and the guide of his riper 
 years. Upon his return from India, he at once refused
 
 LAW REFORM. 311 
 
 the most flattering offers of place from Lord Liver- 
 pool's government ; and lie persevered, with the Whig 
 party, in a long and apparently hopeless opposition to 
 the end of the war, and throng] i fifteen years of the 
 ensuing peace. At length the party for which he had 
 sacrificed so much succeeded to power, and he, though 
 among the very first of its most distinguished members, 
 was almost entirely passed over, while men of little 
 fame, others of hardly any merit at all, and not a few 
 of Tory principles till the moment of the government 
 being formed, were lifted over his head ; and planted in 
 the cabinet of the Whigs. In that cabinet, indeed, there 
 must have been some who could not with a steady coun- 
 tenance look down upon him thus excluded, while they 
 were admitted to unexpected power. His treatment, 
 accordingly, has formed one of the greatest charges 
 against the whole arrangements then made ; but 
 justice requires that Lord Grey should be acquitted 
 of all blame in this respect ; for he had never been 
 in any habits either of personal or of party intercourse 
 with Sir James, and might be supposed to share in 
 the coldness towards him which some of the older 
 Foxites unjustly and unaccountably felt. But even 
 those members of the government, who lived with 
 him in constant habits of friendship, have much more 
 to urge in explanation of this dark passage in the 
 history of the party than is commonly imagined ; for 
 the objectors do not sufficiently consider, that, while Sir 
 James Mackintosh's health, and aversion to the habits 
 of business required by certain offices, excluded him 
 from these, others are, by invariable practice, given to 
 high rank. The occasion of his being here mentioned, is 
 the invaluable service which he rendered to the cause
 
 312 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of Law Reform; a service that must endear his 
 memory to all enlightened statesmen, and all good 
 men, independent of the other assistance for which 
 the rapid progress of liberal principles has to thank 
 him; a progress so beneficial to mankind, so pro- 
 fitable to the Whig party at large, so advantageous 
 to a select few of the Tories, now mingled with that 
 Whig party, but so utterly barren of all benefit what- 
 ever to Sir James Mackintosh himself. 
 
 After the defects in our legal system had been 
 for many years fully exposed, and the principles upon 
 which their correction should be undertaken had 
 become familiar with the reflecting portion of the 
 community, although some highly valuable improve- 
 ments had been effected by Sir R. Peel, (perhaps as 
 many as his position allowed, surrounded by those who 
 held Reform cheap, and those who held it in abhor- 
 rence), these alterations had been chiefly confined to 
 digesting the Criminal Code, and there seemed no 
 prospect of the great work of general reformation 
 being commenced, unless the attention of Parlia- 
 ment should be seriously directed towards it. The 
 motion of Mr. Brougham for a Commission to inves- 
 tigate the whole subject originated in this convic- 
 tion ; and the following is the speech with which 
 it was introduced. The view chiefly taken of the 
 subject was intended for practical purposes, and the 
 immediate correction of manifest defects. The evils, 
 inconsistencies, and absurdities of the system of
 
 LAW REFORM. 313 
 
 civil procedure were therefore singled out as the 
 principal object of attack, the rather because, in Mr. 
 Bentham's writings, the other branches of the mighty 
 subject had been more copiously handled, and because 
 it seemed manifest that the radical improvement of the 
 Remedies administered by the Courts of Law must lead 
 to the universal reformation of our jurisprudence, 
 while it afforded, in the meanwhile, substantial be- 
 nefits to the community, and won over new converts 
 to the great cause of Law Reform. The abuses in 
 courts of equity had already attracted the atten- 
 tion of Parliament, under the truly able advocacy 
 of Mr. Williams ; * and a Commission issued in 
 consequence of his exertions had led to a useful 
 though hitherto a sterile report. The defects in our 
 Criminal Law had, since the labours of Sir S. Romil- 
 ly and Sir J. Mackintosh, ceased to find defenders 
 in any quarter. The present motion produced the 
 immediate appointment of the two great Commis- 
 sions of Common Law inquiry, and inquiry into the 
 Law of Real Property, from whose labours have 
 proceeded all the important changes recently made in 
 our legal system ; and in the course of a very few years 
 the Reform of the Criminal Law, and the general sub- 
 ject of Codification was committed to the jurisdiction 
 of a third Commission, whose reports have led to all 
 the Mitigations lately effected in the enactments of 
 our Penal Code. 
 
 The Notes appended to the following speech will 
 show how far the defects which it points out have 
 
 * Now Mr. Justice Williams.
 
 314 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 already been remedied, and will consequently enable 
 us to observe what admitted imperfections still remain 
 to be removed. It appears that of about sixty capital 
 defects pointed out, about fifty-five either have 
 already been removed in whole, or in by much the 
 greater part, by Act of Parliament, or are in the 
 course of being removed by Bills now before Parlia- 
 ment, and which are quite certain to pass during the 
 present Session. 
 
 The speech upon Local Courts which follows, was 
 delivered on bringing in the Bill for 1830. That Bill 
 was then read a first time ; and, early in the next 
 Session, Mr. Brougham having been removed to the 
 Upper House, he introduced it there. The subject 
 of Parliamentary Reform engrossing the whole atten- 
 tion of Parliament and the country during the two 
 next Sessions, the Common Law Commissioners were 
 directed to consider the subject, which they fully 
 investigated, and illustrated by a valuable body of 
 evidence, from both professional and mercantile men, 
 adding the sanction of their own high authority to 
 the measure. It was, accordingly, pressed upon the 
 attention of the House of Lords, in the Session of 
 1833 ; and, having undergone full discussion on the 
 second reading, and in the Committee, where its 
 details were all settled, it was unfortunately thrown 
 out by a majority of two, on the third reading. 
 
 The Common Law Commissioners were originally, 
 Messrs. Bosanquet, Parke, Alderson, and Sergeant 
 Stephen. Upon the three first being raised to the 
 Bench, Messrs. F. Pollock, Starkie, Evans, and Wight- 
 man were added to the Commission.
 
 LAW REFORM. 315 
 
 The Real Property Commissioners are, Sir J. Camp- 
 bell, Messrs. Tinney, Sanders, Duval, Hodgson, Duck- 
 worth, Brodie, and Tyrrell. 
 
 The Criminal Law Commissioners are, Messrs. 
 Starkie, Austin, Ker, Amos, Jarcline, and Wight- 
 man.
 
 SPEECH 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PRESENT STATE OF THE LAW. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 FEBRUARY 7, 1828.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 IN rising- to address the House upon one of the 
 most important subjects that can possibly be sub- 
 mitted to the Legislature, I feel at the same time 
 deeply impressed with the conviction, that it is also 
 one of the most difficult, and certainly the largest, 
 that could engage its attention. I am aware that I 
 stand engaged to bring before you the whole state 
 of the Common Law of this country (the Common 
 Law, I call it, in contradistinction to Equity), with 
 the view of pointing out those defects which may 
 have existed in its original construction, or which 
 time may have engendered, as well as of consider- 
 ing the remedies appropriate to correct them. No- 
 thing, I do assure you, at all strengthens and bears 
 me up under the pressure of this vast and over- 
 whelming burthen, but a conviction of the paramount 
 importance, nay, the absolute necessity, of no longer 
 delaying the enquiry, or postponing the needful 
 amendments ; and the intimate persuasion I feel, 
 that I shall be able so to deal with the subject (such 
 is my deep veneration for all that is good in our 
 judicial system, and my habitual respect for those 
 in whose hands the administration of it is placed), 
 as neither to offend the prejudices of one class, nor 
 vex the personal feelings of another. But I feel a
 
 320 LAW REFORM. 
 
 confidence, also, which is unspeakable, resting on 
 another ground. I come not here to raise cavils 
 before men ignorant of the details and niceties of the 
 profession I belong to, and who, in that unavoidable 
 ignorance, would be unfit judges of their merits ; I 
 am determined to avail myself in no respect of their 
 situation, or of the absence of the learned Body of 
 the Profession, for the sake of a futile and pitiful 
 triumph over what is most valuable in our jurispru- 
 dence. I am comforted and confirmed in my reso- 
 lution, by the accidental circumstances that have 
 joined me, in some sort, to the administration of the 
 law in which I have had so considerable an experi- 
 ence. I have seen so much of its practical details, 
 that it is, in my view, no speculative matter whether 
 for blame or praise. I pledge myself, through the 
 whole course of my statements, as long as the House 
 may honour me with its attention, in no one 
 instance to make any observation, to bring forward 
 any grievance, or mark any defect, of which I am 
 not myself competent to speak from personal know- 
 ledge. I do not merely say, from observation as a 
 bystander ; I limit myself still further, and confine 
 myself to causes in which I have been counsel for one 
 party or the other. By these considerations em- 
 boldened on the one hand, and on the other im- 
 pressed with a becoming sense of the arduous duty 
 I have undertaken in this weighty matter, I will, 
 without further preface, go on, in the first place, to 
 state the points which I intend to avoid. 
 
 I shall omit Equity in every branch, unless where 
 I may be compelled to mention it incidentally, from 
 its interference with the course of the common lawj 
 not that I think nothing should be done as to Equity, 
 but because in some sort it has been already taken up 
 by Parliament. A Commission sat and enquired into
 
 LAW REFORM. 321 
 
 the subject, and produced a Report, received though 
 not yet acted upon. The Noble and Learned Lord 
 who presides in the other House, has announced his 
 intention of proposing- a Bill, founded on that Re- 
 port. I may also add, that the subject has, to his 
 own great honour, and to the lasting benefit of the 
 country, been for many years in the hands of my 
 Honourable and learned Friend, the Member for 
 Durham ;* it is still with him, and I trust his care 
 of it will not cease. 
 
 For reasons of a like kind, I pass over the great 
 head of Criminal Law. That enquiry, happily for 
 the country, since the time when first Sir Samuel 
 Romilly (a name never to be pronounced by any 
 without veneration, nor ever by me without sorrow) 
 devoted his talents and experience to it, has been 
 carried forward by my honourable and learned 
 friend the member for Knaresborough, t with va- 
 rious success, until at length he reaped the fruit 
 of his labours, and prevailed upon this House, 
 by a narrow majority, to bend its attention towards 
 so great a subject. On a smaller scale, on one 
 indeed of a very limited nature, these enquiries 
 have been since followed up by the Right Honour- 
 able gentleman who is now again Secretary of State 
 for the Home Department.^: It is not so much for 
 any thing he has actually done, that I feel disposed 
 to thank him, as for the countenance he has given to 
 the subject. He has power, from his situation, to 
 effect reforms which others hardly dare propose. 
 His connexions in the Church and State render his 
 services in this department almost invaluable. They 
 have tended to silence the clamours that would other- 
 
 * Mr M. A. Taylor, t Sir James Mackintosh, } Sir Robert Peel. 
 VOL. II. X
 
 322 LAW REFORM. 
 
 wise have been raised against the reform of the law, 
 and might possibly have proved fatal to it. If (which 
 I do not believe) he intended to limit his efforts to 
 what he has already accomplished ; if he were dis- 
 posed to say, " Thus far have I gone, and no fur- 
 ther can I go with you," the gratitude of his country 
 would still be due to him in an eminent degree, for 
 having abashed the worst enemies of improvement 
 by his countenance and support. But I trust he will 
 again direct the energies of his mind to the great 
 work of reformation, and bestow his exertions over 
 a wider space. 
 
 Another reason for avoiding this part of the 
 subject altogether, is to be found in the nature and 
 objects of the Criminal Law. I do not think it right 
 to unsettle the minds of those numerous and igno- 
 rant classes, on whom its sanctions are principally 
 intended to operate. It might produce no good 
 effects if they were all at once to learn, that the 
 Criminal Law in the mass, as it were, had been sen- 
 tenced to undergo a revision that the whole Penal 
 Code was unsettled and about to be remodelled. 
 
 I intend also to leave out of my view the Com- 
 mercial Law. It lies within a narrow compass, and 
 it is far purer and freer from defects than any other 
 part of the system. This arises from its later origin, 
 It has grown up within two centuries, or little more, 
 and been formed by degrees, as the exigency of 
 mercantile affairs required. It is accepted, too, in 
 many of its main branches, by other states, forming 
 a Code common to all trading nations, and which 
 cannot easily be changed without their general con- 
 sent. Accordingly, the provisions of the French 
 Civil Code, unsparing as they were of the old 
 municipal law, excepted the law merchant, generally 
 speaking, from the changes which they introduced.
 
 LA.W REFORM. 323 
 
 Lastly, sir, the law of Heal Property forms no 
 immediate subject of my present consideration ; not 
 that I shall not have much to propose intimately 
 connected with it, and many illustrations to derive 
 from it ; but I am flattered with the hope that the 
 Secretary for the Home Department intends himself, 
 on this subject, to bring forward certain measures, 
 by which the present system will eventually undergo 
 salutary alterations : And I cannot help here saying", 
 that whatever the Criminal Law owes to the perse- 
 vering- and enlightened exertions of the late Sir 
 Samuel Romilly, and of his successor, the member 
 for Knaresborough,* I am sure an almost equal 
 debt of gratitude has been incurred on the part 
 of the law of Real Property, to the honest, 
 patient, and luminous discussion which it has 
 received from one of the first conveyancers and 
 lawyers this country could ever boast of. My ho- 
 nourable and learned friend (the Solicitor-General) t 
 opposite, and those members of the House who are 
 conversant with our profession, will easily under- 
 stand that I can only allude to Mr Humphreys. 
 
 With these exceptions, which I have now stated 
 as shortly as I was able, and for which I shall offer 
 no apology, because it was absolutely necessary that 
 I should begin by making the scope of my present 
 purpose understood, I intend to bring all the Law 
 as administered in our Courts of Justice under the 
 review of the House ; and to this ample task I at 
 once proceed. But I shall not enlarge, after the 
 manner of some, on the infinite importance and high 
 interest which belong to the question, and the 
 attention which it, of right, claims from us, whether 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh. 
 tSir N. Tindal (now Lord Chief-Justice of Common Pleas).
 
 324 LAW REFORM. 
 
 we be considered as a branch of the Government, 
 or as the Representatives of the people, or as a part 
 of the people ourselves. It would be wholly super- 
 fluous ; for every one must at once admit, that if 
 we view the whole establishments of the country 
 the Government by the King and the other Estates 
 of the Realm, the entire system of Administration, 
 whether civil or military, the vast establishments 
 of land and of naval force by which the State is 
 defended, our foreign negotiations, intended to 
 preserve peace with the world, our domestic 
 arrangements, necessary to make the Government 
 respected by the people, or our fiscal regulations, 
 by which the expense of the whole is to be supported, 
 all shrink into nothing, when compared with the 
 pure, and prompt, and cheap . administration of 
 justice throughout the community. I will indeed 
 make no such comparison ; I will not put in contrast 
 things so inseparably connected ; for all the estab- 
 lishments formed by our ancestors, and supported 
 by their descendants, were invented and are chiefly 
 maintained, in order that justice may be duly admi- 
 nistered between man and man. And, in my mind, 
 he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with 
 no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into 
 no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about 
 us, King, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery 
 of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its 
 varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good 
 men into a box. Such the administration of jus- 
 tice is the cause of the establishment of Govern- 
 ment such is the use of Government : it is this 
 purpose which can alone justify restraints on natural 
 liberty it is this only which can excuse constant 
 interference with the rights and the property of men.
 
 LAW KEFOKM. :}>:* 
 
 I invite you then, Sir, to enter upon an unsparing 
 examination of this mighty subject ; I invite the 
 House to proceed with me, first of all, into the 
 different Courts to mark what failures in practice 
 are to be found in the system, as it M^as originally 
 framed, as well as what errors time has engendered 
 by occasioning a departure from that system ; and 
 afterward to consider whether we may not safely 
 and usefully apply to those defects remedies of a 
 seasonable and temperate nature, restoring what 
 is decayed, if it be g'ood lopping off what experience 
 has proved to be pernicious. 
 
 I. i. In the first place, let us proceed to the 
 Courts in Westminster-hall, and observe the course 
 pursued in them. The House is aware that, what- 
 ever may have been the original of our three great 
 Common Law Courts, they uow deal with nearly 
 the same description of suits ; and that, though the 
 jurisdiction of each w r as at first separate and confined 
 within very narrow limits, their functions are now 
 nearly the same. The jurisdiction of the Court of 
 King's Bench, for example, was originally confined 
 to Pleas of the Crown, and then extended to actions 
 where violence was used, actions of trespass by 
 force ; but now all actions are admissible within its 
 walls, through the medium of a legal fiction, adopted 
 for the purpose of enlarging its authority, that every 
 person sued is in the custody of the Marshal of the 
 Court, and may, therefore, be proceeded against for 
 any personal cause of action. Thus, by degrees, 
 this Court has drawn over to itself actions which 
 really belong to the great forum of ordinary actions 
 between subject and subject, as its name implies, the 
 Court of Common Pleas. The Court of Common 
 Pleas, however, in its exertions for extending its
 
 326 LAW REFORM. 
 
 business, was not so fortunate as its rival; for, though 
 it made a vigorous attempt, under Lord Chief Justice 
 North, to enlarge its sphere, it never was able to 
 obtain cognizance of the peculiar subject of King's 
 Bench jurisdiction Crown Pleas. 
 
 I hope, Sir, the House will allow me, for the sake 
 of a little divertisement in the midst of so dry a 
 matter, to state the nature of the contest between 
 the two Courts, as described by Roger North in his 
 biography of the Lord Keeper, a work of amuse- 
 ment with which I am sure my learned Friend (the 
 Solicitor-General) is as well acquainted as he is with 
 the subtleties of his profession. 
 
 It appears from his account, that the Courts of 
 King's Bench and Common Pleas had quarrelled as 
 to their respective provinces ; for he says, " The 
 Court of Common Pleas had been outwitted by the 
 King's Bench, till his Lordship came upon the cushion, 
 and that by our artifice in process called ac etiams. 
 His Lordship used the same artifice in the process 
 of his Court, where it was as good law as above. 
 But Hale exclaimed against it, and called it altering 
 the process of law j which very same thing his own 
 court had done, and continued to do every day."* 
 In another place he tells how, " The two courts be- 
 ing upon terms of competition, the King's Bench 
 outwitted the Common Pleas ;" and how the latter 
 "invented a shift" against the King's Bench. "There," 
 says he, " the Common Pleas thought they had 
 nicked them. But the King's Bench was not so 
 sterile of invention as to want the means of being 
 even with that device ;" and he shows how con- 
 cluding with this remark " The late Chief Justice, 
 
 North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guilford, &c., vol. i., p. 130.
 
 LAW REFORM. 327 
 
 Sir Orlando Bridgman, and his officers of the Com- 
 mon Pleas, gave this way of proceeding- by the King's 
 Bench very ill language, calling it an arbitrary al- 
 teration of the form of legal process, and utterly 
 against law. But the losers might speak ; they got 
 nothing else ; and the Triccum in lege carried it 
 for the King's Bench ; which Court, as I said, ran 
 away with all the business.*" 
 
 The Exchequer has adopted a similar course .; for, 
 though it was originally confined to the trial of 
 Revenue cases, it has, by means of another fiction 
 the supposition that every body sued is a debtor to 
 the Crown, and further that he cannot pay his debt 
 because the other party will not pay him, opened 
 its doors to every suitor, and so drawn to itself the 
 right of trying cases that were never intended to be 
 placed within its jurisdiction. 
 
 The first state of the Courts being that of distinct 
 jurisdiction, then of course this separation of pro- 
 vinces was praised ; afterwards, all distinction be- 
 came obsolete, and then the conflict and competition 
 were as much commended : and with far greater 
 reason, if the competition were real ; but it is almost 
 purely speculative. In the first place, the Court of 
 Common Pleas shuts its door to many practitioners 
 of the law, by requiring that a certain proportion of 
 fees should be advanced at a much earlier stage in 
 the cause than is customary in the other Courts. t 
 For who is it that must advance this money ? Either 
 the attorney himself, if it be his own cause, must pay 
 the money out of his own pocket, or, if he is acting 
 as agent for a country practitioner, he must begin by 
 
 * North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guilford, &c., vol. i., p. 203. 
 t This evil has since been remedied by the new Orders of the Judges 
 under an Act of Parliament.
 
 328 LAW REFORM. 
 
 laying out the money long- before lie can draw upon 
 his employer for reimbursement, and he is not, in all 
 cases, sure of being- repaid for those advances. In the 
 second place, clients and their attornies are induced 
 not to carry causes into the Common Pleas, by the 
 strict monopoly that exists in the advocates of that 
 Court.* I have every wish to speak with all respect 
 of the learned persons who there engross the prac- 
 tice j but as, no doubt, solicitors will have their fa- 
 vourites, and as, possibly, their clients may also have 
 their favourites, the practice not being open to all 
 barristers, prevents many suitors from resorting to a 
 court where no one can be employed for them, at 
 least in term time, except he be a sergeant ; and great 
 as the learning of that body is known to be, well 
 founded as their reputation is for skill and for zeal, 
 as well as for legal knowledge, yet the exclusive right 
 which they exercise operates to keep away business 
 from the Court ; and thus it has happened both that 
 other advocates seldom practise there at Nisi Prius 
 where the Court is open, and that much fewer suits 
 are carried to the Common Pleas than to the King's 
 Bench. The causes which thus operate to shut the 
 doors of that Court must be removed, before it can 
 hope to have its fair share of practice. 
 
 The Exchequer, in like manner, has its drawbacks, 
 though they operate in another way. There is one 
 reason why, as at present constituted, it cannot do 
 much business, or have the high reputation which it 
 ought to enjoy ; I mean the mixture of various suits 
 which are cognizable in it. It is in fact, a court of 
 all sorts of equity and of law of revenue law and 
 of ordinary law of law between subject and subject, 
 
 * This monopoly was abolished in 1832, when the Common Pleas 
 was thrown open.
 
 LAW REFORM. 3*9 
 
 as well as of law between tlic subject and the Crown. 
 This makes suitors, seeing 1 the business done in so 
 many different ways, conic to the conclusion that it 
 is not well done in any. I do not by any means as- 
 sert that this is a correct opinion, at the present 
 time ; because the Judges and the barristers employed 
 in that court do not, I am convinced, yield to any- 
 body of professional men in their knowledge of equity 
 and law. There are to be found on its bench highly 
 distinguished equity and common lawyers ; men of 
 known legal talents, and the greatest experience both 
 in Chancery practice, in Nisi Prius, and in Criminal 
 law. In what, therefore, I have said, I refer merely 
 to that species of public opinion, which, whether 
 right or wrong, has been engendered by the consti- 
 tution of the Court ; I refer, also, to the natural 
 tendency of a jurisdiction, thus open to such a variety 
 of jurisprudence, to degenerate into inaccuracy, or 
 want of effective skill in each department. But there 
 is another and more obvious reason why this court 
 does not obtain so much business as the others ; I 
 mean the limited number of attornies belonging 1 to 
 
 O o 
 
 and allowed to practise in it.* If there is cause to 
 complain, as I have been doing, of the monopoly 
 among the advocates attached to the Common Pleas, 
 there is much more cause for a similar complaint 
 touching the attornies in the Exchequer. The prac- 
 tioners in that court are four attornies and sixteen 
 clerks, arid none others are allowed to practise there; 
 if a country attorney wishes to take his cause thither, 
 the only mode by which he can do so, is to employ 
 one of the privileged attornies of the court, and divide 
 with him the profits of the suit. It is needless to 
 
 * This monopoly ha* also boon put an end to.
 
 330 LAW REFORM. 
 
 say that such a system has, of necessity, a tendency 
 at once to shut the doors of the Court of Exchequer 
 against suitors. 
 
 What, then, is the natural consequence of these 
 restrictions which prevent suitors from approaching 
 the Courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer ? Why, 
 it is this wherever there is but little business done 
 in any court, those in power are induced not to 
 place the strongest Judge in that situation ; then, the 
 small portion of business to be done renders the 
 Judge less fit for his office ; and so, by action and 
 reaction, while the little business makes the Bench 
 and the Bar less able, the inferior ability of the 
 Court still further reduces that little business. I am 
 here speaking of past times, but with a view, how- 
 ever, to what may occur at a future period. We 
 may not always have the Bench so well filled as it is 
 at present. The time may come when, if a Judge 
 were to be made, in consequence of political influ- 
 ence, who was known not to be capable of properly 
 filling the office, it might be said by those who sup- 
 ported him, " Oh, it does not matter send him to 
 the Court of Exchequer he will have nothing to do 
 there." Thus the small portion of business transacted 
 the suspicion originating from the general mixture 
 of suits carried on in different ways, that the business 
 is not well done, the monopoly of attornies, together 
 with several other causes, occasions this Court to be 
 the least frequented of any ; indeed, it has now 
 scarcely any thing to engage its attention. The 
 Judges do not sit for more than half an hour some 
 mornings, and there are hardly ever on the paper 
 more than six or seven causes for trial after term ; a 
 dozen would be considered a large entry ; * when I 
 
 * The entry of Exchequer causes is now fully equal to that of the
 
 LAW REFORM. 331 
 
 well remember Lord Ellenborough having 1 588 set 
 down for trial in London only ; and the present 
 Lord Chief Justice lately had on his paper no less 
 than 850 untried causes. I mention this to support 
 my proposition, that there is not really a free com- 
 petition between the different Courts. To say, in the 
 circumstances which I have stated, that suitors have 
 a free access to all the Courts equally, is a fiction 
 an assertion adapted to what ought to be, perhaps to 
 what is intended, but certainly not founded on the 
 fact. 
 
 Experiments have been tried to lighten the business 
 of the Court of King's Bench ; but I do not find 
 that any of them have answered the purpose for 
 which they were instituted. The first of these at- 
 tempts was made in the year 1821, when it was ar- 
 ranged that the Chief Justice should sit in one court, 
 and a Puisne Judge in another, at the same time ; 
 but never did any arrangement fail more completely. 
 The Court in which the Puisne Judge sat remained 
 almost idle, while the other Court was as constantly 
 preferred, and nearly as much overloaded as before. 
 Little else was effected but a great inconvenience 
 both to practitioners and suitors, by the passing and 
 repassing from Court to Court. In fact, it is not in 
 the power of the Courts, even were all monopolies 
 and other restrictions done away, to distribute busi- 
 ness equally, as long as the suitors are left free to 
 choose their tribunal. There will always be a favour- 
 ite Court ; and the circumstance of its being pre- 
 ferred tends to make it more deserving of preference ; 
 for if the favour towards it began in mere caprice, 
 the great amount of business draws thither the best 
 
 King's Bench. Lord Lyndhurst's talents greatly aided the Law Re- 
 form in producing this result.
 
 332 LAW REFORM. 
 
 practitioners, to say nothing of judges; and the better 
 the Court, the greater will be its business. The 
 same action and reaction will operate favourably, 
 which I before showed in its unfavourable effects 
 where a Court was declining Possunt quid posse 
 videntur. The experiment of 1821 having failed 
 entirely, was not repeated. 
 
 Another attempt has subsequently been made to 
 relieve the Court of King's Bench from the pressure 
 of Term business, which must always bear a pro- 
 portion to the Nisi Prius causes. This system is 
 still going on under the bill brought into the 
 House by the present Chancellor, and of which, 
 though he was induced to patronise it officially when 
 Solicitor-General, I have reason to believe he never 
 much approved. As this arrangement is compulsory, 
 the client having no choice, it cannot well fail ; but 
 I heartily wish that it had failed, for it has done 
 much mischief, and is certainly one of the worst 
 changes that has ever taken place. It is true, the 
 great pressure of business requires that something 
 should be done ; but it is equally true that the right 
 thing has not been adopted ; for, where the King's 
 Bench sits, with the Chief Justice presiding where 
 the suitors resort where the Bar is mustered 
 where the public attend where all the counsel and 
 attornies appear where the business is disposed of 
 as it ought to be, gravely and deliberately, with the 
 eyes of mankind, with the eyes of the Bar, as well 
 as of the world at large, turned on the proceedings, 
 would not every one point to that as the place in 
 which all important legal questions ought to be de- 
 cided ? Would not any one, on the other hand, say, 
 if another Court were constituted in a sort of back 
 room, where three judg-es were sitting where the
 
 LAW IlKFOliM. 333 
 
 only persons present, besides the Judges, were the 
 counsel and attorney employed on cither side of the 
 cause that was pending- where there was no au- 
 dience, and the public eye was entirely directed, not 
 upon, lout from that to the other Court would not 
 anyone, I ask, declare that a Court, so circumstanced, 
 was the place in which the trifling- business alone 
 should be transacted ? These, I think, would be 
 but natural conclusions ; and yet if the matter be 
 stated exactly the other way, it will be far nearer 
 the truth. Of the really important business, as re- 
 gards both its difficulty and importance to the law, 
 and indeed to the suitor, a very larg-e proportion is 
 done in that back room, and before those three 
 Judges. It is done in a corner, and, I may say, dis- 
 posed of behind people's backs, with only the attend- 
 ance of the attorney and barrister on each side, or 
 at most, with the presence of these and of the prac- 
 titioners waiting for the next cause ; and as the 
 Court is not frequented by the public any more than 
 the profession, the business may certainly be said to be 
 transacted without due publicity and solemnity. Thus 
 we see that by this arrangement, while the most in- 
 teresting matter is overlooked, trifling business and 
 points of no importance are brought forward with 
 all possible observation ; a motion for judgment as 
 against the casual ejector, which is a motion of 
 course a motion to refer a bill to the Master to 
 compute principal and interest for judgment, as in 
 case of a nonsuit and a thousand others, either of 
 course or of the most trifling moment, are heard 
 with the utmost publicity before the whole Court 
 before the whole Bar before the whole body of at- 
 tornies before the whole public all of which might 
 be settled by the three Judges in a corner, or by
 
 33* LAW REFORM. 
 
 any one of their clerks. The consequence is, that 
 much time is lost to the full Court, while the 
 most important business special arguments raising 
 the greatest legal questions new trials, involving 
 both matters of law and fact affecting large interests ; 
 and the Crown-paper, comprehending all the ques- 
 tions from Sessions, are obliged to be heard in the 
 private and unsatisfactory manner I have described. 
 I wish this system to be remedied, because it is a 
 great and growing evil.* 
 
 It may be said that the Judges have not time to 
 do the business. I deny that : there is time. Six 
 hours a-day, well employed, would be amply suffi- 
 cient for all purposes. Let them come down to 
 the Court at ten o'clock in the morning, and remain 
 till four a period of six hours and the business 
 may be done. But the system is at present extremely 
 ill-arranged, and I will show how, without having 
 any one to blame for it. The Judges do their ut- 
 most, but they cannot remedy the evil without your 
 aid. Let us see how their time is employed. They 
 are supposed to come to the Court at ten o'clock, 
 and to remain there till four. Surely this time may 
 safely be pronounced to be sufficient for the transac- 
 tion of their business. Then why have they not 
 these six hours ? There are two reasons for it, 
 the one is, that bail must be taken by a Judge. Mr 
 Justice Bayley, no longer ago than last Monday, was 
 occupied the whole day in the Bail Court j and this 
 morning Mr Justice Holroyd was not able to get 
 away till twelve o'clock. I cite these instances of 
 late occurrence, sir, that you may see how closely I 
 
 * This evil has since been remedied ; the sittings of the three Puisne 
 Judges being abolished.
 
 LAW REFORM. 335 
 
 desire to keep by the actually existing 1 state of the 
 facts ; but every week furnishes examples as well as 
 the present. Thus, then, we see that in one case a 
 whole day was lost, as far as regards a full Court, 
 and in another, two hours, merely for the purpose 
 of attending to trifling business, which might just as 
 well be transacted by a commissioner, say a barrister 
 of ten years' standing. The other reason w r hy the 
 Judges' time is misspent, arises from Chamber busi- 
 ness, which consists in the learned Judges, the pro- 
 found lawyers, the great magistrates, whose names I 
 have made free to mention, sitting at Sergeants' Inn 
 to hear the squabbles of attornies, and the clerks of 
 attornies among themselves for barristers rarely 
 attend. This takes them in rotation away from the 
 Court at three o'clock ; so that, in fact, while their 
 nominal time is from ten to four, they are only, on 
 the average, really present from eleven or twelve to 
 three, by which means, instead of transacting business 
 during six hours, the time is reduced to three, or at 
 most four hours per day.* And what, Sir, is the in- 
 ference from all this ? Obvious enough, certainly ; 
 for though it may be fairly contended that the busi- 
 ness of the Bail Court could be transacted by a com- 
 missioner, it may perhaps be doubted whether the 
 Chamber practice does not require a Judge to per- 
 form it, considering the points to be disposed of, and 
 the persons to be controlled. There may, therefore, 
 be a sufficient excuse for the arrangement, as matters 
 stand at present, and yet a remedy may be necessary, 
 as it may certainly be found in changing the circum- 
 stances. For my own part, I frankly confess that I 
 
 * This also has been remedied ; the Judges sitting in rotation, term 
 about, at chambers the whole day, and no Judge leaving the Court.
 
 3S6 LAW REFORM. 
 
 am one of those who do not see the paramount ex- 
 cellence that some suppose to be vested in the num- 
 ber twelve ; although Lord Coke has spoken of it 
 with a degree of rapture like that of the alge- 
 braist, when he dwells upon the marvellous powers 
 of three or of nine. Twelve appears to be the 
 number, in his view, connected with all that is 
 important and venerable, either sacred or profane, 
 ancient or modern ; but as I, unfortunately, do not 
 possess the lights by which he was guided, I cannot 
 help thinking that fourteen is a much better number 
 than twelve, although it may not be so good for 
 division ; and although I cannot quote the fourteen 
 Apostles, or the fourteen Tables, or the fourteen 
 wise men. It will, indeed, divide by seven, which 
 is more than can be said of twelve ; but I rely not 
 upon that superiority : it has another arithmetical 
 quality of more importance. Though neither so 
 divisible nor so beautiful, nor so classical as twelve, 
 it contains two more units than twelve beats it by 
 two beyond all doubt or cavil ; and that superiority 
 recommends it for my present purpose. If twelve 
 was beautiful in the days of Lord Coke, fourteen 
 must now, I fear, on this account, take its place ; for 
 how any one can suppose that twelve men are able 
 to do now what they were only enough to do cen- 
 turies ago, is to me matter of astonishment ; now, 
 that they have seven or eight hundred causes to try, 
 where they formerly had but thirty or forty, and 
 when we know that in the time of Lord Mansfield, 
 in the late reign, sixty was reckoned a fair entry.* 
 
 This, Sir, is one of the illustrations which I would 
 give to expose the heedless folly of those who charge 
 
 * The number of Judges has been now increased to fifteen.
 
 LAW REFORM. 337 
 
 the Bench and the Bar with causing- all the delays 
 in legal proceeding's. How can it be expected that 
 twelve Judges can go through the increased and in- 
 creasing business now, when the affairs of men are 
 so extended and multiplied in every direction, the 
 same twelve, and at one time fifteen, having been 
 not much more than sufficient for the comparatively 
 trifling number of causes tried two or three centuries 
 ago ? But there is a far more unthinking 1 and more 
 
 o o 
 
 dangerous prejudice, to which the same topic is a 
 complete refutation, I mean the outcry against in- 
 novation, set up as often as any one proposes those 
 reforms rendered necessary by the changes that time, 
 the great innovator, is perpetually making, Tern- 
 pus novator rerum. Those who advise an increase 
 of the Judges beyond their present number are not 
 innovators. The innovators are, in truth, those who 
 would stand still while the world is going forward, 
 who would only employ the same number of labour- 
 ers while the harvest has increased tenfold, who, 
 adhering to the ancient system of having but twelve 
 Judges, although the work for them to do has incal- 
 culably increased, refuse to maintain the original 
 equality, the pristine fitness of the means to the end, 
 the old efficiency and adequacy of the establishment ; 
 but they are not innovators who would apply addi- 
 tional power when the pressure exceeds all former 
 bounds, who, when the labour is changed, would 
 alter the force of workmen employed, and thus pre- 
 serve the proportions that originally existed in the 
 judicial system, who would most literally keep things 
 as they were, or return them to their primitive state 
 by restoring and perpetuating their former adapta- 
 tion and harmony. The advantage of the addition 
 I am recommending will become the more evident 
 
 VOL. II. Y
 
 338 LAW REFORM; 
 
 when I have to consider the Welsh Judicature, which 
 I believe to be the worst that was ever established. 
 Why should not the two Judges be received amongst 
 the others, and divide the W T elsh Circuits with the old 
 ones?* Not that I mean they should always take 
 those Circuits, but each might take them in his turn, 
 as each in his turn might sit in the Courts of King's 
 Bench and Common Pleas, and at the Old Bailey, 
 beside dividing with the chiefs the sittings at Nisi 
 Prius.t 
 
 That the King's Bench paper is now far too heavy, 
 there cannot be a doubt, and so it will always be. 
 No one Judge can get through the mass of causes 
 entered in the King's Bench, trying them patiently, 
 and really hearing them to an end. Depend upon 
 it, when more have been tried in the same time, they 
 have been half heard, and forced to compromise or 
 reference. Now, if you will have two Judges sitting 
 at Nisi Prius at once, each of them taking a parti- 
 cular class of trials, the one confining himself to 
 the heavy business, and the other to bills of exchange, 
 promissory-note cases, and undefended causes gene- 
 rally, the whole business of the Court could be 
 got through both thoroughly and with despatch ;t 
 but, as the law now stands, it is utterly impossible 
 for any man, in days consisting of no more than 
 twenty-four hours, and labouring for eleven months 
 in the year, to 'dispose of the business before him. I 
 
 * This has now become the law. 
 
 f The three Puisne Judges thus sitting in Bane, the fourth would 
 each term take Bail and Insolvents and Common motions in the morn- 
 ing, and Chamber business afterwards ; he would also take the Sittings 
 in Term, a serious inconvenience at present.* 
 
 J It is so now. 
 
 * It is so now.
 
 LAW REFORM. 339 
 
 say eleven months ; for the Court, with the exception 
 of a day or two of respite at Easter, and a week at 
 Christmas, sat for above eleven months last year, 
 taking the Circuits as part of the year's work. 
 
 Another obvious distribution might be made with- 
 out having two Judges sitting together in one court. 
 As all real actions have their domicile in the Com- 
 mon Pleas, actions which, in their nature, partake of 
 real actions, as ejectments, trespass to try title, and 
 so forth, might be carried there too. Other suits 
 might be susceptible of a similar classification, as if 
 actions respecting tithes, which are not frequent, bills 
 of exchange, and promissory -notes, were carried into 
 the Court of Exchequer. The Lord Chief Baron is 
 allowed, by the 57th of Geo. III., to sit in Equity 
 and to hear alone all causes and all motions in 
 Equity ; but he never, in fact, does hear motions, 
 although certainly no lawyer ever sat in that Court 
 more fitted to despatch any branch of Equity prac- 
 tice than is the present head of the Exchequer.* Were 
 he confined to the Equity side,- and were another 
 Judge, a common lawyer, appointed to preside on 
 the Law side of that Court, you would have two 
 effective Courts, instead of one not very effective 
 for either Law or Equity.t The Court of Chancery 
 would be materially relieved by this arrangement ; 
 while the double good would be found, of the busi- 
 ness being better done both on the Bench and at 
 the Bar, from that expertness which ever attends 
 the division of labour ; and of seasonable relief being 
 afforded to both the Judges and practitioners of the 
 King's Bench, who would be restored to something 
 of the leisure, at least the moderate professional em- 
 
 * Sir W. Alexander. f This reform has not been introduced.
 
 340 LAW REFORM. 
 
 ployment, so favourable to the liberal pursuits and 
 that unfettered study of jurisprudence, which have 
 always formed the most accomplished lawyers. 
 
 There are two observations, Sir, which I have to 
 make relative to the Judges generally, and which I may 
 as well state now 1 am upon that subject. I highly ap- 
 prove of paying those learned persons by salaries, am 
 not by fees as a general principle ; but so long as if 
 is the practice not to promote the Judges, and whicl 
 I deem essential to the independence of the Bench, 
 and so long as the door is thus closed to all ambi- 
 tion, so long must we find a tendency in them, as ii 
 all men arrived at their resting place, to become les 
 strenuous in their exertions than they would be 
 some little stimulus were applied to them. Thej 
 have an irksome and an arduous duty to perform 
 and, if no motive be held out to them, the nature 
 consequence must be, as long as men are men, that 
 they will have a disposition growing with their yeai 
 to do as little as possible. I, therefore, would hole 
 out an inducement to them to labour vigorously, bj 
 allowing them a certain moderate amount of fees. 
 I say a very moderate amount, a very small additioi 
 to their fixed salary would operate as an incentive 
 and if this were thought expedient, it ought to be 
 ordered that such fees should not be in proportioi 
 to the length of a suit, or the number of its stages 
 but that the amount should be fixed and defined onc( 
 for all, in each piece of business finally disposed of 
 I am quite aware that this mode of payment is not 
 likely to meet with general support, especially with 
 the support of the reformers of the law ; but I give 
 the suggestion as the result of long reflection, which 
 has produced a leaning in my mind towards some 
 such plan. I throw out the matter for enquiry, as
 
 LAW REFORM. 3-11 
 
 the fruit of actual observation, and not from any 
 fancy that I have in my own head ; but I may also 
 mention, that some friends of the highest rank and 
 largest experience in the profession, agree with me 
 in this point, men who are among the soundest 
 and most zealous supporters of reform in the Courts 
 of Law.* 
 
 v The other general observation that I have to make, 
 with respect to the Judges, is of a nature entirely 
 different from the last which I have submitted to the 
 House. The great object of every Government, in 
 selecting the Judges of the land, should be to obtain 
 the most skilful and learned men in their profession, 
 and, at the same time, the men whose character gives 
 the best security for the pure and impartial admini- 
 stration of justice. I almost feel ashamed, Sir, to 
 have troubled you with such a truism ; but the House 
 will presently see the application I am about to make 
 of it. Sorry am I to say, that our system of judicial 
 promotion sins in both these particulars. Govern- 
 ment ought to fill the Bench with men taken from 
 among the most learned lawyers and most accom- 
 plished advocates men who have both knowledge 
 of the depths of jurisprudence, and sagacity to apply 
 it men who, from experience as leading advocates, 
 possess the power of taking large and enlightened 
 views of questions, and of promptly seizing the bear- 
 ings of a case. There cannot be a greater error than 
 theirs who fancy that an able advocate makes a bad 
 Judge ; all experience is against it. The best Judges 
 in my time, with the exception of the present Lord 
 Chief Justice,! than whom no man can discharge 
 his office more excellently and efficiently, have all of 
 
 * This has not yet been so arranged. t Lord Ter.tcrden.
 
 342 LAW REFORM. 
 
 them been previously distinguished in the profession 
 as advocates. But not only should the choice be un- 
 confined by the legal acquirements and professional 
 habits of the practitioner ; there ought not to be, in 
 choosing Judges from the Bar, any exclusion or re- 
 striction. He alone ought to be selected, in whom 
 talent, integrity, and experience most abound, and 
 are best united. The office of Judge is of so impor- 
 tant and reponsible a nature, that one should suppose 
 the members of Government would naturally require 
 that they should be at liberty to make their selection 
 from the whole field of the profession that they 
 would themselves claim to have the whole field open 
 to their choice. Who could believe that a Ministry 
 would not eagerly seek to have all men before them, 
 when their object must be to choose the most able 
 and accomplished ? But although this is obvious and 
 undeniable, and although the extension of the Mini- 
 ster's search cannot fail to be attended with the 
 highest public advantage, as well as the greatest 
 relief to him in performing his trust, is it the case 
 that any such general and uncontrolled choice is ex- 
 ercised ? Is all the field really open ? Are there no 
 portions of the domain excluded from the selector's 
 authority ? True, no law prevents such a search foi 
 capacity and worth ! True, the doors of Westmin- 
 ster Hall stand open to the Minister ! He may entei 
 those gates, and choose the ablest and the best mar 
 there. Be his talent what it may, be his charactei 
 what it may, be his party what it may, no man tc 
 whom the offer is made will refuse to be a Judge. 
 But there is a custom above the law a custom, ii 
 my mind, " more honoured in the breach than the 
 observance," that party, as well as merit, must be 
 studied in these appointments. One half of the Bar
 
 LAW REFORM. 343 
 
 is thus excluded from the competition ; for no man 
 can be a Judge who is not of a particular party. 
 Unless he be the known adherent of a certain system 
 of Government, unless he profess himself devoted 
 to one scheme of policy, unless his party happen to 
 be the party connected with the Crown, or allied 
 with the Ministry of the day, there is no chance for 
 him ; that man is surely excluded. Men must be on 
 one side of the great political question to become 
 Judges ; and no one may hope to fill that dignified 
 office, unless he belongs to the side on which courtly 
 favour shines ; his seat on the Bench must depend, 
 generally speaking, on his supporting the leading 
 principles of the existing Administration.* 
 
 But perhaps, Sir, I may be carrying this distinc- 
 tion too far, and it may be said, that the Ministers do 
 not expect the opinions of a Judge should exactly 
 coincide with theirs in political matters. Be it so ; 
 I stop not to cavil about trifles ; but, at all events, 
 it must be admitted that, if a man belongs to a party 
 opposed to the views of Government ; if, which "the 
 best and ablest of men, and the fittest for the Bench, 
 may well be, he is known for opinions hostile to the 
 Ministry, he can expect no promotion rather let me 
 say, the country has no chance of his elevation to the 
 Bench, whatever be his talents, or how conspicuously 
 soever he may shine in all the most important depart- 
 ments of his profession. No one, I think, will ven- 
 ture to deny this ; or, if he do, I defy him to show 
 me any instance in the course of the last hundred 
 years, of a man, in party fetters, and opposed to the 
 
 * In 1831 this practice was broke through, and to the great benefit of 
 the profession, a Chief Baron appointed from the ranks of the Opposi- 
 tion. So the new Bankrupt Court was constituted without any regard 
 to party.
 
 344 LAW REFORM. 
 
 principles of Government, being- raised to the Bench. 
 No such thing 1 has taken place that I know of. 
 Never have I heard of such a thing, at least in Eng- 
 land ; though we have, perhaps, known instances 
 of men who have changed their party, to arrive at the 
 heights of their profession. But on this subject, desi- 
 rous throughout of avoiding all offence, I will not 
 press well, I do not wish to say a word about it. 
 
 In Scotland, it is true, a more liberal policy has 
 been adopted, and the right honourable gentleman 
 opposite* has done himself great honour by recom- 
 mending Mr Gillies, Mr Cranstoun (now Lords 
 Gillies and Corehouse), and Mr Clerk (Lord Eldin), 
 all as well known for party-men there as Lord Eldon 
 is here,t though, unfortunately, their party has been 
 what is now once more termed the wrong side, but 
 all men of the very highest eminence among the pro- 
 fessors of the law. Now, when I quote these in- 
 stances in Scotland, I want to see examples of the 
 same sort in England ; for however great my respect 
 for the law and the people of the north may be, I 
 cannot help thinking that we of the south too, and 
 our jurisprudence, are of some little importance, and 
 that the administration of justice here may fairly call 
 for some portion of attention. But, Sir, what is our 
 system ? If, at the present moment, the whole of 
 Westminster Hall were to be called upon, in the 
 event of any vacancy unfortunately occurring among 
 the Chief Justices, to name the man best suited to 
 fill it, to point out the individual whose talents and 
 
 * Sir R. Peel. ^ 
 
 t Two other instances should be added, the learned and venerable 
 Lord Chief Commissioner, who has had the signal happiness of presiding 
 over the introduction of Jury Trial into his native country, and Mr 
 Cathcart, Lord Alloway.
 
 LAW REFORM. 345 
 
 integrity best deserved the situation whose judicial 
 exertions were the most likely to shed blessings on 
 his country can any one doubt for a moment whose 
 name would be echoed on every side ? No ; there 
 could be no question as to the individual to whom 
 would point the common consent of those most com- 
 petent to judge ; but then he is known as a party 
 man, and all his merits, were they even greater than 
 they are, would be in vain extolled by his profession, 
 and in vain desiderated by his country. I reprobate 
 this mischievous system, by which the empire loses 
 the services of some of the ablest, the most learned, 
 and most honest men within its bounds. 
 
 And here let me not be supposed to blame one 
 party more than another ; I speak of the practice 
 of all Governments in this country ; and, I believe, 
 when the 'Whigs were in office, in 1806, they did 
 not promote to the Bench any of their political op- 
 ponents j they had no vacancies in Westminster 
 Hall to fill up, but in the Welsh judicature they 
 pursued the accustomed course. Now what is the 
 consequence of thus carrying party-principles into 
 judicial appointments? The choice of Judges is fet- 
 tered by being confined to half the profession ; so 
 that you have less chance of able men ; and those 
 you get are of necessity partisans, and therefore less 
 honest and impartial. Why should the whole Bench 
 be Ministerial or Tory ? No man can desire it to 
 be so, for the purposes of judging over a commu- 
 nity, far very far, from being Ministerial or Tory. 
 Yet it must be so, unless vacancies should occur 
 during those visits of Whig Ministries, "few and 
 far between," when once in a quarter of a century 
 power alights upon that party, and then spreads its 
 wings and flies from them in a few months. Does
 
 346 LAW REFORM. 
 
 not this arrangement instil into the minds, both of 
 expectant Judges and of men already on the Bench, 
 a feeling of party fatal to strict justice in political 
 questions ? I speak impartially but unhesitatingly 
 on this point, for it is perfectly notorious that, now- 
 adays, whenever a question comes before the Bench, 
 whether it be upon a prosecution for libel, or upon 
 any other matter connected with politics, the coun- 
 sel at their meeting take for granted that they can 
 tell pretty accurately the leaning of the Court, and 
 predict exactly enough which way the consultation 
 of the Judges will terminate, though they may not 
 always discover the particular path which will lead 
 to that termination. While the system I complain 
 of continues, while you suffer it to continue, such a 
 leaning is its necessary consequence. The Judges 
 have this leaning, they must have it, they cannot 
 help having it, you compel them to have it ; you 
 choose them on account of their notoriously having 
 it at the Bar ; and you vainly hope that they will 
 suddenly put it off, when they rise by its means to 
 the Bench. On the contrary, they know they fill a 
 certain situation, and they cannot forget by whom 
 they were placed there, or for what reason. 
 
 There is no doubt that the present Judges will 
 always discharge their functions with all the impar- 
 tiality that any man can expect from them ; but I 
 speak without reference to individual habits or pre- 
 judices I speak of impressions which it is natural 
 to expect must exist, where circumstances all con- 
 spire to create them ; I speak too, I must be allowed 
 to say, quite disinterestedly. I cannot take the 
 situation of a Judge I cannot afford it. I speak 
 not for myself, but for the country, because I feel it 
 to be a matter of the deepest importance ; and from
 
 LAW REFORM. 347 
 
 what I have seen of the Right Honourable Gentleman 
 opposite,* I really do hope to see this matter much 
 more maturely weighed than it has heretofore been. 
 ii. I am afraid that I have already tired the 
 House with the length of these details ; but I must 
 now take my leave for a time of Westminster Hall, 
 and beg of you to mark, in the next place, the 
 manner in which the law is administered in Wales. 
 Why should Wales, because it happens to be termed 
 the Principality, have the rights of property, and 
 the personal privileges of the inhabitants, dealt with 
 by different Judges, and almost by a different system 
 from that which is established in England ? In 
 England you have the first men men of the high- 
 est education and experience to sit in judgment on 
 life and property. In Wales you have as Judges, I 
 will not say inferior men, but certainly not the very 
 first, nor in any respect such as sit upon what Roger 
 North calls the " cushion in Westminster Hall." I 
 shall here show three great defects requiring a re- 
 medy most imperatively. Oftentimes those persons 
 have left the Bar and retired to the pursuits of coun- 
 try gentlemen. I do not say that they are for that 
 reason unfit for the office of Judge, but still they 
 cannot be so competent as men in the daily admini- 
 stration of the law, and forming part of our Supreme 
 Courts. In some cases they continue in W T estmin- 
 ster Hall which is so much the worse, because a 
 man who is a Judge one half the year, and a barris- 
 ter the other, is not likely to be either a good Judge 
 or a good barrister. But a second and greater ob- 
 jection is, that the Welsh Judges never change their 
 Circuits. One of them, for instance, goes the Car- 
 marthen Circuit, another the Brecon Circuit, and a 
 
 * Sir Robert Peel.
 
 348 LAW REFORM. 
 
 third the Chester Circuit but always the same Cir- 
 cuit. And what is the inevitable consequence ? Why, 
 they become acquainted with the gentry, the magis- 
 trates, almost with the tradesmen of each district, the 
 very witnesses who come before them, and intimately 
 with the practitioners, whether counsel or attornies. 
 The names, the faces, the characters, the histories, of 
 all those persons are familiar to them ; and out of this 
 too great knowledge grow likings and prejudices 
 which never can by any possibility cast a shadow 
 across the open, broad, and pure path of the Judges 
 of Westminster Hall. Then, again, they have no 
 retiring pensions ; and the consequence is, they re- 
 tain their salaries long after they have ceased to dis- 
 charge properly the functions for which they receive 
 them. Now mark the result of all this. On one of 
 the Welsh circuits, at the last Spring Assizes, there 
 were set down no more than forty-six causes for 
 trial ; and how many does the House think were 
 disposed of? Only twenty; and of the twenty-six 
 made remanets, are some that had stood over from 
 the preceding Assizes. It is evident enough what 
 should be done here. If any of the Judges of the 
 Principality have become, from the extreme pressure 
 of business, on the one hand, or from any physical 
 cause, on the other, inadequate to the discharge of 
 the business which comes before them, pension them 
 off if they be barristers yet remaining in Westmin- 
 ster Hall, and not fit to be raised to the Bench, 
 pension them off too : sure I am that theirs will be 
 the cheapest pension, nay, the most beneficial to the 
 giver, " being twice blessed," which has ever been 
 bestowed. I verily think that the Principality 
 would itself cheerfully pay this first cost of a better 
 system. At all events, add two Judges to your pre- 
 sent number, and let them take, with the other
 
 LAW REFORM. 349 
 
 twelve, their turn and share in the business of the 
 country. Let the Principality of Wales be divided 
 into two Circuits, and then you will have the work 
 well done, and quickly done, especially if you trans- 
 fer the Equity jurisdiction to the two Courts of 
 Westminster. In addition to this, from the acces- 
 sion to the present number of Judges, the existing 
 difficulties arising from the Bail Court and the Cham- 
 ber practice will be done away.* 
 
 And here, before passing to another head of judi- 
 cature, the Times of the Circuits require a word or 
 two. Not, perhaps, that this is of so much import- 
 ance as the other defects I have already noticed, or 
 shall presently touch upon ; but it regards classes 
 of great importance in themselves, Judges, barristers, 
 and solicitors ; and it touches also, in no little de- 
 gree, the convenience of the community at large. I 
 should be most glad to see that folly, for really I 
 cannot call it by any other name, that absurd and 
 vexatious folly of regulating Easter Term by means 
 of the moon, done away with. It is said by many 
 that this would be difficult to reform. I see no such 
 difficulty in the matter. Let the Law Returns be 
 made certain, and leave the moveable feast to the 
 Church. I have no wish to interfere with the times 
 and seasons of the Church ; let those be regulated 
 as you please ; but let this inconvenience in the Law 
 be remedied, by making', for Easter and Trinity 
 terms, like those for Michaelmas and Hilary, the 
 returns on some certain days. I remember that 
 when the late Mr Erskine brought in a bill, in 1802, 
 to fix Easter term, a learned Judge delivered himself 
 in print against the dangerous innovation ; and some 
 
 " This evil is now remedied, the Welsh Judicature being abolished.
 
 350 LAW REFORM. 
 
 persons, alarmed by him, exclaimed, " Only imagine 
 the horror of attempting- to change Easter Term, 
 when all Christians throughout the world have at 
 present the unspeakable comfort of knowing that 
 they are keeping this great festival upon one and 
 the same day." For my part, I have no wish to 
 deprive them of this comfort, admitting it, as I do, 
 to be unspeakable. The day upon which Good 
 Friday falls may be determined as heretofore, that 
 is, by the period of the full moon ; by the same cer- 
 tain varying rule may Easter Sunday be fixed for 
 all clerical purposes ; but temporal business ought 
 not to be sacrificed to these ideas of some undefined 
 spiritual consolation. There is no inconvenience in 
 Easter being moveable, but there is a very great in- 
 convenience in making the law returns moveable. 
 Why not, then, let the feasts of the Church remain 
 changeable as heretofore, and the terms of the Courts, 
 little enough connected with sacred things, fall at a 
 stated period ? Let it be counted, for example, from 
 Lady-day, which is always on the 25th of March. 
 But why, indeed, must we continue to count from 
 Saints' days, now that we have happily a very Pro- 
 testantcountry, more especially underthegovernment 
 of the present Commander-in-Chief ?* Why preserve 
 any Romish folly of this sort, or keep up a mere rem- 
 nant of Popery ? Let Easter Term always begin on 
 the 10th of April, or on the 5th, and the inconve- 
 nience will cease. It is the foolishest of vulgar errors 
 to suppose, that, by how much the more you vex and 
 harass the professors of the law, by so much the 
 more you benefit the country. The fact is quite the 
 reverse : for by these means you make inferior men, 
 
 * Duke of York.
 
 LAW REFORM. 351 
 
 both in rank, in feelings, and in accomplishments, 
 alone follow that profession out of which the Judges 
 of the land must be appointed. I should rather say, 
 that by how much the more you surround this re- 
 nowned profession with difficulties and impediments, 
 calculated only to make it eligible for persons of 
 mere ordinary education, and mere habits of drud- 
 gery, who otherwise would find their way to em- 
 ployment in tradesmen's shops, or at best in mer- 
 chants' counting-houses by so much the more you 
 close it upon men of talent and respectability, and 
 prevent it from being the resort of genius and of 
 liberal accomplishment. I apprehend, therefore, that 
 the convenience of the Bar is a matter which the 
 Legislature ought never to lose sight of, where it 
 clashes not with the advantage of the suitor. The 
 having the Terms which are moveable (Easter and 
 Trinity), and the Circuit, and the Long Vacation, 
 earlier by four or five weeks in one year, and later 
 by four or five weeks in another, is a most serious 
 inconvenience in itself, and quite unnecessary upon 
 any principle. Only observe how hard the present 
 system bears, for instance, upon those who, like my- 
 self, frequent the Northern Circuit. It happened to 
 me that I did not get home till the 20th of Septem- 
 ber last year, having repaired to London on the 5th 
 of October the year before ; so that I was engaged 
 in my profession for eleven months and a half, and 
 had been gratified, out of the twelve months, by 
 exactly one fortnight's vacation for needful repose. 
 When I should have been obliged again to bend my 
 steps towards Guildhall, appointed to open on the 
 9th of October, I naturally enough joined those who 
 signed a requisition to my Lord Tenterden, entreat- 
 ing him to defer the sittings. His Lordship most
 
 352 LAW REFORM. 
 
 handsomely expressed his willing-ness to meet the 
 wishes of the gentlemen of the Bar, kindly return- 
 ing the affectionate respect which all who practise in 
 his Court bear to his person. He stated his satisfac- 
 tion at being able to accommodate us, by sitting on 
 Tuesday the 16th, instead of Tuesday the 9th, so that 
 we obtained a week, for which we were thankful. 
 My Lord observed, that in the state of his paper he 
 could grant us no more ; indeed, such is his resolu- 
 tion manfully and honestly to despatch his business, 
 that he seems to take as much interest in his work as 
 others do in their relaxation.* 
 
 III. I now pass to the Civil Law Courts ; and 
 their constitution I touch with a tender, and, I may 
 say, a trembling hand, knowing that, from my little 
 experience of their practice, I am scarcely competent 
 to discourse of them ; for I profess to speak only 
 from such knowledge as I have obtained incidentally 
 by practising in the two Courts of Appeal, the High 
 Court of Delegates, and the Cock-pit, where Common 
 Lawyers are occasionally associated with Civilians. 
 The observations I have to make on this part of the 
 subject resolve themselves, entirely, into those which 
 I would offer upon the manner in which their Judges 
 are appointed and paid. In the first place, I would 
 have them better paid than they are now, a reform 
 to which I would fain hope there may be no serious 
 objection on their part, averse, as I know them 
 generally, to all change. I think they are under- 
 paid in respect of the most important part of their 
 functions. The Judge of the Court of Admiralty, 
 who has the highest situation, or almost the highest, 
 
 * Easter and Trinity Terms have since been fixed, and sitting in 
 October prohibited, as here recommended.
 
 LAW REFORM. 353 
 
 among the Judges of the land (for there is none of 
 them who decides upon questions of greater delicacy 
 and moment, in a national view, or involving a larger 
 amount of property), this great dignitary of the 
 law has L.2,oOO a-year salary only. The rest of his 
 income is composed of fees, and these are little or 
 nothing during peace. But, then, in time of war 
 they amount to seven or eight thousand per annum. 
 I profess not to like the notion of a functionary who 
 has so many calls as the Judge of the Admiralty 
 Court, for dealing with the most delicate neutral 
 questions for drawing up manifestoes and giving 
 opinions on those questions, and advising the Crown 
 in matters of public policy bearing on our relations 
 with foreign states ; I like not, I say, the notion of 
 such a personage being subject to the dreadful bias 
 (and here again I am speaking on general principles 
 only, and with no personal reference whatever) which 
 he is likely to receive, from the circumstance of his 
 having a salary of L.2,500 per annum only, if a state 
 of peace continue, and between ten or eleven thou- 
 sand a-year, if it be succeeded by war. I know very 
 well, Sir, that no feeling of this kind could possibly 
 influence the present Noble and Learned Judge of that 
 Court ;* but I hardly think it a decent thing to under- 
 pay him in time of peace, and still less decent is it, 
 to overpay him at a period when the country is en- 
 gaged in war. I conceive that it may not always 
 be safe to make so large an increase to a Judge's 
 salary dependent upon whether the horrors of war 
 or the blessings of peace frown or smile upon his 
 country to bestow upon one, eminently mixed up 
 with questions on which the continuance of tran- 
 
 Lord Stowell, formerly Sir W. Scott. 
 VOL. II. Z
 
 35G LAW REFORM. 
 
 so small a Bar, the cnances are, that the three or 
 four eminent advocates have been employed in the 
 case under appeal. Thus the absurdity is really 
 much the same as if you were to appeal from a so- 
 lemn and elaborate judgment, pronounced by my 
 Lord Tenterden, Mr Justice Bayley, Mr Justice 
 Holroyd, and Mr Justice Littledale, to the judgment 
 of three young- barristers, called but the day before, 
 and three older ones, who never could obtain any 
 practice.* 
 
 Sir, I have spoken of the Primate and his princi- 
 pal suffragan, and I hope I need not protest, espe- 
 cially while I have the pleasure of addressing you, 
 that in what I have said of the privilege belonging 
 to the highest dignitary in the Church, my observa- 
 tions were meant to be most remote indeed from, 
 every thing like personal disrespect. Towards no 
 persons in their exalted station do I bear a more 
 profound respect than to both the distinguished Pre- 
 lates I have named, well knowing the liberality of 
 their conduct in exercising the powers I am object- 
 ing to, as all the country knows the extent of learn- 
 ing and integrity of character which have made them 
 the ornaments of our hierarchy, t 
 
 IV. I next come to speak of the Privy Council 
 a very important judicature, and of which the mem- 
 bers discharge as momentous duties as any of the 
 Judges of this country, having to determine not only 
 upon questions of Colonial law in Plantation cases, 
 but to sit also as Judges, in the last resort, of all 
 Prize causes. The point, however, to which I more 
 
 1 The Court of Delegates has since been abolished, and its judica- 
 ture transferred to the new Court of Privy Council. 
 
 t Measures were taken in 1832 to abolish this absurd kind of Epis- 
 copal patronage.
 
 LAW REFORM. 357 
 
 immediately address myself on this head is, that they 
 hear and decide upon all our Plantation appeals. 
 They are thus made the supreme Judges in the last 
 resort, over every one of your foreign settlements, 
 whether situated in those immense territories which 
 you possess in the East, where you and a trading- 
 Company together rule over not less than seventy 
 millions of subjects or established among those rich 
 and populous islands which stud the Indian ocean, 
 and form the great Eastern Archipelago or have 
 their stations in those lands, part lying within the 
 Tropics, part stretching towards the Pole, peopled 
 by various castes differing widely in habits, still more 
 widely in privileges, great in numbers, abounding in 
 wealth, extremely unsettled in their notions of right, 
 and excessively litigious, as all the children of the 
 New World are supposed to be, both from their phy- 
 sical and political constitution. All this immense 
 jurisdiction over the rights of property and person, 
 over rights political and legal, and over all the ques- 
 tions growing out of such a vast and varied province, 
 is exercised by the Privy Council unaided and alone. 
 It is obvious that, from the mere distance of those 
 colonies, and the immense variety of matters arising 
 in them, foreign to our habits and beyond the scope 
 of our knowledge, any judicial tribunal in this 
 country must of necessity be an extremely inade- 
 quate court of review. But what adds incredibly to 
 the difficulty is, that hardly any two of the colonies 
 can be named which have the same law ; and in 
 the greater number, the law is wholly unlike our 
 own. In some settlements, it is the Dutch law, in 
 others the Spanish, in others the French, in others 
 the Danish. In our Eastern possessions these vari- 
 ations are, if possible, yet greater j while one terri-
 
 35G LAW REFORM. 
 
 so small a Bar, the cnances are, that the three or 
 four eminent advocates have been employed in the 
 case under appeal. Thus the absurdity is really 
 much the same as if you were to appeal from a so- 
 lemn and elaborate judgment, pronounced by my 
 Lord Tenterden, Mr Justice Bayley, Mr Justice 
 Holroyd, and Mr Justice Littledale, to the judgment 
 of three young barristers, called but the day before, 
 and three older ones, who never could obtain any 
 practice.* 
 
 Sir, I have spoken of the Primate and his princi- 
 pal suffragan, and I hope I need not protest, espe- 
 cially while I have the pleasure of addressing you, 
 that in what I have said of the privilege belonging 
 to the highest dignitary in the Church, my observa- 
 tions were meant to be most remote indeed from 
 every thing like personal disrespect. Towards no 
 persons in their exalted station do I bear a more 
 profound respect than to both the distinguished Pre- 
 lates I have named, well knowing the liberality of 
 their conduct in exercising the powers I am object- 
 ing to, as all the country knows the extent of learn- 
 ing and integrity of character which have made them 
 the ornaments of our hierarchy, t 
 
 IV. I next come to speak of the Privy Council 
 a very important judicature, and of which the mem- 
 bers discharge as momentous duties as any of the 
 Judges of this country, having to determine not only 
 upon questions of Colonial law in Plantation cases, 
 but to sit also as Judges, in the last resort, of all 
 Prize causes. The point, however, to which I more 
 
 1 The Court of Delegates has since been abolished, and its judica- 
 ture transferred to the new Court of Privy Council. 
 
 t Measures were taken in 1832 to abolish this absurd kind of Epis- 
 copal patronage.
 
 LAW REFORM. 357 
 
 immediately address myself on this head is, that they 
 hear and decide upon all our Plantation appeals. 
 They are thus made the supreme Judges in the last 
 resort, over every one of your foreign settlements, 
 whether situated in those immense territories which 
 you possess in the East, where you and a tradino 1 
 Company together rule over not less than seventy 
 millions of subjects or established among those rich 
 and populous islands which stud the Indian ocean, 
 and form the great Eastern Archipelago or have 
 their stations in those lands, part lying within the 
 Tropics, part stretching towards the Pole, peopled 
 by various castes differing widely in habits, still more 
 widely in privileges, great in numbers, abounding in 
 wealth, extremely unsettled in their notions of right, 
 and excessively litigious, as all the children of the 
 New World are supposed to be, both from their phy- 
 sical and political constitution. All this immense 
 jurisdiction over the rights of property and person, 
 over rights political and legal, and over all the ques- 
 tions growing out of such a vast and varied province, 
 is exercised by the Privy Council unaided and alone. 
 It is obvious that, from the mere distance of those 
 colonies, and the immense variety of matters arising 
 in them, foreign to our habits and beyond the scope 
 of our knowledge, any judicial tribunal in this 
 country must of necessity be an extremely inade- 
 quate court of revie\v. But what adds incredibly to 
 the difficulty is, that hardly any two of the colonies 
 can be named which have the same law ; and in 
 the greater number, the law is wholly unlike our 
 own. In some settlements, it is the Dutch law, in 
 others the Spanish, in others the French, in others 
 the Danish. In our Eastern possessions these vari- 
 ations are, if possible, yet greater j while one terri-
 
 358 LAW REFORM. 
 
 torj is swayed by the Mahomraedan law, another is 
 ruled by the native, or Hindoo law ; and this again, 
 in some of our possessions, is qualified or superseded 
 by the law of Buddah, the English jurisprudence 
 being confined to the handful of British settlers, and 
 the inhabitants of the three Presidencies. All those 
 laws must come in their turns in review, before the 
 necessarily ignorant Privy Councillor, after the 
 learned doctors in each have differed. The difficulty 
 thus arising of necessity from our distance, an un- 
 avoidable incident to our Colonial empire, may 
 almost be deemed an incapacity, for it involves both 
 ignorance of the law and unfitness to judge of the 
 facts. But so much the more anxious should we be 
 to remove every unnecessary obstacle to right judg- 
 ment, and to use all the correctives in our power. 
 The Judges should be men of the largest legal and 
 general information, accustomed to study other sys- 
 tems of law beside their own, and associated with 
 lawyers who have practised or presided in the Co- 
 lonial Courts. They should be assisted by a Bar 
 limiting its practice, for the most part, to this Appeal 
 Court ; at any rate, making it their principal object. 
 To counteract, in some degree, the delays necessa- 
 rily arising from the distance of the Courts below, 
 and give ample time for patient enquiry into so dark 
 and difficult matters, the Court of Review should sit 
 frequently and regularly at all seasons. Because all 
 these precautions would still leave much to wish for, 
 that is no kind of reason why you should not 
 anxiously adopt them. On the contrary, it is your 
 bounden duty, among those countless millions 
 whom you desire to govern all over the globe, not 
 to suffer a single unnecessary addition to the inevi- 
 table impediments which the remote position of the
 
 LAW REFORM. 359 
 
 seat of empire throws in the way of correct and 
 speedy justice. 
 
 Widely different are our arrangements. The Privy 
 Council, which ought to be held more regularly than 
 any other Court, sits far less constantly than any, 
 having neither a regular Bench nor a regular Bar. 
 It only meets on certain extraordinary days the 
 30th of January, the Feast of the Purification, some 
 day in May, Midsummer-day, and a few others. I 
 find that, on an average of twelve years, ending 1826, 
 it sat in each year nine days, to dispose of all the 
 appeals from all the British subjects in India ; from 
 our own Civil Courts, to the jurisdiction of which 
 all our subjects are locally amenable, throughout the 
 wide extent of the several Presidencies of Calcutta, 
 Bombay, and Madras ; to dispose of all the causes 
 which come up to the three several native Courts of 
 last resort, the Sudder Adawluts, from the inferior 
 Courts of Zilla and Circuit, comprising all contested 
 suits between the Hindoos, the half-caste people, and 
 Mahommedan inhabitants. But in the same nine days 
 are to be disposed of all the appeals from Ceylon, 
 the Mauritius, the Cape, and New Holland ; from 
 our colonies in the West Indies and in North Ame- 
 rica ; from our settlements in the Mediterranean, and 
 from the islands in the Channel ; nine days' sittings 
 are deemed sufficient for the decision of the whole. 
 But nine days do not suffice, nor any thing like it, 
 for this purpose ; and the summary I have in my 
 hand demonstrates it, both by what it contains and by 
 what it does not. It appears that, in all those twelve 
 years taken together, the appeals have amounted to 
 but few in number. I marvel that they are so few 
 and yet I marvel not, for, in point of fact, you have 
 no adequate tribunal to dispose of them j and the
 
 360 LAW REFORM. 
 
 want of such a tribunal is an absolute denial of jus- 
 tice to the subjects of the Crown in those colonies. 
 The total number is only 467 ; but including- about 
 50 which came from India, and appear not to have 
 been regularly entered, though they are still undis- 
 posed of, there are 51?. Of these, 243 only have 
 been disposed of, but only 129 have been heard ; for 
 the others were either compromised, from hopeless- 
 ness, owing to the delay which had intervened be- 
 tween the appeal and the sentence, or dismissed for 
 want of prosecution. Consequently, the Privy Coun- 
 cil must have heard ten or eleven appeals only by 
 the year, or little more than one in the course of 
 each day's sitting. Again, of the 129 which were 
 heard and disposed of, no less than 56 were decided 
 against the original sentences, which were altered, 
 and, generally speaking, wholly reversed. Now, 56 
 out of 129 is a very large proportion, little less than 
 one-half, and clearly shows that the limited number 
 of appeals must have arisen, not from the want of 
 cases where revision was required, but from the ap- 
 prehension of finding no adequate court of review, 
 or no convenient despatch of business. And that 
 the sentences in the colonies should oftentimes be 
 found ill-digested, or hasty, or ignorant, can be no 
 matter of astonishment, when we find a bold Lieu- 
 tenant-General Lord Chancellor in one Court, and 
 an enterprising Captain President in another, and a 
 worthy Major officiating as Judge-advocate in a third. 
 In many of these cases, a gallant and unlearned Lord 
 Chancellor has decided, in the Court below, points 
 of the greatest legal nicety, and the Judges of Appeal, 
 who are to set him right here, are chosen without 
 much more regard to legal aptitude ; for you are 
 not to suppose that the business of these nine days
 
 LAW REFORM. 361 
 
 upon which they sit is all transacted before lawyers ; 
 one lawyer there may be, but the rest are laymen. 
 Certainly a right honourable gentleman* whom I 
 see opposite to me is there sometimes by chance, 
 and his presence is sure to be attended with great 
 advantage to us. Occasionally we see him or my 
 learned friend, his predecessor, t but this good for- 
 tune is rare ; the Master of the Rolls alone is 
 always to be seen there, of the lawyers ; for the 
 rest, one meets sometimes in company with him, an 
 elderly and most respectable gentleman, who has for- 
 merly been an ambassador, and was a governor with 
 much credit to himself in difficult times; and now 
 and then a junior Lord of the Admiralty, who has 
 been neither ambassador nor lawyer, but would be 
 exceedingly fit for both functions, only that he hap- 
 pened to be educated for neither. And such, Sir, is 
 the constitution of that awful Privy Council which 
 sits at Westminster, making up, for its distance from 
 the suitors, by the regularity of its sittings, and for 
 its ignorance of local laws and usages, by the extent 
 and variety of its general law learning ; this is the 
 Court which determines, without appeal, and in a 
 manner the most summary that can be conceived in 
 this country, all those most important matters which 
 come before it. For instance, I once saw property 
 worth thirty thousand pounds sterling per annum, 
 disposed of in a few minutes after the arguments at 
 the bar ended, by the learned members of the Privy 
 Council, who reversed a sentence pronounced by all 
 the Judges in the Settlement, upon no less than nine- 
 teen days' most anxious discussion. Such a Court, 
 
 * Sir John Beckett, Judge- Advocate. 
 
 t Mr Abercromby (now Speaker of the House of Commons).
 
 362 LAW REFORM. 
 
 whose decisions are without appeal irreversible, un- 
 less by act of Parliament is the supreme tribunal 
 which dispenses the law to eighty millions of people, 
 and disposes of all their property. 
 
 I cannot pass from this subject without relating- a 
 fact which illustrates the consequences of the delays 
 necessarily incident to such a jurisdiction. The 
 Ranee, or Queen of Ramnad, having- died, a ques- 
 tion arose among the members of her family respect- 
 ing the succession to the vacant Musnud (or throne), 
 and to the personal property of the deceased sove- 
 reign, as well as the territorial revenue. The situa- 
 tion of the country, as well as its population and 
 wealth, render it a province of some note. It reckons 
 four hundred thousand inhabitants, and it lies in the 
 direct road which the pilgrims from the south of India 
 take to the sanctuary in the island of Remisseram, 
 frequented by them as much as the Juggernaut is by 
 those of the north. On the death of Her Highness in 
 1809, proceedings commenced in the Courts below 
 upon the disputed succession. An appeal to the 
 King in Council was lodged in 1814 ; it is still pend- 
 ing. And what has been the consequence of this 
 delay of justice ? Why, that the kingdom of Ram- 
 nad has been all this time in the keeping of sheriffs' 
 officers, excepting the Honourable Company's pesh- 
 cush, or share of the revenues, which, I have no 
 manner of doubt, has been faithfully exacted to the 
 last rupee. It is strictly in what amounts to the same 
 thing as the custody of sheriffs' officers, having been 
 taken, as I may say, in execution, or rather by a kind 
 of mesne process, such as we have not in our law. 
 
 As the papers on the table, to which I have referred, 
 show so much fewer appeals from the Plantations 
 than might have been expected, it is fit now to re-
 
 LAW REFORM. 363 
 
 mind the House how equivocal a symptom this is of 
 full justice being done. It is the worst of all follies, 
 the most iniquitous, as well as the most mistaken 
 kind of policy, to stop litigation, not by affording a 
 cheap and expeditious remedy, but by an absolute 
 denial of justice, in the difficulties which distance, 
 ignorance, expense, and delay produce. The dis- 
 tance you cannot remove, if you would ; the igno- 
 rance it is hardly more easy to get rid of: then, for 
 God's sake, why not give to these your foreign sub- 
 jects, what you have it in your power to bestow 
 a speedy and cheap administration of justice ? This 
 improvement in the Court of Appeal would create 
 more business, indeed, but justice would no longer 
 be taxed and delayed, and, in the cost and the de- 
 lay, be denied. But if you would safely, and with- 
 out working injustice, stop appeals from the colo- 
 nies, carry your reforms thither also : I should say, 
 for instance, that a reform of the judicatures of India 
 would be matter most highly deserving the consider- 
 ation of his Majesty's Government. I am at a loss 
 to know, why there should be so rigorous an exclu- 
 sion of jury trials from the native courts of India. 
 I know, and every one must know, who has taken 
 the trouble to enquire, that the natives are eminently 
 capable of applying- their minds to the evisceration 
 of truth in judicial enquiries ; that they possess 
 powers of discrimination, ready ingenuity, and sa- 
 gacity in a very high degree ; and that, where they 
 have been admitted so to exercise those powers, they 
 have been found most useful and intelligent assist- 
 ants in aiding the investigations of the Judge. But 
 I know, also, that your present mode of administer- 
 ing justice to these native subjects is such as I can 
 hardly speak of without shame. Look at your local
 
 364 LAW REFORM. 
 
 Judges at their fitness for judicial functions. A 
 young writer goes out to India ; he is appointed a 
 Judge, and he repairs to his station, to make money, 
 by distributing justice, if he can, but, at all events, 
 to make money. In total ignorance of the manners, 
 the customs, the prejudices, possibly of the language, 
 of those upon whose affairs and conduct he is to sit 
 in judgment, and by whose testimony he is to pur- 
 sue his enquiries, and very possibly equally unin- 
 formed of the laws he is to administer he must 
 needs be wholly dependent upon his Pundit, for di- 
 rection both as to matter of fact and matter of law, 
 and, most probably, becomes a blind passive tool in 
 the hands of a designing Minister. 
 
 The House will not suppose that I mean to in- 
 sinuate for a moment the possibility cf suspicion as 
 to the wilful misconduct of the Judge in this difficult 
 position. I am very sure that the party who may 
 happen to occupy that high office would rather cut 
 off his right hand, if the alternative were offered him, 
 than take the bribe of a paria to misdecide a cause 
 that came before him. But I arn by no means so 
 secure of the Pundit upon whom the Judge must be 
 necessarily dependent ; and while he is both less 
 trustworthy and wholly irresponsible, the purity of 
 the responsible, but passive instrument in his hands 
 is a thing of perfect insignificance. The experiment 
 of trial by jury, by which this serious evil may, in 
 part, be remedied, has been already tried. The 
 efforts made by a learned Judge of Ceylon, Sir 
 Alexander Johnson, to introduce into that Colony 
 the British system of justice, manfully supported by 
 the Government at home, have been attended with 
 signal success. I am acquainted with a particular 
 case, indeed, the details of which are too long to lay
 
 LAW REFORM. 365 
 
 before the House, but which showed the fitness of the 
 natives to form part of a tribunal, notwithstanding 
 the prevalence of strong 1 prejudices in a particular 
 instance among 1 them, where the failure of the ex- 
 periment might, therefore, have been apprehended. 
 A Brahmin was put on his trial for murder, and a 
 great feeling excited against him, possibly against 
 his caste. Twelve of the jury were led away by this 
 feeling, and by the very strong case which a subtle 
 conspiracy had contrived against the prisoner, when 
 a young Brahmin, the thirteenth juror, examined the 
 evidence with a dexterity and judgment that excited 
 the greatest admiration, and from his knowledge of 
 the habits and manners of the witnesses, together 
 with extraordinary natural sagacity, succeeded in 
 exposing the plot and saving the innocent man. 
 Other considerations there are, less immediately con- 
 nected with the administration of justice, and which 
 I might press upon the House, to evince the expe- 
 diency of introducing our system of trial in the East. 
 Nothing could be better calculated to conciliate the 
 minds of the natives than allowing them to form part 
 of the tribunals to which they are subject, and share 
 in administering the laws under which they live. 
 It would give them an understanding of the course 
 of public justice, and of the law by which they are 
 ruled ; a fellow feeling with the Government which 
 executes it j and an interest in supporting the system 
 in whose powers they participate. The effect of 
 such a proceeding would be, that in India, as in 
 Ceylon, in the event of a rebellion, the great mass of 
 the people, instead of joining the revolters, would 
 give all their support to the Government. This 
 valuable, but not costly fruit of the wise policy pur- 
 sued in that Island, has already been gathered. In
 
 366 LAW REFORM. 
 
 1816, the same people which, twelve years before, 
 had risen against your dynasty, were found marshal- 
 led on your side, and helping you to crush rebellion. 
 So will it be in the Peninsula, if you give your sub- 
 jects a share in administering your laws, and an in- 
 terest and a pride in supporting you. Should the 
 dav ever come when disaffection may appeal to 
 seventy millions, against a few thousand strangers, 
 who have planted themselves upon the ruins of their 
 ancient dynasties, you will find how much safer it is 
 to have won their hearts, and universally cemented 
 their attachment bya common interest in your system, 
 than to rely upon a hundred and fifty thousand Seapoy 
 swords, of excellent temper, but in doubtful hands.* 
 V. I now, Sir, come to the administration of law 
 in the country, by Justices of Peace ; and I approach 
 this jurisdiction with fear and trembling, when I 
 reflect on what Mr Windham was accustomed to say, 
 that he dreaded to talk of the game laws in a House 
 composed of sportsmen ; and so too, I dread to talk 
 of the quorum in an assembly of magistrates. Sur- 
 rounded as I am both among my honourable friends, 
 and among members on the other side, by gentle- 
 men in the commission, I own that this is a ground 
 on which I have some reluctance to tread. But I 
 have to deal with the principle only, not with the 
 individuals: my reflections are general, not personal. 
 Nevertheless, considering the changes which have 
 been effected in modern times, I cannot help think- 
 ing it worth enquiry, whether some amendment 
 might not be made in our Justice-of-peace system. 
 
 * All these evils have now been remedied by the Judicial Committee 
 Act, constituting a regular Court of four professional Judges in the 
 Privy Council, and providing for the hearing of the East India causes.
 
 LAW REFORM. 367 
 
 The first doubt which strikes me is, if it be fit that 
 they should be appointed as they are, merely by the 
 Lords Lieutenant of counties, without the interfe- 
 rence of the Crown's responsible Ministers. It is 
 true that the Lord Chancellor issues the commission, 
 but it is the Lord Lieutenant who designates the 
 persons to be comprehended in it. Such a thing is 
 hardly ever known as any interference with respect 
 to those individuals on the part of the Lord Chan- 
 cellor. He looks to the Lord Lieutenant, or rather 
 to the * Gustos Rotulorum,' which the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant most frequently is (indeed every where but in 
 counties Palatine), for the names of proper persons. 
 The Lord Lieutenant, therefore, as Gustos llotulo- 
 rum, absolutely appoints all the Justices of the Peace 
 in his county, at his sole will and pleasure. Now I 
 cannot understand what quality is peculiar to a Keeper 
 of the Records, that fits him, above all other men, to 
 say who shall be the Judges of the district whose re- 
 cords he keeps. I think it would be about as con- 
 venient and natural to let the Master of the Rolls 
 appoint the Judges of the land (indeed, more so, for 
 he is a lawyer), or to give the appointment to the 
 Keeper of the State Papers. The Gustos Rotulorum 
 may issue a new commission, too, and leave out 
 names ; I have known it done ; but I have also 
 known it prevented by the Great Seal ; indeed, it 
 was laid down as a rule by the late Lord Chancellor 
 Eldon, from which no consideration, his Lordship 
 was used to say, should induce him to depart, that 
 however unfit a magistrate might be for his office, 
 either from private misconduct or party feeling, he 
 would never strike him off the list, until he had been 
 convicted of some offence by the verdict of a Court 
 of Record. Upon this principle he always acted.
 
 368 LAW REFORM. 
 
 No doubt his Lordship felt, that as the Magistrates 
 gave their services gratis, they ought to be protected; 
 but still it is a rule which opens the door to very 
 serious mischief and injustice, and I myself could, if 
 necessary, quote cases in which it has been most un- 
 fortunately persevered in. On looking, however, at 
 the description of persons who are put into the com- 
 mission, I am not at all satisfied that the choice is 
 made with competent discretion ; and upon this part 
 of the question I may as well declare at once, that I 
 have very great doubts as to the expediency of ma- 
 lting Clergymen magistrates. This is a course which, 
 whenever it can be done conveniently, I should cer- 
 tainly be glad to see changed, unless in counties 
 where there are very few resident lay proprietors. 
 My opinion is, that a clerical magistrate, in uniting 
 two very excellent and useful characters, pretty gene- 
 rally spoils both ; that the combination produces 
 what the alchymists called a tertium quid, with very 
 little, indeed, of the good qualities of either ingre- 
 dient, and no little of the bad ones of both, together 
 with new evils superinduced by their commixture. 
 There is the activity of the magistrate in an excessive 
 degree ; over-activity is a very high magisterial of- 
 fence, in my view ; yet most of the magistrates dis- 
 tinguished for over-activity are Clergymen : joined 
 to this are found the local hatings and likings, and, 
 generally, somewhat narrow-minded opinions and 
 prejudices, which are apt to attach to the character 
 of the resident parish priest, one of the most valuable 
 and respectable, if kept pure from political contami- 
 nation. There are some Lords Lieutenant, I know, 
 who make it a rule never to appoint a clergyman to 
 the magistracy ; and I entirely agree in the policy 
 of that course, because the education and the habits
 
 LAW REFORM. 369 
 
 of such gentlemen are seldom of a worldly descrip- 
 tion, and therefore by no means qualify them to dis- 
 charge the duties of such an office ; but, generally 
 speaking, as the House must be aware, through the 
 country the practice is far otherwise. Again, some 
 Lords Lieutenant appoint men for their political 
 opinions ; some for activity as partisans in local con- 
 tests ; some are so far influenced as to keep out all 
 who take a decided part against themselves in matters 
 where all men should be free to act as their opinions 
 dictate ; and in the exercise of this patronage no 
 responsibility whatever substantially exists. Appoint- 
 ed, then, by irresponsible advisers, and irremovable 
 without a conviction, let us now see what is the 
 authority of men so chosen and so secure.* 
 
 In the first place, they have the privilege of grant- 
 ing or withholding Licenses. As we all know, it 
 lies in the breast of two Justices of the Peace to give 
 or to refuse this important privilege. It is in their 
 absolute power to give a License to one of the most 
 unfit persons possible ; and it is in their power to 
 refuse a License to one of the most fit persons pos- 
 sible. They may continue a License to some person 
 who has had it but a twelvemonth, and who, during 
 that twelvemonth, has made his house a nuisance to 
 the whole neighbourhood ; or they may take away 
 a License from a house to which it has been attached 
 for a century, and the enjoyment of which has not 
 only been attended by no evil, but has been produc- 
 
 * The course since 1828, and especially since 1832, has been for the 
 Great Seal to exercise a much more active interference in appointing- 
 Magistrates ; and the Lord Lieutenant (or rather Custos llotulorum) 
 nt> longer is the person alone consulted. This is now the case with 
 Durham also, where the Bishop is no longer Custos, that office beingr 
 now held by the Lord Lieutenant. 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Q. A
 
 370 LAW REFORM. 
 
 tive of great public benefit. And all this, be it ob- 
 served, they do without even the shadow of controul. 
 There is no rule more certain than that a manda- 
 mus does not lie to compel Justices either to grant 
 or withhold a License. I hardly ever remember 
 moving 1 for one ; and I only once recollect a Rule 
 being granted it was on the motion of my Ho- 
 nourable and Learned friend, the Solicitor-General. 
 But I know that great astonishment was expressed 
 on the occasion ; that every one asked what he 
 could have stated to make the Court listen to the 
 application ; that all took for granted it would 
 be discharged, as a matter of course ; which it ac- 
 cordingly was, in less time than I have taken to re- 
 late the circumstance. What other controul is there 
 over the conduct of the Licensing Magistrate? I 
 shall be told that he may be proceeded against, either 
 by a Criminal Information, or by Impeachment. As 
 to the latter, no man of common sense would dream 
 of impeaching a Magistrate, any more than he would 
 think nowadays of impeaching a Minister. Then, 
 as to proceeding by Criminal Information : In the 
 first place, it is necessary, in order even to obtain 
 the Rule, to produce affidavits, that the Magistrate 
 has been influenced by wilful and corrupt motives : 
 not merely affidavits of belief in those who swear, 
 but of facts proving him guilty of malversation in 
 his office. Then, suppose, as not unfrequently hap- 
 pens, a rule obtained on this ex parte statement ; 
 the Magistrate answers the charges on oath ; he 
 swears last, and may touch many points never anti- 
 cipated by the other party, consequently not answer- 
 ed ; and unless the alleged facts remain, upon the 
 discussion, undeniable, and the guilt to be inferred 
 from them seems as clear as the light of day, the rule
 
 LAW REFORM. 371 
 
 is discharged with costs. The difficulty of proving 
 corruption ,is rendered almost insuperable, because 
 all the Magistrate has to do, in order to defend him- 
 self from the consequences of granting or withhold- 
 ing a License, is to adopt the short course of saying- 
 nothing at the time of keeping his own counsel 
 of abstaining from any statement of his reasons. Let 
 him only give no reason for his conduct, and no 
 power on earth can touch him. He may grant a 
 License to a common brothel, or he may refuse a Li- 
 cense to one of the most respectable inns on the 
 North road ; let him withhold his reasons, and his 
 conduct remains unquestionable ; although the real 
 motive by which he is actuated may be, that he is 
 in the habit of using the one house, and that the 
 landlord of the other will not suffer him to use it in 
 the same way. Unless you can show that he has 
 himself stated his motives, or that there are circum- 
 stances so strong against him as amount to convic- 
 tion, you are prevented from even instituting an en- 
 quiry on the subject. Thus absolute is the authority 
 of the Magistrate with regard to licensing. With 
 the permission of the House, in order to illustrate 
 the abuse of this extensive power, I will read a letter 
 which I received some time ago on the subject of 
 the Licensing system, from one of the most worthy 
 and learned individuals in this country a man of 
 large fortune, and of most pure and estimable cha- 
 racter, who long acted as a Magistrate in one of the 
 neighbouring counties. 
 
 [Mr B. here read a letter, in which the tendency 
 of Justices is stated to favour particular houses, and 
 not take away their Licenses, though guilty of the 
 grossest irregularities, on the pretence, become a 
 maxim with many of them, that " the house being
 
 31-2 LAW REFORM. 
 
 brick and mortar cannot offend," whereas a haunt 
 of bad company being established, it becomes the 
 Magistrate's duty to break it up. It was also shown 
 how the power of Licensing placed millions of pro- 
 perty at the disposal of the Justices, a License easily 
 adding L.500 to the value of a lease, and often much 
 more, and the number of victuallers exceeding 
 40,000. It further showed the partiality of the 
 Bench towards brewers and their houses, especially 
 in Middlesex and the home counties.] 
 
 I have received a variety of other information upon 
 this subject, all leading to the same result. That 
 which I have described, the leaning of Justices to- 
 wards brewers, whom, in licensing, they favour, as 
 brother Magistrates, although the latter are not 
 allowed by law to preside at a Brewster Sessions, is, 
 perhaps, the most crying evil connected with the 
 system ; but who does not know (I am sure I do, in 
 more parts of the kingdom than one or two) that 
 Licenses are granted, and refused, from election mo- 
 tives? When, some time ago, I brought the Beer 
 Bill into this House, I had, of course, an extensive 
 correspondence on the subject ; and I was assured 
 by many highly respectable persons, that the evil of 
 this system is by no means confined to the neigh- 
 bourhood of London, of which they gave me nume- 
 rous instances.* 
 
 Nor is the Licensing power of the Magistracy that 
 in which alone great abuses exist. They prevail where- 
 soever their authority is exercised ; in the commit- 
 ments for offences against the Game Laws ; in deal- 
 ing with petty offences against property ; in taking 
 
 * The alteration of the Law on Beer Licenses has deprived the Jus- 
 tices of this power.
 
 LAW KEFO11M. 973 
 
 cognizance of little assaults, especially on officers ; 
 in summary convictions for non-payment of tithes, 
 and a number of other matters affecting 1 the liberties 
 and property of the subject ; and, yet, for their con- 
 duct in all of these matters they are not amenable 
 to any superior power, provided, as I have said 
 before, they only keep their own counsel, and abstain 
 from stating the reasons by which they have been 
 actuated, should their motives be evil. There is not 
 a worse constituted tribunal on the face of the earth, 
 not even that of the Turkish Cadi, than that at which 
 summary convictions on the Game Laws constantly 
 take place ; I mean a bench or a brace of sporting- 
 Justices. I am far from saying that, on such subjects, 
 they are actuated by corrupt motives ; but they are 
 undoubtedly instigated by their abhorrence of that 
 caput lupinum, that hostis humani generis, as an 
 Honourable Friend of mine once called him in his 
 place, thatye/Yz natures a poacher.* From their 
 decisions on those points, where their passions are 
 the most likely to mislead them, no appeal in reality 
 lies to a more calm and unprejudiced tribunal ; for, 
 unless they set out any matter illegal on the face of 
 the conviction, you remove the record in vain. 
 Equally supreme are they in cases where, sitting in 
 a body at Quarter Sessions, they decide upon the most 
 important rights of liberty and property. Let it be 
 remembered that they can sentence to almost unli- 
 mited imprisonment, to whipping, to fine, nay, to 
 transportation for seven and fourteen years. I have 
 shuddered to see the way in which these extensive 
 powers are sometimes exercised by a jurisdiction riot 
 
 * The alteration of the Lav/ as to the sale of Game 1ms since grently 
 remedied these evils.
 
 374 LAW REFORM. 
 
 responsible for its acts. It is said that the Magis- 
 tracy ought not to be responsible, because it is not 
 paid ; but we ought not to forget, that as gold itself 
 may be bought too dear, so may economy ; money 
 may be saved at too high a price. Mark the differ- 
 ence of responsibility between the Quarter Sessions 
 and one of the superior Courts of the kingdom. 
 In the King's Bench, the name of the Judge who 
 pronounces the judgment is known, and the vene- 
 rable magistrate stands before the country in his own 
 proper person, always placed at the bar of public 
 opinion. Here it is Lord Tenterden it is Mr 
 Justice Bailey, by their names : in the other case, it is 
 merely the Quarter Sessions, which, as Dean Swift 
 says, is nobody's name. The individual Magistrates 
 composing it are not thought of; their names are not 
 even published. It is a fluctuating body. If the 
 same individuals always sat in the Court, there might 
 be some approach to responsibility. At present 
 there is none ; and where there is no responsibility, 
 injustice will occasionally be committed, as long as 
 men are men. It would be some correction of the 
 evil, if the number of Magistrates was fixed ; if their 
 names were always known in connexion with their 
 acts ; and if they were more easily removable on 
 proof of their misconduct. Then comes the ques- 
 tion Is it, after all, gratuitous service ? We are told 
 that we cannot visit the Magistrates severely, or even 
 watch them very strictly, because they volunteer 
 their duty, and receive no remuneration for their 
 trouble. But although they have no money for it, 
 they may have money's worth. Cheap justice, Sir, 
 is a very good thing ; but costly justice is much bet- 
 ter than cheap injustice. If I saw clearly the means 
 by which the Magistrates could be paid, and by which,
 
 LAW REFORM. 375 
 
 therefore, a more correct discharge of the magis- 
 terial duties might be insured, I would certainly pre- 
 fer/paying them in money to allowing them to 
 receivejmoney's worth by jobs, and other violations 
 of their duty. Not only may the Magistrate himself 
 receive compensation in money's worth ; he may re- 
 ceive it in hard money by his servants. The fees of 
 a Justice's clerk amount to a little income, often to 
 many times a man's wages. I have heard of a 
 reverend Justice in the country, having a clerk whose 
 emoluments he wished to increase, and therefore he 
 had him appointed Surveyor of weights and measures, 
 with a salary of a guinea and a half a week. This 
 person appointed a deputy, to whom he gave five 
 shillings and sixpence, and who did all the duty. 
 These circumstances came under the consideration 
 of his brother Justices; when, after a strenuous op- 
 position, and among others, on the part of the gen- 
 tleman who communicates the occurrence in a letter 
 now lying before me, it was decided, not only not 
 to remove the first appointed person, who it was 
 proved was doing nothing, but to swear in the other 
 as his assistant ! My friend is not entirely without 
 suspicion that this functionary, having so small a 
 remuneration as five shillings and sixpence a week, 
 can only have undertaken the duty with a view of 
 increasing it by some understanding with the people 
 whose weights and measures it is his duty to su- 
 perintend. 
 
 The operation of pecuniary motives in matters 
 connected with the magistracy, is more extensive 
 than may at first sight appear. There was a bill in- 
 troduced by the right honourable gentleman oppo- 
 site,* for extending the payment of expenses of wit- 
 
 * Sir Robert Peel.
 
 376 LAW REFORM. 
 
 nesses and prosecutors out of the county rates. It 
 is not to be doubted that it has greatly increased the 
 number of commitments, and has been the cause of 
 many persons being 1 brought to trial, who ought to 
 have been discharged by the Magistrates. The habit 
 of committing, from this and other causes, has grie- 
 vously increased every where of late, and especially 
 of boys. Eighteen hundred and odd, many of them 
 mere children, have been committed in the Warwick 
 district, during the last seven years. Nor is this a 
 trifling evil. People do not come out of gaol as they 
 went in. A boy may enter the prison gate merely 
 as the robber of an orchard ; he may come out of it 
 " fit for" 1 will not say " treasons" but cer- 
 tainly "stratagems and spoils."* Many are the in- 
 ducements, independent of any legislative encou- 
 ragement, to these commitments. The Justice 
 thinks he gains credit by them. He has the glory 
 of being commemorated at the Assizes before the 
 Lord Judge and the Sheriff, and the Grand Jury, 
 and all who read the Crown Calendar. On that 
 solemn occasion, he has the gratification of hearing 
 it fly from mouth to mouth, " He is a monstrous 
 good magistrate ; no man commits so many persons." 
 Then there is the lesser glory acquired among neigh- 
 bours, into whose pockets they are the means of putting 
 money, by making them prosecutors and witnesses 
 in petty criminal cases ; and thus converting (as Sir 
 Eardley Wilmot says) their journey of duty into a 
 jaunt of pleasure to the Assizes. The reputation of 
 activity is very seducing to a Magistrate ; but I have 
 known it curiously combined with things more solid 
 than empty praise. In a certain town which I am 
 
 * There is still wanting much reform of the Criminal Law on this 
 material subject.
 
 LAW REFORM. 377 
 
 well acquainted with, one suburb was peopled by 
 Irishmen and Scots, who were wont to fight on 
 every market-day a good deal, at fair tides a good 
 deal more, but without any serious affray taking 
 place. Beside these two classes of the King's sub- 
 jects, there also dwelt in those parts two Justices of 
 the King, assigned to keep the peace ; for the better 
 conserving of which, they repaired at the hour of 
 fight to an ale-house conveniently situated, hard by 
 the scene of action, and there took their seat with a 
 punch-bowl full of warrants, ready to fill up. If the 
 Irish happened to be victorious, the Scots came one 
 after another and applied for commitments against 
 those who had assaulted them. The despatch with 
 which warrants, at least if not justice, were adminis- 
 tered, was notable. Then came the other party, and 
 swore to as many assaults upon them ; and, justice 
 being evenhanded, they too had their desire gratified, 
 until the bowl was by degrees emptied of its paper 
 investment, and a metallic currency, by like degrees, 
 took its place. 
 
 Some of these details may be ludicrous ; but the 
 general subject is a most serious and a most import- 
 ant one, because these facts show the manner in 
 which justice is administered to the people out of 
 sight of the public, and out of reach of the higher 
 Courts of Law. It is through the Magistracy, more 
 than through any other agency except, indeed, that 
 of the tax-gatherer that the people are brought di- 
 rectly into contact with the Government of the 
 country ; and this is the measure of justice with 
 which, when they approach it, they are treated by 
 functionaries irresponsible for their proceedings. A 
 Justice of the Peace, whether in his own parlour or 
 on the bench whether employed in summary convic-
 
 378 LAW REFORM. 
 
 tioris, or in enforcing what is called, after a very 
 worthy friend of mine, Mr Nicholson Calvert's Act 
 (one of the worst in the Statute-book, which I hope 
 to see repealed,* and which I trust its excellent au- 
 thor will very long survive) is never an ostensible 
 individual, responsible in his own proper person to 
 public opinion ; hardly ever, unless he chooses by 
 some indiscretion to make himself so, amenable to a 
 higher and purer judicature. The Judges of the 
 land, chosen from the professors of the law, after 
 the labours of a life previously devoted to the ac- 
 quirement of knowledge calculated to fit them for 
 their office, and clothed with attributes of supreme 
 power over petty Magistrates, are responsible for 
 every word and act, and are subject to every species 
 of revision and controul. They were selected with 
 the most anxious caution for every qualification of 
 high character and of profound knowledge ; and yet 
 they are incapable of pronouncing a single decision 
 from which an appeal will not lie to some other tri- 
 bunal immediately above them : while, from the 
 decision of the country Justices taken from the 
 community at hazard, or recommended by the habits 
 least calculated to make them just subject to no 
 personal responsibility, because beyond or below the 
 superintendence of public opinion and irremovable, 
 unless by a verdict for some indictable offence from 
 their decision there is no appeal ; from their decision, 
 although they have to deal with some of the most 
 important interests in the country, there is no ap- 
 peal, unless their misdeeds shall have been set forth 
 in a case, submitted by their own free will, with their 
 expression, to the Court of King's Bench. 
 
 This Act still exists, and continues liable to the same objections.
 
 LAW REFORM. 37!> 
 
 These are the principal points to which, in the 
 first division of my subject, I desire to call the atten- 
 tion of the House, as deserving 1 your deliberate con- 
 sideration, and as the materials of solemn enquiry. 
 I could have wished to accomplish my object more 
 briefly, but I found it impossible, consistently with 
 distinctness. I am not aware that I have made an 
 unnecessary comment ; and I must trust to the can- 
 dour of honourable members in weighing the im- 
 portance of these statements, to pardon the apparent 
 prolixity unavoidably incident to the handling- of a 
 very extensive and varied argument. 
 
 II. I wish I could give the House any promise 
 that my speech was approaching its termination ; but 
 that hope can hardly be entertained, when I state 
 that I am now about to enter on the still more vast 
 and momentous consideration of the Law as Admi- 
 nistered in those tribunals, whose construction we 
 have been surveying the Distribution of Justice in 
 those Courts in which it has been my fortune to 
 practise during a pretty long professional life. 
 
 There is a consideration of a general nature, to 
 which I would first of all advert ; I mean the incon- 
 venient differences in the Tenures by which property 
 is held, and the rules by which it is Conveyed and 
 Transmitted, in various districts of the country. Is 
 it fitting or consistent with reason, or indeed with 
 justice, that merely crossing the river, or travelling 
 a distance of some miles in this neighbourhood, 
 should make so great an alteration in the law of real 
 property, as that, to the eastward of us, all the sons 
 inherit equally; to the westward, the youngest alone; 
 and here, the eldest ? But these rules of the Com- 
 mon Law, of Gavelkind, and of Borough English, 
 are better known, and operate within more defined 
 limits. What shall be said of the Customary Te-
 
 380 LAW REFORM. 
 
 nures, in a thousand manors, all different from the 
 Common Law that regulates freehold estates, most, 
 of them differing- from each other ?* Is it, I ask, fit 
 that this multitude of Laws, this variety of Codes, 
 the relics of a barbarous age, should be allowed to 
 exist in a country subject to the same general bonds 
 of government ? I should trespass at greater length 
 than I am willing to do, were I to detail the various 
 customs which exist in the manors of this country ; 
 but to give the House an idea of their diversity, I 
 must mention a few. In one manor, the Copyhold 
 property is not allowed to pass by will j in another, it 
 may be so conveyed. I admit that a great improve- 
 ment has been made in this respect, by the act of an 
 honourable friend of mine (Mr M. A. Taylor), to 
 whom we owe several other important legislative 
 measures, allowing it to be devised by will without 
 surrender. This is the only material improvement 
 which has been made, with respect to such property, 
 within the last hundred years ; but it only operates 
 in facilitating the transmission, according to the 
 custom of the manor of passing the copyhold by will. 
 In one manor, a devise is not valid, if made longer 
 than two years before the testator's decease ; so 
 that it is necessary for wills to be renewed every two 
 years ; in another, one year ; in a third, three years 
 are the period ; while in many there are no such re- 
 strictions.t In some manors, the eldest daughter 
 succeeds, to the exclusion of her sisters, as the eldest 
 daughter (in default of male heirs) succeeds to the 
 crown of England ; in other manors, all the daugh- 
 
 * The Real Property Law Commission, issued after this motion, has 
 fully investigated this subject, and made a very learned and satisfactory 
 Report, on which Bills have been founded, but are not yet passed. 
 
 t This evil has been all removed by the Wills Act, prepared by the 
 Real Property Commissioners, and passed with some changes.
 
 LAW REFORM. 381 
 
 ters succeed jointly, as co-partner?, after the manner 
 of the Common Law. In some manors a wife has 
 her dower, one-third of the tenement, as in case of 
 freehold. In others, she has, for her "free bench" 
 one-half; and again, in some, she takes the whole 
 for life, to the exclusion of the heir. The fines on 
 death or alienation vary ; the power and manner of 
 entailing or cutting 1 off entails, vary ; the taking- of 
 heriots and lords' services varies. There are as many 
 or more of these local laws than in France, in the 
 Pays de Continue, of which I have seen four hun- 
 dred enumerated, so as to make it the chief oppro- 
 brium of the old French law, that it differed in every 
 village. Is it right that such varieties of custom 
 should be allowed to have force in particular districts, 
 contrary to the general law of the land ? Is it right, 
 I may also ask, that in London, Bristol, and some 
 other places, the debts due to a man should be sub- 
 ject to execution for what he owes himself, while in 
 all the rest of England there is no such recourse ; 
 although in Scotland, as in France, this most ra- 
 tional and equitable law is universal ? * 
 
 All these local peculiarities augment the obstacles, 
 both to the conveyance and to the improvement of 
 landed estates. They prevent the circulation of 
 property in a great degree ; and they lessen the 
 chance that an owner of such tenements would other- 
 wise have of raising money, on their security, ade- 
 quate to their value. The greater facility of con- 
 veyance is nothing set against the ignorance of local 
 custom ; and then copyhold property is not liable 
 even for specialty debts, nor can it be extended by 
 elegit ; and thus, absurd and unjust as is the law 
 
 * This anomaly is remedied by the new Bill about to pass on the 
 Law of Debtor and Creditor.
 
 382 LAW REFORM. 
 
 which prevents freehold property from being' charged 
 with simple contract debts,* it goes further in this 
 instance, and exempts the copyhold from liability, 
 even to those of the highest nature, a judgment itself 
 not giving the creditor any right of execution against 
 it. The obvious remedy to be adopted in this case 
 is, to give all parts of the country the same rulgs 
 touching property ; and, therefore, I would propose 
 an assimilation of the laws affecting real estates, all 
 over England, to take place at a given period, say 
 twenty or thirty years hence, so as to prevent inter- 
 ference with vested interests. 
 
 Having now, Sir, pointed out some of the varieties 
 of our law in certain districts, its inequalities in 
 respect of place, let us proceed to examine whether 
 it is more uniform and more equal in respect of per- 
 sons. And here we are met, at the very outset, 
 with a most fearful exception to the maxim, which 
 describes the law as no respecter of persons. It is 
 commonly said that the Crown and the subject come 
 into court on equal terms. Lawyers of the present 
 day do not, I am aware, profess this ; but that emi- 
 nent dealer in panegyric, Mr Justice Blackstone, has 
 spoken as if the King had no greater advantage in 
 litigation than any of his people. It would have 
 been well if he had stated that this was only a fiction ; 
 though he must have been puzzled to prove it, like 
 other fictions, invented for the furtherance of justice. 
 It is true that the law itself makes no such preten- 
 sions to impartiality ; for of the two classes of mani- 
 fest inequality which I am about to mention, one is 
 avowedly such, by reason, as it is said, of the prero- 
 gative ; although the other, just as substantial in 
 
 * This evil has since been removed.
 
 LAW RKFOHM. 38:5 
 
 reality, is not avowed to be so. I begin with the 
 latter. It is said, that the Crown can no more 
 take my estate than I can another man's ; for if I 
 have a claim against the Crown, I am told that I 
 have a remedy, by the decent and respectful mode, 
 as they term it, of a petition de droit, or, in case of 
 a title by matter of record, a monstrans de droit. 
 The same eloquent panegyrist, whom I have men- 
 tioned, describing the very name of the process to 
 have arisen from the presumption of the law, that 
 the King can do no wrong, adds, that, from the great 
 excellence ascribed to the Crown, " to know of an 
 injury and to redress it, are one and the same thing ; 
 therefore the subject has only to make his grievance 
 known by his petition." From this is drawn the con- 
 clusion, that when a subject has a right, he can have 
 the means of defending it with equal facility against 
 the Crown as against any other party. Now, let us 
 see how far this consequence is, in point of fact, real- 
 ized. The Crown never moves by itself, but through 
 the medium of the King's Attorney-General. No 
 proceeding can be taken against the Crown without 
 thejiat of the Attorney-General ; and unless a party 
 obtains that, all his trouble and expense in going to 
 Whitehall, and asking the permission of the Secretary 
 of State, are lost, because all such affairs are referred 
 to the Crown lawyer ; and if he should refuse leave, 
 the only remedy left to the subject is the very con- 
 venient and practical one of impeaching that officer. 
 It may be said that the Attorney-General would not 
 refuse his Jiat, because it is a mere proceeding in the 
 first instance, like suing out an original writ, or a 
 latitat, to bring a cause into the King's Bench ; and 
 the Attorney-General here is like the Chancellor or 
 the sealers of the writs elsewhere, who issue writs
 
 381 LAW REFORM. 
 
 to any suitor as a matter of course. But I make 
 answer that, although it ought to be so, it is not so. 
 It is in the discretion of the Attorney-General, that 
 is, of your adversary's counsel, to let you bring your 
 action or not as he pleases. Why, I demand, should 
 it be left in the breast of any man to refuse that 
 which another may claim as a right, and as the low- 
 est of all rights, to have his right enquired into by 
 law ? To show you how this discretionary power is 
 used, I might say abused, I will mention a case ; 
 and, following the rule I prescribed to myself at set- 
 ting out, it shall be one that has come within my 
 own knowledge professionally. A considerable 
 estate had, on a supposed default of heirs, been 
 granted to a gentleman of great respectability, a 
 friend of mine. After some time another indivi- 
 dual set up a claim to it, on the ground of being 
 the heir of the body of the original grantee, the first 
 gift having been in tail male. The case was sub- 
 mitted to me, and to a learned friend of mine at the 
 Chancery bar ; and we advised that the party should 
 proceed by Petition of Right. We examined all 
 the cases upon the subject, and deeming this the 
 only mode, we applied to the Attorney-General ; 
 and he refused \\\$fiat, giving no better reason than 
 that we ought to have proceeded by ejectment 
 against the tenant in possession. We preferred our 
 Writ of Right against the Crown, as all lawyers 
 term the petition de droit. Had the question been 
 with a subject, we might either have proceeded by 
 ejectment to recover possession, or by writ to try 
 the mere right as the higher remedy ; and no officer 
 could have shut us out at either door by which we 
 chose to enter the Court. Now, I can state con- 
 scientiously my opinion, that the case of the indivi-
 
 LAW REFORM. 385 
 
 dual alluded to was a strong- one in statement. It 
 was one of pedigree, and certainly one of the clear- 
 est I had seen on paper. I do not mean to assert, 
 for I had no means of ascertaining- it, that it was 
 unanswerable. There may have been some gap in 
 the chain, some marriage or some birth not proved, 
 or some other flaw in the claimant's title ; but of 
 that I can form no judgment, because that I was 
 not allowed to try; and this is the hardship of the 
 case, the matter of which, I hold, my client had 
 just reason to complain he was not allowed to 
 bring forward his proofs. Then, I ask, is it not a 
 mere mockery in those panegyrists of things as they 
 are, to say that the Crown and the subject stand on 
 equal footing ? * 
 
 But the cases in which the same disparity prevails 
 between their rights, avowedly and by the declared 
 sanction of the law, are much m^re numerous ; they 
 are of constant occurrence, too, in practice ; and I 
 will, therefore, mention them for the information of 
 those who are not lawyers, and, I believe I may 
 say, of some who are. In the first place, it is the 
 general principle that a Demurrer is an admission 
 of the facts in dispute ; but this, it is said, does not 
 extend to the Crown, and that, if defeated in this 
 way, it can begin again, and is not concluded. Se- 
 condly, it has been decided lately in the Exchequer 
 I was not in the case, but so I have heard, from 
 those who attend that Court, that no such thing is 
 allowed as an Exception for insufficiency to an an- 
 swer filed by the Attorney-General on behalf of the 
 Crown. But the subject notoriously enjoys no such 
 privilege ; his answer is open to all exceptions ; 
 
 ' This evil remains still without remedy. 
 VOL. II. 2. B
 
 38G LAW REFORM. 
 
 were it not, you must, in suing him, take for an 
 answer just what he chooses to tell you, and he 
 escapes the equitable jurisdiction entirely. Next 
 (and an instance occurred lately, which I argued in 
 the Court of King's Bench, and which was decided 
 against me, without hearing the other side), wherever 
 a suit is commenced, whether it be in Cumberland, 
 Middlesex, or Cornwall (and in Cornwall was the 
 case I allude to), if the Crown has any title which 
 may, however indirectly, come in question, although 
 no party, the proceedings can at once be removed 
 by a mere suggestion, not of record, but on the part 
 of the Attorney-General, stating it from his place in 
 Court, and a Trial must then be had at Bar before 
 the four Judges. In this way all the preparations 
 made by the parties are put an end to, and wit- 
 nesses must be brought to town at an inordinate 
 expense, and under every disadvantage. There is no 
 doubt that an allowance would, in such cases, be 
 made by the Crown to compensate for this additional 
 cost ; but still the party has to pay in the first in- 
 stance, together with being taken away, as well as 
 his witnesses, from that part of the country in which 
 he and they are known, to the county of Middlesex, 
 where the power of the Crown is more accurately 
 known than the character of the other suitor. When 
 this point was argued, the Court held the preroga- 
 tive too clear to be discussed. There is a fourth 
 advantage which the Crown possesses over any other 
 party. No person can, after the jury is sworn, with- 
 draw a record, but must be non-suited, to avoid a 
 verdict. The Crown has, to my knowledge, with- 
 drawn it, after counsel had been heard, and wit- 
 nesses examined, and the jury been charged by the 
 Judge ; I have known the record withdrawn while
 
 LAW REFORM. 387 
 
 they were deliberating, and because they were de- 
 liberating, which indicated hesitation ; and this late 
 retreat is made without the penalty to which any 
 other party would be liable, who had fled before 
 the cause was called on, namely, the costs of the 
 day : for there is another unfairness to justify this 
 course ; that as the Crown is supposed above re- 
 ceiving costs, so it is to be exempt also from paying 
 them. But the reason of this I cannot possibly see. 
 I cannot grant that the dignity of the Crown places 
 it above taking costs, when I reflect that by the 
 Crown is here meant the revenue raised from the 
 people for the public service, and that, consequently, 
 the non-payment of costs to the Crown is an in- 
 crease of the people's burthens. But, even if I 
 could admit the propriety of the Crown's receiving 
 none, it would by no means follow that it should 
 pay none to the subject, who is in a widely different 
 predicament. All this, however, arises out of no- 
 tions derived from the feudal times, when the Crown 
 was in a situation the very reverse of that in which 
 it stands at present, its income then arising almost 
 entirely from a land revenue. There is now no 
 reason why it should be exempt from paying, or 
 disabled from receiving, in all cases where costs 
 would be due between common persons. Indeed, 
 there has been of late years an exception made in 
 the Crown Law on this head, but so as to augment 
 the inequality I complain of. In all Stamp prosecu- 
 tions, the costs of the Crown are paid by the unsuc- 
 cessful defendant ; so far does it stoop from its 
 former dignity ; but not so low as to pay the de- 
 fendant a farthing of his costs should he be acquitted. 
 The last and the worst part of the history remains; 
 whenever a Special Jury is summoned in a Crown
 
 388 LAW REFORM. 
 
 case, and that all the twelve jurors do not attend, a 
 Tales cannot be prayed to let the cause proceed, 
 without a warrant from the Attorney-General : so 
 that it is in the power of your adversary to refuse 
 this at the time it may be most for his advantage so 
 to do ; while you have no option whatever in case 
 it should be for his interest to proceed, and for yours 
 to delay. I pray the House will mark attentively 
 what I am now about to relate, although, indeed, I 
 should apologize for thus appealing to them, after 
 the singular patience with which I have been heard 
 throughout, for the great length of time I have al- 
 ready occupied. There was a case in the Court of 
 Exchequer, in which I acted as counsel for the de- 
 fendant, and had to subject a Crown witness to a 
 severe cross-examination ; he exhibited strong indi- 
 cations of perjury, but the verdict went against me 
 notwithstanding. My Learned friend, Mr Sergeant 
 Jones (whose talent and professional skill entitle 
 him to higher praise than any in my power to be- 
 stow), whether he profited by my experience, or was 
 more dexterous in dealing with the case, did honour 
 to himself by succeeding in the next trial, when the 
 same witness was examined ; for the suspicion of 
 perjury entertained before was now turned into 
 certainty, and the party acquitted. A prosecution 
 for perjury was instituted against that man and others 
 connected with him ; eighteen indictments were 
 found at the Sessions, and the Crown at once re- 
 moved the whole by certiorari into the Court of 
 King's Bench. There they were all to be tried, and 
 a former Attorney-General conducted the prosecu- 
 tion. On the first, Meade, the witness I have men- 
 tioned, was clearly convicted. The other seventeen 
 were then to have been tried, and Mr Sergeant Jones
 
 LAW REFORM. 389 
 
 called them on, but the Crown had made the whole 
 eighteen Special Jury causes : a sufficient number of 
 jurymen did not attend ; my Learned Friend wanted 
 to pray a Tales, and the Crown refused a warrant. 
 Thus an expense of ten thousand pounds was in- 
 curred, and a hundred witnesses from Yorkshire 
 were brought to London, all for nothing-, except, 
 after the vexation, trouble, and delay, he had endur- 
 ed, to work the ruin of the prosecutor, who had 
 been first harassed upon the testimony of the per- 
 jured witnesses. These poor Yorkshire farmers, 
 whom the villain had so vexed, had no more money 
 to spend in law ; all the other prosecutions dropped ; 
 Meade obtained a Rule for a new trial, but funds 
 were wanting to meet him again, and he escaped. 
 So that public justice was utterly frustrated, as well 
 as the most grievous wrong inflicted upon indivi- 
 duals. Nor did it end here ; the poor farmer was 
 fated to lose his life by the transaction. Meade, the 
 false witness, and Law, the farmer whom he had in- 
 formed against, and who was become the witness 
 against him upon the approaching trial, lived in the 
 same village; and one evening, in consequence, as was 
 alleged, of some song or madrigal sung by him in 
 the street, this man Meade seized a gun, and shot Law 
 from his house dead upon the spot. He was acquitted 
 of murder, on the ground of something like provoca- 
 tion, but he was found guilty of manslaughter, and 
 such was the impression of his guilt upon the mind 
 of the Court, that he was sentenced to two years' 
 imprisonment. A case of more complicated injus- 
 tice one fraught with more cruel injury to the 
 parties, I never knew in this country, nor do I con- 
 ceive that worse can be found in any other. We 
 may talk of our excellent institutions, and excellent
 
 390 ^ LAW REFORM. 
 
 they certainly are, though I could wish we were not 
 given to so much Pharisaical praising of them j but 
 if, while others, who do more and talk less, go on 
 improving their laws, we stand still, and suffer all 
 our worst abuses to continue, we shall soon cease 
 to be respected by our neighbours, or to receive any 
 praises save those we are so ready to lavish upon 
 ourselves.* 
 
 i. And now, having thus far cleared the way for exa- 
 mining the proceedings in our Courts of Justice, the 
 first enquiry that meets us is, by what means Unne- 
 cessary Litigation may be Prevented; in other words, 
 suits unjustly and frivolously brought, and wrongfully 
 defended, by oppressive or intemperate parties. I 
 shall here, as under almost all the other heads of the 
 subject, begin by laying down what I take to be the 
 sound principles of legislation applicable to the point, 
 and then comparing with these the provisions actually 
 adopted by our jurisprudence. The first and most 
 obvious step is, to remove the encouragement given 
 to rich and litigious suitors, by lessening the expense 
 of all legal proceedings ; and I would put an end to 
 all harassing and unjust defences, by encouraging 
 expedition. Next, I would not allow of any action 
 or proceeding which only profits the court and the 
 practitioners, and the object of which is always grant- 
 ed as a mere matter of course ; all things should be 
 considered as done at once and for nothing, which 
 may be now done on a simple application to the 
 Court with some delay and expense. Thirdly, no 
 party should be sent to two courts where one is able 
 to afford him his whole remedy; nor to a dear and bad 
 Court, when he can elsewhere have a cheaper and a 
 
 ' These inequalities in the Crown law, between the Crown and the 
 subject, still exist.
 
 LAW REFORM. 391 
 
 better remedy; nor should any one be obliged to come 
 twice over to the same Court for different portions 
 of his remedy, which he might have all in one pro- 
 ceeding. Fourthly, whenever a strong presumption 
 of right appears on the part of a plaintiff', the burden 
 of disputing his claim should be thrown on the de- 
 fendant. This I would extend to such cases as bills 
 of exchange, bonds, mortgages, and other such secu- 
 rities. In those cases I think the plaintiff should be 
 allowed to have hisjudgment, upon due notice given, 
 unless good cause be, in the first instance, shown to 
 the contrary, and security given to prosecute a suit 
 for setting the instrument aside.* This is a mode 
 well known in the law of Scotland, and would put 
 an end to all those undefended causes, which are now 
 attended with such great and useless expense, as 
 well as injurious delay to the parties and the public. 
 Fifthly, I would suggest, that in all cases where fu- 
 ture suits are to be apprehended, proceedings might 
 be adopted immediately to raise the question, and 
 quiet the title. The law on this head, also, is very 
 different in the two parts of the island. In England, 
 it is not possible to have the opinion of any court, 
 until the parties are actually engaged in a lawsuit, 
 opportunities for which may very frequently not 
 occur until the witnesses to prove a case may be 
 dead, or an infant, or a person living abroad and 
 incapable of well defending his right, has come into 
 possession. But the Scotch law furnishes a kind of 
 action, the adoption of which may be productive of 
 the greatest benefit, as I have once and again heard 
 Lord Eldon hint in the House of Lords. I know 
 very well that here we may file a Bill for perpetuat- 
 
 * This important improvement has since been made, but the decla- 
 ratory action has not yet been introduced.
 
 392 LAW REFORM. 
 
 ing testimony, but there must be an actual vested 
 right in the party instituting the suit ; and the pro- 
 ceeding is, besides, so cumbrous, as rarely to be used. 
 The Scotch law, on the contrary, permits a Decla- 
 ratory Action to be instituted by the party in pos- 
 session or expectancy, quia timet, and enables him 
 to make all whose claims he dreads parties, so as to 
 obtain a decision of the question immediately. This 
 is, of course, and very properly, at the expense of him 
 who brings forward the suit for his own interest, 
 unless where a very obvious benefit arises to the other 
 party ; for in Scotland they have nothing like our 
 statute of Gloucester, and costs are always in the 
 discretion of the Court, as with us in equity. Sixth- 
 ly, I would abolish all obsolete proceedings, which 
 serve only as a trap to the unwary, or tools in the 
 hands of litigious and dishonest parties, and lie hid 
 or unheeded until, unexpectedly, they are brought 
 forth to work injustice.* For an instance, I will 
 name Wager of Law, a defence which may be set 
 up in answer to an action of detinue, or of debt on 
 simple contract. This is another of the remains of 
 the old system. The defendant has only to swear 
 that he does not owe the sum of money claimed by 
 the plaintiff, and bring eleven others to swear that 
 they believe him ; and a defendant would certainly 
 be badly off if he could not find out so many persons 
 to do this kind office for him, as he needs only bring 
 those who know him, but know nothing at all of 
 the circumstances, for the less they know, the more 
 ready will they be to swear they believe their friend. 
 He has only to place them on opposite sides, at the 
 end of the table (for the wisdom of past ages hath 
 
 * The new rules of pleading and practice have removed these evil?.
 
 LAW REFORM. 393 
 
 carefully fixed the stations which the parties are to 
 occupy pending this "solempnity"),get them to swear, 
 and there is an end at once of the action. It is true 
 that pleas of this kind are seldom pleaded, though it 
 was done some time ago in the Common Pleas ; and 
 the oldest practitioners there, not being- acquainted 
 with the plea, were about demurring- to it, when it 
 was discovered to be a law wager well pleaded, and 
 a complete good defence in law, though the practice 
 was obsolete. 
 
 Now, these being the fundamental Principles that 
 should guide us on this head, nothing can depart 
 more widely from them than our Practice, and 
 nothing can be more easy than making it conform 
 to them. In the first place, without throwing away 
 a thought upon the pain which I should necessarily 
 inflict upon some of my learned friends much wed- 
 ded to such lore, without caring a rush for the 
 quantity of curious learning which would thus be 
 thrown to waste, or dropping a tear over the musty 
 records which must be swept away, I would abolish 
 at once the whole doctrine and procedure of .Fines 
 and Recoveries.* I hope I may not offend the ears 
 of my respected brethren the conveyancers ; but I 
 must say, that if ever there was an absurdity not to 
 be tolerated, it is those fictitious suits, at any time, 
 but, above all, in the present state of society. 
 
 I wish to make myself understood, for I see by the 
 countenances of some gentlemen that they do not 
 quite comprehend the whole absurdity of the law 
 respecting Fines and Recoveries. I do not by any 
 means wish to interfere with the power of making, 
 or of barring entails ; I consider the English law as 
 
 Those have now been entirely abolished.
 
 394 LAW REFORM. 
 
 hitting 1 very happily the just medium between too 
 great strictness and too great latitude, in the dispo- 
 sition of landed property ; sufficient restraints upon 
 perpetuities, upon endless settlements, are provided, 
 to allow a free commerce in land, as far as that is 
 consistent with the interests of agriculture, and the 
 exigencies of our mixed constitution ; while as much 
 power is given of annexing estates to families, as may 
 prevent a minute division of property, and preserve 
 the aristocratic branch of the Government. With the 
 substance of our law of entail, then, I have no wish 
 to meddle ; all I desire is, to abolish the ridiculous 
 machinery by which fines are levied and recoveries 
 suffered. Every gentleman knows that if he has an 
 estate in fee he can sell it, or bestow it in any way 
 he may please, but if he has an estate tail, to which 
 he succeeds in the long vacation, he can go, on the 
 first day of Michaelmas Term, and levy a fine, which 
 destroys the expectant rights of the issue in tail ; or 
 he may, by means of a recovery, get rid of those rights 
 and of all remainders over. He can thus, by going 
 through certain mere forms, make himself absolute 
 master of his estate, and do with it as he pleases. 
 But this must be done through the Court of Com- 
 mon Pleas, at certain seasons of the year ; and why 
 should there exist a necessity for going there ? Why 
 not, if it be necessary, pay the fines which are due, 
 without going there at all ? J, the other day, asked 
 this question of some learned friends, Why force 
 tenants in tail into court, for mere form's sake? They 
 laughed at my simplicity, and said, " All this was 
 asked a hundred years ago j there is no necessity for 
 the proceeding, only to keep up the payment of the 
 King's silver, alienation fines, and other duties." In 
 case of bankruptcy, the necessity for those forms is
 
 LAW REFORM. 393 
 
 not felt. A trader who is tenant in tail commits an 
 act of bankruptcy, and by the assignment under the 
 commission not only the interest vested in him is 
 conveyed, but all remainders expectant upon it are 
 destroyed for the benefit of his creditors, and the 
 estate passes to his asignees free from all restriction. 
 The courts have held the conveyance in bankruptcy 
 to be a statutory barring of the entail an enlarger 
 of the estate tail to a fee, as indeed the Bankrupt 
 Laws evidently intended.* Now, I would do that 
 for honest landowners which the law at present per- 
 mits to be done for insolvent tradesmen and their 
 creditors. So, too, a man and his wife cannot con- 
 vey an estate of the wife without a fine or a recovery, 
 neither can the wife be barred of her dower without 
 a similar proceeding. The reason is, the influence 
 her husband may possess over her mind ; and, con- 
 sequently, a judge takes the woman, in these cases, 
 into a private room, to examine her, first, as to 
 whether she acts from fear, and then, when that is 
 out of the case, whether she is influenced by favour 
 and affection ; and he also examines her as to any 
 temporary increase of affection from any passing' 
 cause ; and then, when she has purged herself of all 
 temporary increase of affection, of all fear, and all 
 love, she is allowed to give her consent. I would 
 propose, in place of all this enquiry, not always very 
 delicate, nor ever very satisfactory, to let husband 
 and wife join in a common conveyance, with the 
 
 * Of the bar to the issue in tail there can be no doubt ; but there- 
 are decisions which lean against the operation of the Bankruptcy, to 
 bar the remainders over, contrary to Blackstone's decided opinion (2 
 Com. 286, 361.) and, it should seem, to the plain intent of the Legis- 
 lature. See Doe v. Clarke, 5 B. A. 458, and Jennings v. Tayleure, 
 3 B. A. 557, where it is considered that a base fee only passes in the 
 remainder.
 
 396 LAW REFORM. 
 
 consent of a guardian to be appointed, or of the next 
 male relative of the wife, who is not related to the 
 husband, and not interested in either the succession 
 or the conveyance. 
 
 Now, there is certainly nothing very real in a 
 Fine ; but as to Recoveries, I ask, do those persons 
 who seem to hold by them, know at all what they 
 avowedly proceed upon ? They go upon the ground 
 of compensation in value being made to the remain- 
 der-man, whose right they cut off, and who, but for 
 this fictitious suit, would have a title to take the 
 estate after the tenant-in-tail's decease. He is said 
 to recover a compensation in value ; and from whom 
 does he get it ? Why, the common vouchee, who is 
 the Cryer of the Court of Common Pleas, and who, 
 like the man at the Custom House obliged to take 
 all the oaths other people do not like, lies groaning 
 under the weight of all the liabilities he has incurred 
 to every remainder-man, since he became cryer, and 
 answerable for the millions of property, the rights to 
 which, in remainder, have been barred, he not being 
 worth a shilling. Locke says, that a madman is one 
 who reasons rightly from wrong premises ; so it is 
 with the lawyers on recoveries, who argue very inge- 
 niously, and even soundly and consistently, on the 
 principle of the compensation, and whose conclusions 
 could in no wise be impeached, if you once allowed 
 the fact, that those in the remainder are compensated 
 by the proceedings. Indeed, it happened to myself, 
 not long ago, in a case where a very large estate was 
 in question, to argue, and to prevail, respecting the 
 effect of a recovery, on this very ground of com- 
 pensation in value. I there had to contend that the 
 claimant was barred by the recovery, in consequence 
 of the compensation received from the vouchee,
 
 LAW REFORM. 397 
 
 though it was quite certain that, from the vouchee, 
 there never was, nor ever could be, received a single 
 shilling. My argument, on that occasion, did not 
 excite a smile in the Court, because the principles of 
 the law were known to be thus established, and the 
 consequences were of serious import, be the premises 
 ever so ludicrous. But, were I to use the same 
 argument elsewhere, it would, if understood, be re- 
 ceived with much less gravity. Put an end, then, to 
 all such ridiculous forms, which have no earthly use 
 but to raise a little money by way of fees ; and 
 which, beside creating expense and delay, and often- 
 times preventing tenants in tail from passing their 
 property by will, which they cannot if they die before 
 suffering the recovery, give rise to a number of ques- 
 tions in law, often very puzzling, always dilatory and 
 costly not rarely to mistakes in fact ; as where I 
 knew an estate go to the tenant in tail in remain- 
 der, instead of the recoveree's heir-at-law or devisee, 
 which he fully intended it should, merely because 
 in suffering the recovery an omission was made of 
 one parcel. 
 
 Sir, I also would put an end to those imaginary 
 Trusts in settlements for the purpose of preserving 
 Contingent Remainders. It has been said that some 
 Members of this House, who, during the Common- 
 wealth retired to the country and employed them- 
 selves in conveyancing, invented those refinements 
 which characterise what are called Strict Settle- 
 ments. I repeat, that my object is not to touch the 
 principle of the law of entails, as it now exists in 
 this country, believing that owners of estates should 
 not be laid under greater restrictions than they now 
 are in disposing of them by will after their death, or 
 by settlement upon marriages in their families. But
 
 398 LAW REFORM. 
 
 let the purpose of the owner be accomplished more 
 simply and more easily than can now be done. I 
 would allow every man to settle or to devise his pro- 
 perty to A. during his life, and after him to B. and 
 C. in succession, making 1 by plain words so many life 
 estates, and giving a fee to the person who, by our 
 present law, takes the first estate tail, not allowing 
 the latter to have any power over the property until 
 it became vested in possession, but requiring that, in 
 order to affect it while in expectancy, he and the te- 
 nant for life should join in some simple conveyance, 
 as a feoffment, whereby the settlement might, if the 
 parties chose, be carried on. The property then 
 would not be alienable an hour sooner than it now 
 is, and it would be alienable without fine or recovery ; 
 and I would make the act, which the law now deems 
 a discontinuance, as a feoffment in fee by tenant for 
 life, absolutely void to all purposes, instead of mak- 
 ing it a forfeiture of the particular estate of the 
 feoffer, though void as a conveyance ; so that I would 
 get rid of the necessity of trustees being interposed 
 to save the contingent uses from destruction. 
 
 Again, I would restore the Statute of Uses to what 
 it was clearly intended to be. Our ancestors made 
 that law, by which, if land were given to A. for the 
 use of B., the latter was deemed the legal owner, the 
 use being executed in him, just as if A. did not exist. 
 It was justly observed by Lord Hardvvicke, that all 
 the pains taken by this famous law ended in the add- 
 ing of three words to a conveyance. This has been 
 said by conveyancers to be a severe remark,* but it 
 is perfectly correct ; for the Courts of Equity invent- 
 ed Second Uses or Trusts, by holding with the Courts 
 
 * Some have questioned its authenticity, as not to be found in a MS. 
 note of Hopkins v. Hopkins ; but the words are far too remarkable to
 
 LAW REFORM. 3<)[> 
 
 of Law that the statute did not apply tcJ land given 
 to A. to the use of B., in trust for C. ; that it execut- 
 ed the use only in B., but not in C. ; therefore the 
 whole provision is evaded, by making the gift " to 
 the use o/*B., in trust for C. ;" and these three words 
 send the whole matter into Chancery, contrary to 
 the plain intent of the statute. It \vas also held that 
 copyhold estates are not within the statute in any 
 way ; and there are other nice exceptions, but not 
 much better grounded. Can there be any reason 
 whatever for not making all such estates legal at 
 once, and restoring them to the jurisdiction of the 
 Common Law, by recognising, as the owner, the per- 
 son to whom in reality the estate is given, and pass- 
 ing over him who is a mere nominal party ? * 
 
 Another deviation from the principles I have laid 
 down, and a great source of multiplicity of suits, is 
 the law with respect to Agreements for sales, leases, 
 and other conveyances. Thus, if I agree with a per- 
 son to give him a lease, though he, under the agree- 
 ment, becomes my tenant, he is my equitable tenant 
 only, but not my legal tenant. He may be possessed 
 of a written agreement, signed and sealed, for a lease 
 of ten years, and may occupy under it, but he has no 
 lease which a court of law can take notice of ; and 
 if an ejectment is brought, he must go out. He may 
 go into a Court of Equity on his agreement, if that 
 
 have been invented : " By this means a Statute, made upon great con- 
 sideration, introduced in a solemn and pompous manner, by this strict 
 construction, has had no other effect than to add at most three words 
 to a conveyance." 1 Aih. 591 . The remark, nearly in the same words, 
 is adopted by Blackstone, who cites Lord Hardwicke in support of it. 
 2 Com. 336. 
 
 * The late Wills-Act has introduced very great improvements into 
 the Law respecting executing Devises, and put an end to by far the 
 most fruitful source of vexatious litigation on this head.
 
 400 LAW REFORM. 
 
 is any comfort to him ; he may apply for a decree 
 against me to perform my agreement ; but till then 
 his claims are not recognised in a Court of Common 
 Law. If an injunction be brought, the expenses are 
 further multiplied. Why, I ask, should not the 
 agreement, such as I have described, be as good as a 
 lease ; when, in substance, it is the very same thing, 
 and only wants a word added or left out to make it 
 the same in legal effect too ? A case illustrative of 
 this subject happened to come within my own ob- 
 servation. I was counsel in a case at York, where 
 an agreement had been entered into and possession 
 given ; but because it did not contain words of pre- 
 sent demise, it was no lease, and therefore the tenant 
 could not stand a moment against the ejectment that 
 was brought, but was driven into the Court of Chan- 
 cery, where the other party could just as little stand 
 against him. How much inconvenience, expense, 
 and delay, then, might be saved, if such an agree- 
 ment were pronounced equivalent to a lease ; and, 
 in general, every thing were supposed done in one 
 Court which may be ordered as a matter of course to 
 be done by another, reserving, no doubt, all objec- 
 tions on the head of fraud, mistake, surprise, and the 
 like, which may be raised by pleading at law, just as 
 easily as in equity. 
 
 In like manner, I would allow a Legatee to sue an 
 Executor or Administrator for his legacy,* and the 
 Mortgager to sue for his rights. It is always said 
 that in these and the like cases of active trusts, ac- 
 counts must be taken ; and so they must in every 
 
 * The Local Courts Bill, brought in according to the recommenda- 
 tion of the Common Law Commissioners appointed in consequence of 
 this motion, provided for these defects, but it was thrown out by a bare 
 majority in the Lords, 1833,
 
 LAW REFORM. 401 
 
 action where there is a matter of set-off against a 
 demand. The old Action of Account might be 
 greatly improved ; and by its aid, and by reference 
 to arbitration, where necessary, much that now goes 
 to equity might be disposed of at law. The only 
 reason why such cases as these, where the assets are 
 to be marshalled and cross claims considered, now 
 go into the Court of Chancery, is, not for any supe- 
 rior fitness of that Court itself, but because of its ap- 
 pendage, the Masters' office, without which it would 
 be no better able than the King's Bench to manage 
 even long trusts, chronic cases, as they have been 
 termed, though every suit in Equity might be thus 
 named. Let' the Court of King's Bench have an 
 equal number of Masters let Arbitrators be publicly 
 appointed, to whom parties may refer before any ex- 
 pense has been incurred, as they do now after all 
 the bill has been run up nay, to whom they may 
 go without even consulting an attorney and if this 
 machinery be found not enough effectually and pro- 
 perly to despatch the business of the Court, let its 
 machinery be increased, and sure I am it would be 
 the cheapest and most powerful that ever was set up. 
 It would do away with the ridiculous importance 
 attached to a few words of conveyance ; it would 
 oust the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery in all 
 the matters of which I have been speaking, and 
 which it has from time to time drawn over from the 
 Common Law, to which those matters originally be- 
 longed. Then the Courts of Equity would be left 
 to execute their ordinary jurisdiction in matters of 
 account requiring a long course of time, and minute 
 and daily attention cases calling not for decision, 
 but superintendence to the care of infants, idiots, 
 and insolvent estates, and other matters which it 
 
 VOL. II. 2 C
 
 402 LAW REFORM. 
 
 would be impossible for a Court of Common Law 
 effectually to take charge of. 
 
 Again, on the same principle of avoiding multi- 
 plicity of suits, why, in Ejectments, should two pro- 
 cesses be requisite to give the plaintiff his remedy ? 
 As things now stand, after a man has succeeded in 
 one action, and established his title to the possession, 
 he must have recourse to another, to recover that 
 which he ought to have obtained by one and the 
 same verdict that established his title the mesne 
 profits? Why could not the same jury settle the matter 
 at once ? Why is an individual driven to maintain 
 two actions for the purpose of obtaining one and the 
 same remedy? Or why should not the jury that 
 tries the right, also assess the damages ? Mr Ten- 
 nyson's Bill, which was intended to remedy some 
 part of this evil, is only permissive ; it ought to have 
 been compulsory. It is partial, and it is only recom- 
 mendatory, and its recommendations are not always 
 attended to, because the lawyers, having the choice, 
 do not think fit to pursue that which is the least pro- 
 fitable ; they choose the two actions, when one would 
 suffice for the interests of justice for the interests of 
 the plaintiff and defendant for all interests except 
 those of the practitioners.* 
 
 ii. Having considered how the number of needless 
 suits may be diminished, I now proceed to the next 
 head of my enquiry to ascertain how, after their 
 number is reduced as low as possible, and those only 
 brought into Court which ought to be tried, you may 
 best Shorten the Suits brought, by disposing of them 
 in the shortest time, and with the least expense. And 
 
 * This defect has since been supplied by Legislative enactment.
 
 LAW HKl'OKM. 403 
 
 this topic leads me to examine the principles which 
 ought to be adopted for encouraging the parties to 
 come to an amicable settlement as speedily as possible. 
 The law cites as its warrant for certain steps in 
 every suit, the injunction of Scripture " Agree 
 with thy adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the 
 way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver 
 thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the 
 officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say 
 unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence 
 till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." The 
 latter part of the text is applicable enough to the 
 proceedings under the English law ; and this scrip- 
 tural advice to compromise ought to be constantly 
 set before the eyes of suitors in all our Courts, 
 with the penalty denounced. Our law, however, 
 no sooner adopts the principle, by allowing a party 
 to imparl, than it departs from the spirit of it ; for it 
 must be observed, that the delay of imparlance is 
 admissible, not " in the way," but in the Court, 
 after arrest, and when the effect is only to pro- 
 duce unnecessary loss of time, and fees equally unne- 
 cessary. Here, however, the sound principles are 
 as obvious as before. Whatever brings the parties 
 to their senses as soon as possible, especially by giving 
 each a clear view of his chance of success or failure, 
 and, above all things, making him well acquainted 
 with his adversary's case at the earliest possible mo- 
 ment, will always be for the interests of justice, of 
 the parties themselves, and indeed of all but the 
 practitioners. It is the practitioners, generally, that 
 determine how the matter shall proceed, and it may 
 be imagined that their own interests are not the last 
 attended to. The seeming interest of two parties 
 disposed to be litigious, in many cases appears to be 
 different from the interests of justice, although their
 
 404 LAW REFORM. 
 
 real interests, if strictly examined, will not unfre- 
 quently be found to be the same. Now, justice is 
 embarrassed by the disingenuousness of conflicting 
 parties ; justice wants the cases of both to be fully 
 and early stated ; but both parties take care to in- 
 form each other as little as possible, and as late as 
 possible, of the merits of their respective cases. One 
 tells as much of his case as he thinks good for the 
 furtherance of his claim, and the frustration of the 
 enemy's so does the other give only as much of his 
 case in answer as may help him, without aiding his 
 adversary; and the Judge is oftentimes left to guess at 
 the truth in the trick and conflict of the two. The inte- 
 rest of the Court and of justice being to make both 
 parties come out with the whole of their case as early 
 as possible, the law should never lend itself to their 
 concealments. "This remark extends to the proof as 
 well as the statement of the case. An intimation of 
 what the evidence is, may often stop a cause at once. 
 In Scotland, the law in this respect is better than 
 ours; for no man can produce a written instrument 
 on the trial without having previously shown it to 
 his adversary. For want of this salutary rule, we 
 have often seen the most useless litigation protracted 
 for the sole benefit of the practitioners. I was my- 
 self lately engaged in a cause, the circumstances of 
 which will give the House an idea of the mischief. 
 I was instructed not to show a certain receipt to the 
 opposite party, as my client, the defendant, meant to 
 nonsuit his adversary in great style, as he would call 
 it. Well, the plaintiff" (an executor) stated his case, 
 and called his witnesses to prove the debt. I did not 
 take the trouble to cross-examine, which would have 
 been quite unnecessary. Equally so was it to address 
 the Jury. I acknowledged the truth of all that had 
 been sworn on the other side, but added that it was
 
 LAW REFORM. 405 
 
 all useless, as I happened to have a receipt for the 
 money, which had been paid to the testator. This, 
 of course, put an end to the case. The sum sought 
 to be recovered did not exceed twenty pounds, and 
 the expenses could not have been less than a hun- 
 dred. If that action had been brought in Scotland, 
 it never could have come to trial, nor, indeed, been 
 prosecuted beyond the mere demand : for, this re- 
 ceipt being shown, the claim would have been aban- 
 doned. Here some person or other, I will not say 
 who, had an interest in the cause being suffered to 
 proceed, and the law enabled him to accomplish his 
 purpose. I think, sir, the adoption of some such 
 rule as the Scotch might be desirable. At least, it 
 would be well to enquire how it works in Scotland, 
 and be guided by the result.* 
 
 Next, the greatest encouragement should be given 
 to compromises in all cases. At present the law re- 
 cognises the principle to a certain extent, and per- 
 mits money to be paid into Court, in some instances, 
 as cases of contract and quasi-contract, where the 
 damages are certain. But nothing can be less judi- 
 cious than restricting the power of paying money 
 into Court to those classes of causes, and excluding 
 actions upon contract with uncertain damages, and 
 actions upon tort, which are far more likely to be 
 brought hastily, or obstinately defended, because 
 they are accompanied by irritated feelings. t The 
 
 * The late rules of the Judges, under the Act of 1833, have, to a great 
 degree, provided this remedy. 
 
 t It has been held that money cannot be paid into Court in actions 
 for breach of contract to deliver goods at a fixed price (3 B. and P. 14), 
 for dilapidations (87 R. 47), on bond for money in a foreign currency 
 depreciated (57 R. 87). Chambre J., in the first and the strongest of these 
 cases, says" It could not be done without violating every rule of 
 practice." See Com. Pleader, C. 10.
 
 406 LAW REFORM. 
 
 earliest opportunity should be afforded in all cases 
 to each party of getting 1 rid of the suit on receiving 
 or making compensation. I would, therefore, ex- 
 tend the right of paying into Court, or tendering 
 amends, to all cases whatever. As the law now 
 stands, it is only magistrates, officers, and other per- 
 sons specially protected by the statutes of James I. 
 and George II, who can thus proceed in actions 
 for injury offered to the person or property.* 
 
 But the great means of shortening litigation are 
 to be found in an enlargement of our Law of Arbi- 
 trament. I much fear that this, my next proposal, 
 may seem strange, especially as coming from a pro- 
 fessional man ; for it goes directly to abridge the 
 length and the expense of law proceedings in a great 
 number of cases, and of preventing not a few from 
 ever coming into Court. But it is calculated to se- 
 cure justice effectually, without which no saving of 
 expense or of time deserves the name of an improve- 
 ment. Now I do not lay claim to any peculiar dis- 
 interestedness in broaching this matter. Few per- 
 sons, it is true, have less interest in diminishing the 
 amount of business in our Courts, because there 
 are not many who gain more by it, and to whom, 
 therefore, the abuses which I am describing, if 
 such they be, are more profitable. But I really be- 
 lieve that lopping off needless litigation, by measures 
 calculated to lessen the expense of procedure in all 
 its branches, would greatly increase the number of 
 lawsuits real suits, which ought to be encouraged, 
 as necessary to justice, but which at present are kept 
 out of Court, by the double tax of cost and delay. 
 
 * This is now remedied.
 
 LAW Jtlil'OltM. 407 
 
 The County Courts ought to be diligently reformed 
 their process extended to matters of a larger amount, 
 and of greater variety their officers rendered more 
 able and effective.* This improvement of itself 
 would greatly diminish the number of trifling 
 suits brought into the higher judicatures; and how 
 can I, or any one conversant with the practice of 
 the law, adequately express the benefits of having a 
 speedy and cheap redress for petty wrongs, when 
 we daily witness the evils of the opposite system ! 
 How often have I been able to trace bankruptcies 
 and insolvencies to some lawsuit about ten or fifteen 
 pounds, the costs of which have mounted up to large 
 sums, and been the beginning of embarrassment ! 
 Nay, how often have we seen men in the situation 
 described by Dean Swift, who represents Gulliver's 
 father as ruined by gaining a Chancery suit, with 
 costs ! The public generally are little aware of the 
 number of petty actions forming the bulk of every 
 cause paper at Nisi Pri us. Professional men can tell 
 how many now stand for trial concerning demands 
 under twenty pounds ; how few of these have been 
 thus far ripened by the fostering care of the profes- 
 sion and the offices, under a hundred pounds ex- 
 pense. I made the Prothonotary, four years ago, at 
 Lancaster, give me a list of fifty verdicts obtained at 
 the Lent Assizes ; the average was under fourteen 
 pounds, including, however, two or three actions 
 brought to try rights, where the damages were of 
 course nominal. But if the money recovered 
 amounted in all to less than nine hundred pounds, 
 the costs incurred certainly exceeded five thousand 
 
 * The Act of 1833 has extended and improved this jurisdiction mate- 
 rially ; but the Local Courts Bill would have done so far more effectually.
 
 408 LAW REFORM. 
 
 pounds ; fifty pounds a-side being indeed a very 
 low average of costs as between attorney and client. 
 It is not too much to affirm that not above a tenth 
 part of those fifty cases would ever have seen the 
 Court at Lancaster, had a righ^ system prevailed j 
 that is, if the parties who were to bear the heavy 
 charge, whether of losing or seeming to gain (for the 
 loss, generally speaking, only differed in degree) 
 had been early apprized of their real situation, and 
 exercised their own judgment upon the question of 
 going on or settling betimes. An extension and im- 
 provement of arbitration is one of the remedies I 
 have ventured to suggest, at least for further discus- 
 sion. If arbitrators were publicly appointed, before 
 whom parties themselves might go in the first in- 
 stance, state their grounds of contention, and hear 
 the calm opinion of able and judicious men upon 
 their own statements, their anger would often be 
 cooled, and their confidence abated, so as to do each 
 other justice without any expense or delay. Such a 
 tribunal exists in France, under the name of Cour de 
 Conciliation; in Denmark it exists j and for certain 
 mercantile causes, in Holland also. If it be thought 
 too great a change to introduce it here, in what I 
 deem its best form, I think much good would arise 
 from a modification of it the appointment of Public 
 Arbitrators, who might at all times sit and take re- 
 ferences by consent, with process to compel the at- 
 tendance of witnesses, and the execution of their 
 awards. At least we should see all those cases taken 
 before them at once, which are now brought at great 
 cost into courts wholly unable to try them, and are 
 uniformly greeted with the observation from both 
 Bench and Bar " Oh, an account and a set-off 
 a hundred items so many issues no judge or jury
 
 LAW REFORM. 409 
 
 can try it," after all the expense of trying it has been 
 incurred.* 
 
 iii. The course of our inquiry has thus brought 
 us, in the third place, to the Commencement of a 
 Suit ; and here the principles and rules which pre- 
 sent themselves are as obvious as they are important. 
 The first is to prevent the debtor's escape, and hinder 
 him from delaying his creditor, by wilfully absenting 
 himself. The second is to give the debtor due notice 
 of the particular nature of the claim, so that he may 
 defend himself if right, or yield if wrong, that is, if 
 actually indebted. The third is, to give the debtor 
 no unnecessary inconvenience, till found to be in the 
 wrong (that is, indebted), as far as is consistent 
 with due security to the plaintiff against a defendant 
 likely to escape ; taking care also to protect the de- 
 fendant against a plaintiff likely to oppress him with 
 costs, and leave him without remedy on dropping 
 the suit. 
 
 Now, against all these, which I consider cardinal 
 virtues in this important stage of procedure, our 
 laws offend most grievously. For, in the first place, 
 we assume the defendant to be in the wrong, and 
 not only so, but to be meditating flight from his 
 country and his home ; we, therefore, arrest him 
 immediately, and cast him into prison, or compel 
 
 * Out of the Statute of William, arbitration is no favourite of our 
 law. An agreement or a covenant to refer is waste paper ; no action 
 can be maintained for a breach of either ; f and equity will not enforce 
 the performance. (6 Ves. 818). A great Judge said on this case, that 
 he had, since a cause he mentioned, made it a rule never to recommend 
 an arbitration. The Local Courts Bill established Courts of Concilia- 
 tion, under the name of Courts of Reconcilement, with the fullest 
 powers. 
 
 f The proceedings in arbitrations are very much improved by the late Act 
 of 1833.
 
 410 LAW REFORM. 
 
 him to find bail. A Member of this Honourable 
 House, if, by the acceptance of an office, he hap- 
 pens, for the space of a few days, to be out of Par- 
 liament, may thus be arrested, and put to the most 
 serious inconvenience. It might have happened the 
 other day to the member for Oxford. If he bought 
 twenty pounds' worth of goods on a Saturday, went 
 to his villa and returned on Monday, on knocking 
 at his door he might be met with an arrest, and he 
 must then accompany the sheriff's officer to a lock- 
 up house till he procured bail. He would then do 
 what I understand is usual in such cases, send for 
 his butcher and his baker, and get bailed ; but a 
 gentleman could not, after that, complain so well of 
 the meat, or the bread, or the bills during the next 
 half year. Certainly he would not be in a situation, 
 the week after, to criticise his tradesman's conduct 
 with a good grace. I have known worse inconve- 
 nience happen from such use being made of the law, 
 at elections ; indeed, when candidates have car- 
 ried their adversary's voters to Norway, instead of 
 letting them reach Berwick, we may believe they 
 would not scruple to use the writ for a similar pur- 
 pose. But however malicious or spiteful may be the 
 motives of any one in so employing the process of 
 the law, there being a probable cause of detention, 
 and the process not being abused, no action lies 
 against the wrong doer. If he have no accomplices, 
 so as to fall within the charge of conspiracy, he is 
 safe. To the wealthy, however, all these inconve- 
 niences are trivial ; but how does such a proceeding 
 operate on a poor man, or a tradesman in moderate 
 circumstances? He has no facilities for obtaining 
 bail ; if he does, he pays one way or another after- 
 wards for the favour ; and if he cannot procure it,
 
 LAW REFORM. 411 
 
 he must go to prison. Perhaps no man ever holds 
 up his head, or is the same man again, after having 
 once been in prison, unless for a political offence. 
 But, I ask, why should a man ever be arrested on 
 mesne process at all ? The Honourable Member for 
 Montrose has brought this subject before the House, 
 and he has my hearty thanks for it. On what ground 
 of common sense does our law in this matter rest ? 
 Why should it be supposed that a man, owing twenty 
 pounds, will leave his house, his wife, his children, 
 his country, his pursuits ; and incur voluntarily the 
 punishment awarded for great crimes, by banishing 
 himself for life ? Yet the law always proceeds on the 
 supposition that a man will run away the moment he 
 has notice given him of an action for the debt. Some 
 men might possibly act thus, but their conduct forms 
 the exception, not the rule ; and do you legislate 
 wisely do you legislate like men of sense do you 
 legislate with common consistency when you de- 
 nounce a penalty against all men in order to meet a 
 case not likely to occur once in a thousand times ? 
 
 What would be the effect of altering the law in 
 this respect ? Could its reformation injure any one? 
 Certainly not ; on the contrary, it would benefit all 
 classes of the community. The very first conse- 
 quence of such an alteration would be to make 
 tradesmen less easy in giving credit, by rendering 
 them more cautious. At present they are induced 
 to rely on the suddenness of personal arrest for com- 
 pelling a payment of their demands, in preference to 
 others, and thus to speculate upon the chance of 
 payment from insolvent persons ; so they enter into 
 a competition not an honest, praiseworthy compe- 
 tition, in the correctness of their dealings, or the 
 goodness of their wares but a competition in the
 
 412 LAW REFORM. 
 
 credit to give to needy and profligate, or suspected 
 and extravagant men, unable to pay any thing like 
 the whole amount of the debts which the rashness or 
 cupidity of tradesmen may allow them to contract. 
 And on whom does the loss thus incurred by the 
 tradesman finally fall ? Not unfrequently on those 
 who can and do pay ; they have to answer for those 
 who do not ; they pay a sort of del credere in pro- 
 portion to the loss incurred through giving credit 
 a species of insurance on all bad debts. Even the 
 more respectable customers would be all the more 
 regular in their dealings and economical in their 
 habits, were they never tempted by easy credits to 
 buy what they have not money to pay for.* 
 
 My next objection to the present system, under 
 this head, is, that no proceeding can take place in our 
 courts unless there be an actual appearance. We out- 
 law a man to compel an appearance. Why do so? Why 
 can we not proceed as in the case of ejectment, where 
 a notice is left at the dwelling-house ? Why can we 
 not leave a writ at a man's house, stating what we 
 sue him for ; and only when we think him about to 
 fly, call upon him to give surety ? I repeat, why not 
 send a writ to the known domicile or house of busi- 
 ness of the debtor ; a writ, too, which shall plainly 
 describe the cause of action, instead of serving him 
 wiwi a writ that only tells him he is a prisoner for 
 some reason or other, which in due time he will be 
 informed of ; and if he cannot be found, outlawing 
 him after nine months' delay ? This is done in Hol- 
 land, a mercantile country, and in Scotland, a wary 
 
 * Upon the grounds here stated, the Common Law Commissioners 
 recommended abolishing Imprisonment for Debt entirely, unless where 
 fraud had been committed, or contumacy exerted, or escape meditated. 
 The Bill now before Parliament will effect this.
 
 LAW REFORM. 413 
 
 country, where too great charity is not generally 
 shown to the debtor ; at least the Scotch have not 
 the reputation of being unnecessarily merciful on 
 such occasions ; yet a writ to take the debtor's per- 
 son is only obtainable there if he be in meditatione 
 fugce. Our process of outlawry is, in its nature, 
 extremely foolish ; its object being to compel an ap- 
 pearance, which, after all, is not necessary, provided 
 the party wilfully absents himself after due notice. 
 If a man chooses to keep away, why not proceed 
 without him after such a delay, and so many services 
 at his place of residence as shall insure him having 
 a knowledge of the action ? As for any scruple about 
 proceedingagainst an absent man, without making per- 
 fectly sure of his having notice, the present law has no 
 right to say a word on the subject ; for its process of 
 outlawry is neither more nor less than a mean by 
 which you harass an absent man, without even pre- 
 tending to give him notice. He may be in the Greek 
 Islands, on the coast of Africa, or in the backwoods 
 of America, and his creditor can outlaw him, and 
 proceed to have his goods forfeited, without his being 
 aware of the transaction, and without the proceeds 
 of the forfeiture necessarily benefiting any one but 
 the Crown. In Exchequer cases, it is true, the debt 
 and costs, not exceeding L.50, are paid out of the 
 fund which arises from selling the goods ; in all 
 other cases, a party must apply to the Lords of the 
 Treasury. Why should this be ? What have the 
 Lords of the Treasury to do with the legal remedy 
 of plaintiffs in suits ? Why send any one to the 
 executive power for the redress which the judicial 
 authority alone ought to administer ? * 
 
 iv. We are now to suppose the parties in Court, 
 
 * This clumsy and inconsistent process remains unaltered.
 
 414 LAW REFORM. 
 
 and called upon to state their cases, the claim of one, 
 and defence of the other. Anciently this Pleading, 
 as it is termed, was by word of mouth ; but in more 
 modern times it has been carried on in writing. 
 Originally, too, Pleas were in French, afterwards in 
 Latin, and for a century past, by a great, but most 
 salutary innovation, doubtless much reviled and 
 dreaded in its day, they have been conducted in 
 English. I must own that I approach the subject 
 of Special Pleading, in the presence of my most 
 worthy friend and learned instructor in that art,* 
 with some degree of awe. That excellent person's 
 attainments in its mysteries are well known, and 
 justly appreciated- He is intimately acquainted with 
 the subject. The distrust of rny own learning, there- 
 in, while addressing him, is not lessened by my re- 
 collection of the praises lavished upon the science 
 by high authorities of past times. Lord Coke 
 deemed it so delightful a science, that its very name 
 was derived, according to him, from its pleasurable 
 nature " Quia bene placitare omnibus placet." In- 
 capable of inventing a new pleasure, I would fain 
 restore a lost one, by bringing back Pleading to 
 somewhat of its pristine state, when it gave our an- 
 cestors such exquisite recreation. Certain it is that 
 our deviation from the old rules in this branch of the 
 law, has been attended with evil effects. Those rules, 
 as Lord Mansfield once said, were founded in rea- 
 son and good sense ; accuracy and justice was their 
 object, and in the details much of ingenuity and 
 subtlety was displayed ; but by degrees the good 
 sense has disappeared, and the ingenuity and subtlety 
 have increased beyond measure, and been oftentimes 
 misdirected ; nay, to such a pitch have the changes 
 
 * Sir N. C. Tindal.
 
 LAW III-: I- OHM. 115 
 
 proceeded, that at last subtlety has superseded sense ; 
 accuracy and justice are wellnigli lost sight of; and 
 ingenuity is exhausted in devising 1 pretexts for pro- 
 lixity and means of stratagem. In these really hurt- 
 ful innovations the Courts of Law have been the far 
 too ready accomplices ; and the Legislature has been 
 a most willing instrument to increase the evil, by 
 sanctioning, almost as a matter of course, in each 
 new act, the power of pleading the general issue ; so 
 that to call the modern practice by the name of spe- 
 cial pleading, is really an abuse of terms. It can 
 only be restored to its ancient condition, and made 
 deserving, if not of Lord Coke's panegyric, yet of 
 the more measured commendations of Lord Mans- 
 field, by reviewing the entire system as it at present 
 stands. My wish is, as far as possible, to revive the 
 accuracy of the old pleading, without its niceties and 
 verbosity; while pains are taken to improve it, where 
 this can safely be done, by adapting it to the advan- 
 ced state of modern jurisprudence. 
 
 The precedents of the ancient pleaders, and the 
 other rules recognised in their times, furnish the 
 most valuable materials for this reform ; and, in- 
 deed, it is chiefly from the science as they left it that 
 the principles I am about to state are drawn. The 
 first great rule of pleading should be, to induce and 
 compel the litigant parties to disclose fully and dis- 
 tinctly the real nature of their respective contentions, 
 whether claim or defence, as early as possible. The 
 second is, that no needless impediment should be 
 thrown in the way of either party, in any stage of 
 the discussion within the Court, whether plea, repli- 
 cation, or rejoinder, whereby he may be hindered to 
 propound his case in point of fact, or of law. In the 
 third place, all needless repetitions, and generally all
 
 416 LAW REFORM. 
 
 prolixity should, as well as all mere reasoning 1 , which 
 neither simply affirms nor denies any proposition of 
 fact or of law, be prevented ; and all repugnant or 
 inconsistent pleas should be disallowed, as well as all 
 departure from ground once taken.* 
 
 1. That these were the principles on which the 
 ancient pleaders bottomed their system entirely, I 
 will not affirm ; but upon them it was mainly built. 
 And I regret to say, that the last century and a half 
 has witnessed great and prejudicial alterations in the 
 original plan ; so that the record, in the great majo- 
 rity of cases, instead of exhibiting a plain view of 
 what each party is prepared to prove, contains an 
 endless multitude of words, from which, if the real 
 matter in dispute can be gathered at all, it is only by 
 guess work, or by communications out of the record 
 relating to things of which it gives not even a hint. 
 Let us look into this a little more narrowly. The 
 Count of a Declaration should convey information 
 as to the subject of the action ; but it conveys no 
 precise knowledge of the plaintiff's demand, or in- 
 deed of what the suit is about. Take the instance 
 of the Common Counts, as they are justly termed, in 
 Assumpsit, being those constantly resorted to ; and 
 take the most common of these, the count for money 
 had and received. I will take no advantage of the 
 audience I speak before being unacquainted with 
 legal niceties, in order to make merry with the ve- 
 nerable formalities of the art. All lawyers know 
 how easy it would be in this place to raise a smile, 
 at the least, by recounting the little fooleries of our 
 draftsmen ; but I disdain it, and will treat the sub- 
 
 * The valuable improvements introduced with so bold a hand, but so 
 judiciously, under the Act of 1833, are mainly founded upon these 
 principles. 

 
 LAW REFORM. 417 
 
 ject precisely as if I were addressing- professional 
 men. The plaintiff declares that the defendant, 
 being indebted to him for so much money had and 
 received to the use of the said plaintiff, to wit, one 
 thousand pounds, undertook and faithfully promised 
 to pay it, but broke his engagement ; and the count 
 is thus framed, the self-same terms being- invariably 
 used, whatever be the cause of action which can be 
 brought into Court under this head. Now, observe 
 how various the matters are which may be all descri- 
 bed by the foregoing words. In the first place, such 
 is the declaration for money paid by one individual 
 to another, for the use and benefit of the plaintiff 
 this is what alone the words of the count imply, but 
 to express this they are rarely, indeed, made use of. 
 2dly, The self-same terms are used on suing for 
 money received on a consideration that fails, and 
 used in the same way to describe all the endless va- 
 riety of cases which can occur of such failure, as an 
 estate sold with a bad title, and a deposit paid ; a 
 horse sold with a concealed unsoundness, and so 
 forth. 3dly, The same words are used when it is 
 wished to recover money paid under mistake of fact. 
 4thly, To recover money paid by one person to a 
 stakeholder, in consideration of an illegal contract 
 made with another person.* 5th ly, Money paid to 
 revenue-officers for releasing the goods illegally de- 
 tained, of the person paying.t Gthly, To try the 
 right to any office, instead of bringing an assize.J 
 7thly, To try the liability of the landlord for rates 
 levied on his tenant. What information, then, does 
 such a declaration give ? It is impossible, on read- 
 
 * 1 B. and P. 3. Ib. 290. f 4 T. II. 485. 
 
 t Str. 747. Garth. 95. 1 T. K. 255. 
 VOL. II. 2 D
 
 418 LAW REFORM. 
 
 ing this count, to say which of the seven causes of 
 action has arisen ; and it is not merely those seven, 
 for each one of them has a vast number of varieties, 
 which are declared on in the same words. In ac- 
 tions of Trover, the case is even worse. Suppose 
 the case of a plaintiff suing- for any chattel, as a gun, 
 the declaration will be such as may apply equally to 
 at least eight different heads, under each of which 
 are many different causes of action. The words in 
 all would be the very same that the plaintiff was 
 possessed of a gun, as of his own proper goods and 
 chattels ; that he accidentally lost it j that the de- 
 fendant found it, and converted it to his use. Now 
 this count describes only one case, that of a gun 
 lost by its owner, and detained by the finder. But 
 it is employed to mean, 2dly, That the gun has been 
 taken by the defendant under pretence of some title, 
 or in any way not felonious. 3dly, That it was de- 
 posited with the defendant, who refused to deliver it 
 up. 4thly, That it was stopped in transitu, the price 
 not having been paid. 5thly, That the plaintiff is the 
 assignee of a bankrupt, and seeks to recover the gun, 
 as having been sold after the bankruptcy of the ven- 
 dor. 6thly, That the plaintiff has been improperly 
 made a bankrupt, and sues the assignees to try the 
 bankruptcy. 7thly, That his goods have been unlaw- 
 fully taken, and he sues to try the validity of an exe- 
 cution, on any of the various grounds of fraud, &c., 
 which impeach the validity of the process. Sthly, 
 That the gun has been misdelivered, or detained, by 
 a warehouseman or carrier. All those causes of 
 action differ from each other as much as different 
 things can differ, and yet they are all stated in the 
 declaration the same way, and signified under the 
 same form of words.
 
 LAW REFORM. 419 
 
 The pleadings in cases where it might be expected 
 that the greatest particularity would be given to the 
 statement, actions upon Torts to the Person, are 
 somewhat, but for the most part, not remarkably 
 more definite and precise in their description. The 
 declarations on the seduction of a wife, servant, or 
 daughter, assault, and false imprisonment, are drawn 
 so that you can say, no doubt, what the action is 
 about, which you hardly ever can in cases of As- 
 sumpsit or Trover ; but the same form of words is 
 used, whatever the particular shape of the cause 
 may be. Of the circumstances peculiar to the trans- 
 action, the pleadings tell the defendant nothing . 
 they tell the counsel nothing they tell the judge 
 nothing. It may be said that the defendant must 
 know the cause of action himself; but that does not 
 always follow, especially if (which may be presumed 
 barely possible, though it seems never to be thought 
 so) the allegations are groundless. There is, how- 
 ever, one person who must know the cause of action, 
 and that is the plaintiff. He ought, for the satisfac- 
 tion of all concerned, to state it distinctly. The 
 same may be said of the counts in Trespass, for 
 taking goods.* In Trespass quare clausum fregit, 
 perhaps the description of the wrong done is more 
 specific. But it happens that the circumstances here 
 are of far less importance ; damages are not in ques- 
 tion ; a shilling or so is to be recovered, the object 
 of the action being almost always to try a right of 
 property or an easement. In all other cases of trespass, 
 where a knowledge of the wrong suffered is most 
 material, the parties are left to fight, and the Court 
 
 * These defects are in a great measure remedied by the late 
 changes,
 
 420 LAW REFORM. 
 
 to decide, in the dark ; but in the case I have just 
 alluded to, where a knowledge of the circumstances 
 in which the trespass was committed is immaterial, 
 every thing is told them of which it is wholly 
 unimportant that they should be informed ; in a 
 cumbrous way, no doubt, and with much fanciful 
 statement, but still it is told. Actions for Slander 
 and Libel, for Malicious Prosecutions, and Mali- 
 cious Arrest, or holding to bail, with others on the 
 Case, are very particular, and form, certainly, an 
 exception to the ordinary course of pleading ; at 
 least, as far as the declaration goes ; no further, as 
 we shall presently see for I now proceed to the 
 next stage of the pleadings, namely, to the Pleas 
 which the defendant puts upon the record in answer 
 to the plaintiff's complaints. 
 
 In this stage of the cause, we encounter the same 
 evils, but in greater abundance ; for they affect those 
 Actions on the Case where the count is most pre- 
 cise. Generally speaking, it may be said, that if the 
 plaintiff tells us nothing in his declaration, the de- 
 fendant, in return, tells us as little in his plea ; in 
 that respect, at least, they are even. This is, per- 
 haps, a consequence of the former evil ; but be that 
 as it may, it ought to be remedied. The plaintiff 
 ought to tell the defendant the real nature of his 
 complaint, and the defendant ought to make him 
 equally acquainted with the nature of his answer. 
 If this were always done, perjury would not so often 
 be committed; everything intended to be proved 
 would be stated on each side ; and the parties, 
 knowing the evidence on which the respective state- 
 ments must be established, would have an opportu- 
 nity of examining into the character of the witnesses, 
 and of procuring the best evidence to elucidate the
 
 LAW REFORM, 421 
 
 point. At present, the mystery of pleading- leaves 
 them in doubt ; and the vague and indistinct state- 
 ments on the record, unaccompanied by other in- 
 formation, open a door to the entrance of falsehood 
 in the witnesses, far wider than any you could open, 
 by enabling them to get up proofs in answer to those 
 expected from the opposite side. Whenever the 
 parties fight each other by trick, on the record in 
 the first instance, fencing to evade telling their 
 grounds of contention, they renew the fight after- 
 wards by perjury in Court. I will now give the 
 House some instances of the vagueness of this part 
 of pleading. 
 
 In the indebitatus assinnpsit, from which I took 
 my first example, the general issue is non (issump- 
 ait. Now, under that plea no less than eight dif- 
 ferent defences may be set tip ; as, for instance, a 
 denial of the contract, payment, usury, gaming, 
 infancy, coverture, accord and satisfaction, release. 
 All these defences are entirely different, and yet 
 they are all stated in the self-same words. So, too, 
 in the action of trover ; take our former case of the 
 gun : the defendant, under the plea of " not guilty," 
 may set up as a defence, that he is a gamekeeper, 
 and took it by virtue of the statute of Charles II. ; * 
 or that he had a lien upon it as a carrier for his 
 general balance, and had, therefore, a right to de- 
 tain it ; or a particular lien for work done upon it ; 
 or that he had received it as a deposit, and was en- 
 titled to keep it ; or that he took it for toll, t or 
 detained it till passage-money due by its owner were 
 paid ;t or the reward due for saving it from ship- 
 
 * St. 22, 23 Car. II. Dawe and Walter in Bull. N. P. 48. 
 t Sir W. Jones, 240. t 2 Camp. 031.
 
 423 LAW REFORM. 
 
 wreck were given.* Any one of these defences 
 may be concealed under the plea of " not guilty," 
 without the possibility of the plaintiff discovering 
 which it is that his adversary means to set up ; so 
 that every body will, I think, agree with me, that if 
 the count teaches the Court and opposite party little, 
 the plea teaches them not a whit more, t 
 
 It is of these things that Mr Justice Blackstone 
 must be speaking, when he thus eloquently closes 
 his account of special pleading and actions (not 
 otherwise remarkable for accuracy) t with a pane- 
 gyric upon that perfection which it shares in his 
 eyes with all the rest of our system. " This care 
 and circumspection in the law, in providing that 
 no man's right shall be affected by any legal pro- 
 ceeding without giving him previous notice, and 
 yet that the debtor shall not, by receiving such no- 
 tice, take occasion to escape from justice ; in requi- 
 ring that every complaint be accurately and pre- 
 cisely ascertained in writing, and be as pointedly 
 and exactly answered ; in clearly stating the ques- 
 tion either of law or of fact ; in deliberately resol- 
 ving the former after full argumentative discussion, 
 and indisputably fixing the latter by a diligent and 
 impartial trial ; in correcting such errors as may 
 have arisen in either of those modes of decision, 
 from accident, mistake, or surprise ; this anxiety to 
 maintain and to restore to every individual the en- 
 joyment of his civil rights, without entrenching upon 
 those of any other individual in the nation this 
 
 * Lord R. 393. 
 
 f The new rules remove these evils in a great measure. 
 J e. g. His giving as an example of Assumpsit, an undertaking 
 without consideration.
 
 LAW REFORM. 423 
 
 parental solicitude, which pcn-adcs our whole legal 
 constitution, is the genuine offspring- of that spirit 
 of equal liberty which is the singular felicity of 
 Englishmen." 
 
 2. The Inconsistency of many of our rules of plead- 
 ing forms the next head of complaint to which I 
 shall direct your attention ; and it is just as manifest 
 as the vagueness and indistinctness I have been 
 pointing out. Why are infancy and coverture to be 
 given in evidence under the general issue, while 
 other defences of a similar description must be plead- 
 ed specially, as the statute of limitations always, and 
 leave and license in trespass ? If it is right that 
 specific defences, of which your general plea gives 
 your opponent no notice, should be couched under 
 that plea, why should you be compelled to give 
 notice of other averments before being suffered to 
 prove them ? Why do you, in one case, multiply 
 pleas, which, in the other, your own practice declares 
 to be unnecessary ? One or other course, the vague 
 or the definite, the prolix or the concise, may be 
 fitting ; both cannot be right. Nay, there is often 
 an option given as to the same thing ; infancy, 
 coverture, release, accord and satisfaction, and others, 
 may either be given under the general issue in As- 
 sumpsit, or pleaded. Why, this choice amounts to 
 no rule at all ! If a ground of defence is ever to be 
 pleaded specially, why not always ? t 
 
 3. Akin to this inconsistency of principle is the 
 variety of Repugnant counts and pleas allowed in 
 all cases whatever. Where there are ten different 
 
 * 3 Com. 423. 
 
 t These evils are also remedied ; and so of the evils described in tlu> 
 subsequent pages.
 
 424 LAW REFORM. 
 
 ways of stating a defence, and all of them are em- 
 ployed, it is hardly possible that any three of them 
 can be true ; at the same time their variety tends to 
 prevent both the opposite party and the court from 
 knowing 1 the real question to be tried. Yet this 
 practice is generally resorted to, because neither 
 party knows accurately what course his opponent 
 may take ; each, therefore, throws his drag-net over 
 the whole ground, in hopes to avail himself of every 
 thing which cannot escape through its meshes. Take 
 the case of Debt on bond. The first plea in such an 
 action, almost as a matter of course, is the general 
 issue, non estfactum, whereby the defendant denies 
 that it is his deed ; the second as usually is, solvit 
 ad diem he paid it on the day mentioned in the 
 bond, a circumstance not very likely to happen, if it 
 be not his deed ; the third is solvit post diem he 
 paid it after the day ; a thing equally unlikely to 
 happen, if it be not his bond, or if he paid it when 
 due ; and a fourth often is, a general release. What 
 can the plaintiff learn from a statement in which the 
 defendant first asserts that he never executed the 
 deed, and next that he not only executed it, but has 
 moreover paid it off? Where pleas are consistent 
 with each other, it may be well to let them be pleaded 
 in unlimited abundance : where they are not only 
 not consistent, but absolutely destructive of each 
 other, it would be a good rule to establish that such 
 pleas should not be put together upon the record, 
 at least without some previous discussion, and leave 
 obtained. The grounds of action are often stated 
 with almost as great inconsistency, almost always 
 with greater multiplicity in the declaration. I recol- 
 lect that at York, many years ago, it was my duty, 
 as junior counsel, to open the pleadings in an action
 
 LAW REFORM. 425 
 
 brought upon a wager which had boon laid upon the 
 life of the Emperor Napoleon. I stated to the jury 
 in the usual way, that the defendant, in considera- 
 tion of one hundred guineas, agreed to pay the 
 plaintiff a guinea a-day during the life of one Napo- 
 leon Buonaparte, and so forth, alleging the breach. 
 Thus far all was well, and the audience were not 
 disturbed ; but there was not much gravity among 
 them when I went on to state the second count, 
 averring another wager on the life of " one other 
 Napoleon Buonaparte ;" and, indeed, though one, 
 in those days, was quite enough for the rest of the 
 world, two did not satisfy the pleader, who made 
 mention of a third and a fourth Napoleon. 
 
 I know that it is frequently said these allegations 
 deceive nobody, and their vagueness and repugnancy 
 keep no one in the dark, for each party contrives to 
 have a good guess of what his adversary means. 
 That this is not the case in many instances I know ; 
 that it takes place more frequently than might be 
 expected, I am ready to admit. But what vindica- 
 tion is this of the system ? If any thing like precise 
 information is obtained in such cases as I have de- 
 scribed, it is most assuredly not from the record, but 
 in spite of the record ; it is by travelling out of it 
 by seeking elsewhere for what the record does not 
 give, or for correcting the false impression which it 
 conveys ; consequently, this defence of pleading is 
 the very humble one, that it is useless, and, were it 
 not for the cost, would be harmless. 
 
 4. Before the statute of the 4-th of Anne, no man 
 was allowed to plead double ; the plaintiff might 
 have as many ways of stating his case as he pleased, 
 but to each count the defendant could only give one 
 answer. By that statute he may, with leave of the
 
 426 LAW REFORM. 
 
 Court, plead two or more distinct matters. Though 
 that leave was formerly granted or refused at the 
 discretion of the Court, it is now regularly given as 
 a matter of course. There is, however, a fee to be 
 paid to the office for it, and also a fee to counsel for 
 signing the rule to obtain it, which, of course, implies 
 a charge by the attorney also. I think every prac- 
 titioner is fully aware of the consequences. Beside 
 the expense, the utterly needless expense, the mis- 
 chief of it is great and undeniable, I believe in my 
 conscience, that many an attorney's clerk, who after- 
 wards proceeds to still greater frauds, begins his 
 career of crime by stopping this fee to counsel on its 
 way. It is not necessary that the barrister should 
 sign his name ; and a knowledge of that fact among 
 attornies' clerks and barristers' clerks, seduces into a 
 course of petty embezzlement, which leads to larger 
 peculations in the long run, and ends in all the dis- 
 honesty which marks the life of the disreputable 
 practitioner. According to the principles before 
 laid down, such rules as this, to plead double, and all 
 others of the kind, ought at once to be abolished, 
 and the parties allowed to do, without any applica- 
 tion, or rather supposed application, to the Judge, 
 and without any expense, what they thus obtain for 
 the mere payment of money. But to proceed : though 
 the defendant may plead, the plaintiff cannot reply 
 many matters. For instance, in indebitatus as- 
 sumpsity if the defendant pleads, first, that he never 
 made any promise, and next, that he was an infant 
 when he made the promise, the plaintiff must either 
 admit the infancy, and set up a subsequent promise, 
 or deny the infancy altogether, and re-affirm the 
 original promise ; for he cannot both deny the in- 
 fancy and set up a subsequent promise. Now, I 

 
 LAW REFORM, 427 
 
 will ask the House, why, if the defendant may plead 
 several matters, the plaintiff should not reply several 
 matters ? There must be some limit, I allow, set to 
 the replication, otherwise, at each stage of the plead- 
 ing, there would be a multiplication of issues, like 
 the puzzle of the nails in a horse-shoe ; but, surely, 
 there can be no harm in allowing 1 each separate 
 ground of defence to be met both by a denial and an 
 answer j giving the plaintiff a general replication to 
 make the defendant prove his plea, and one special 
 replication: I mean, as long as you allow the defend- 
 ant to multiply, without restraint, his grounds of 
 defence ; for the power of pleading repugnant pleas 
 being restricted, there will be the less prolixity occa- 
 sioned by enlarging the power of replying. 
 
 5. The restriction upon Demurrer, or pleading to 
 raise an issue in law, appears still less founded in 
 principle. By demurring, a party is obliged to con- 
 fess the facts to be true as stated by the opposite 
 party, and confine himself to a denial that, by law, 
 those facts warrant the inference against him to 
 raise which they are stated. If I am alleged to have 
 made a particular promise, I may deny that I made 
 it, which would raise a direct issue on the fact : or 
 I may say that, though I did make it, such a pro- 
 mise is not binding in law, which raises an issue on 
 the law. These two denials, however, cannot both 
 be given ; I must take my choice, either to admit 
 the law or the fact. How is this in common life ? 
 If I am charged with any thing wrong, as using 
 certain blameable expressions, I may deny the words 
 altogether, but may add, " Admit, for argument 
 sake, I did utter them, they were wholly harmless 
 wholly free from the meaning affixed to them." In 
 truth, men are demurring all day long, when they
 
 428 LAW REFORM. 
 
 are conflicting or disputing with one another, and 
 no one ever dreamt of tying down his antagonist to 
 the admission of the fact, because he had argued 
 against the inference. If any thing can make the 
 rule more objectionable, it is the gross inconsistency 
 which it exhibits to the last rule I mentioned, the 
 permission given to a defendant to raise as many 
 repugnant issues of fact as he pleases. Why should 
 a party be allowed to say, " In point of fact I deny 
 the promise but if I made it, six years have elap- 
 sed or I made it under age," and be prohibited 
 from saying " In point of fact, I deny the promise; 
 but, if I made it, there was nothing binding in point 
 of law?" The two defences, as far as their dupli- 
 city goes, are precisely similar ; and as it must be 
 allowed that, before double pleading was introduced, 
 the restriction upon demurring was consistent with 
 the general principles of the system, so, if repugnant 
 pleas were forbidden, the objection, in respect of 
 consistency, to a demurrer admitting the facts plead- 
 ed, would be removed. On other grounds, however, 
 it would still be quite wrong. I admit that part of 
 the mischief occasioned by the rule may be remedied 
 after verdict, the objection being on the record. 
 But beside that this remedy cannot, in every case, 
 be applied, there has been the delay and expense, to 
 say nothing of the absurdity of a trial of facts, which, 
 if proved, amount to nothing. Why should not the 
 Court first determine the disputed law, and then, 
 only if it becomes necessary, try the truth of the 
 facts ? In Equity pleading it is so. Why not in 
 Law pleading too ? 
 
 6. A very great amendment of the law would be, 
 to permit all Formal Errors to be amended, even 
 at the very last stage of the cause. No one should
 
 LAW REFORM. 429 
 
 be turned round on a more variance; no one should 
 be defeated on a mere verbal mistake, as it was my 
 lot to be lately, in au indictment, the history of 
 which will aptly enough introduce this head of re- 
 mark. It was a prosecution for perjury : the jury 
 was sworn, the case was opened, witnesses were 
 examined, and documents read, when a variance 
 was discovered between the affidavit, on which the 
 perjury was assigned, and the copy of it which 
 formed part of the record : in the one the word 
 "grandmother" was used: in the record the syl- 
 lable "grand" was omitted, and only the two last 
 syllables " mother " were inserted. This was, of 
 course, fatal to the indictment. There can be no 
 doubt that the perjury, which consisted in the denial 
 of a payment, was equally committed, whether that 
 supposed payment was made to the mother or the 
 grandmother; yet, owing to this utterly unimportant 
 error, all the trouble of the Court, and all the ex- 
 pense of the prosecutor, were rendered perfectly 
 useless, and the ends of public justice frustrated. In 
 ninety-nine cases out of every hundred indeed, I 
 might say, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases 
 out of every thousand, in which parties are turned 
 round upon variances, the materiality is not greater 
 than in that which I have just mentioned to the 
 House. The improvement which I would suggest 
 is to allow nobody to be turned round upon a va- 
 riance, except at the discretion of the judge. Where 
 it is clear that the record by its variance from the 
 evidence has deceived the party, then the discre- 
 pancy ought to be fatal ; but because this may hap- 
 pen once in a thousand times, ought we to legislate 
 upon the exception, and introduce a general system 
 of quirks and niceties upon sorry trifles the great-
 
 430 LAW REFORM. 
 
 est opprobrium of the law ? Furthermore, I would 
 allow no failure of a case from the want of a suffi- 
 cient stamp being- affixed to any instrument used in 
 evidence. In a case which occurred not long since, 
 my Lord Dudley was turned round, because it was 
 said there were a few words more in the instrument 
 than we had counted, and the stamp was some half- 
 crown below the amount required. At the trial of 
 the cause, it was not disputed by us, that the words 
 were more in number than the stamp covered ; we 
 took for granted that our adversary had reckoned 
 right, and we did not require the process of addi- 
 tion to be gone through in Court; it was afterwards 
 found out that the defendant had counted the words 
 wrong, and that they fell short of the number men- 
 tioned in the Stamp Act. The plaintiff, in conse- 
 quence, got a rule for a new trial, and soon after he 
 had a verdict. But suppose we had been wrong 
 and our adversary right, what difference would that 
 have made in the justice of the cause, which was 
 truly an undefended one ? I would allow the judge 
 to inflict a penalty of L.20, of L.50 if necessary, to 
 protect the revenue, instead of L.10 for the want of 
 a stamp ; but I would not allow the party to be 
 turned round, and to lose his trial, because he had 
 got a wrong stamp, or no stamp at all, affixed to 
 his agreement or deed. 
 
 Let not the House suppose that grievances such as 
 I have been describing to flow naturally from the 
 present system, are imaginary and theoretical; I can 
 assure the House, from my own daily experience, 
 that they are not : they produce constantly a cost 
 or a delay, or both, amounting to the positive denial 
 of justice. To give an illustration of some of the 
 parts of the system in its workings, I shall read the
 
 LAW REFORM. 431 
 
 letter which I hold in my hand, from an eminent 
 practitioner in the law. The widow of a Welsh 
 clergyman was obliged to bring- an action upon a 
 mortgage-deed for the payment of the mortgage- 
 money and interest, and for performance of the 
 covenants in the deed. She might have foreclosed 
 by a proceeding in equity; but preferring the delays 
 of the King's Bench to those of the Chancery, she 
 brought an action of debt of the simplest possible 
 kind, both in its nature, and in the form of the pro- 
 ceedings ; and the House shall now hear from her 
 respectable solicitor himself, what was the progress 
 and termination of that action: "The defendant 
 " was a Member of Parliament, and some delay, as 
 "is usual with such defendants "-(I beg pardon, 
 Sir of course, I am not answerable for the terms 
 of the letter) " took place in enforcing an appear- 
 " ance. When the declaration was delivered, the 
 " defendant demanded oyer of the bond, and that 
 " obtained, made as many applications as the judge 
 " would allow for further time to plead. At the 
 " expiration of this period, he pleaded 1st, Non 
 " estfactum 2d, Solvit ad diem 3d, Solrit ante 
 " diem* 4th, Solvitpost client oth, Performances. 
 
 * Had the plaintiff's pleader chose, the law enabled him to demur to 
 this plea (but it would have increased the delay and served the defend- 
 ant's purpose). The ground of the doctrine, that paying before the 
 debt falls due is no answer to the action seems not very intelligible, but 
 it is now settled law. The reason assigned (in Cass v. Tryon though 
 there are cases contra, see Cro. Eliz. 143, Dyer, 222. and also 14 Anne, 
 c. 16, 12) is, that if the verdict on that issue goes for the plaintiff, it by 
 no means follows that he has a right to recover, for he may have been 
 paid at or after the day. But so it may be said of a plea of infancy 
 or, indeed, of solvit ad diem itself for though the verdict negative that 
 plea, non constat that there may not have been duress or a release. The
 
 432 LAW REFORM. 
 
 " It is needless to add, all these pleas were pure 
 " legal fictions. The plaintiffs, in their replication, 
 " took issue on such pleas as concluded to the con- 
 " trary, and assigned breaches of the condition, 
 " according to the statute. The breaches assigned 
 " were, non-payment of the principal non-pay- 
 " ment of the interest and non-performance of the 
 " covenants of the mortgage-deed. The defendant, 
 " for the purpose of splitting the second into two 
 " issues, and thereby creating the delay of an issue 
 " in law, to be tried before the Court in banco, and 
 " an issue in fact, to be afterwards tried at Nisi 
 " Prius before a jury, demurred to the last assign- 
 " ment of breaches a sham demurrer for delay. 
 " The plaintiffs joined in demurrer, and made up 
 " and delivered the paper-book and demurrer-book. 
 " The defendant, in order to entitle himself to bring 
 " a writ of error for delay, without giving bail, then 
 " suffered judgment to go by default, for not re- 
 " turning the paper and demurrer-book. The con- 
 " sequence of this was, that all the pleas, replica- 
 " tions, rejoinders, and demurrer, became useless, 
 " and were struck out of the record ; and the plain- 
 " tiffs had to execute a writ of enquiry before the 
 " Chief Justice, under the statute of William III., 
 " to assess damages on the breaches suggested. But 
 " these proceedings had answered the purpose of 
 " harassing the poor defendant with useless and ex- 
 " pensive litigation, swelling the pleadings from five 
 " folios to one hundred and eighteen ; and they had 
 
 true test of a plea (or an affirmative issue tendered at any stage of the 
 pleadings) plainly is this if its being found for him who pleads it decides 
 the matter in his favour, no new fact being averred on the other side, it 
 is good if not, bad.
 
 LAW REFORM. 433 
 
 " already accomplished much delay, having- occupied 
 " four terms : the bill was filed in Trinity Term, 
 " the pleas and replication in Michaelmas Term, the 
 " demurrer and joinder in Hilary Term, and the 
 " final judgment was obtained in Easter Term. 
 " The defendant then brought a writ of error, with- 
 " out the slightest pretence of actual error ; and 
 " that proceeding-, of course, delayed the plaintiffs 
 " four terms longer. All this was necessarily at- 
 " tended with expense, grievous to a poor person, 
 " as the party in this case was. The costs of the 
 "judgment were taxed at 80, 4s., and the costs 
 " in error at 19, 10s., making together -99, 14s. 
 " for the costs, and two years for the delay in an 
 " undefended action, in which the length of the de- 
 " claration was five folios! Comment on such a 
 " case would be a waste of words." It would 
 indeed! But if it be wanted, Blackstone shall be 
 the commentator. " So tender and circumspect," 
 saith he, " is the law of England in providing that 
 no man's right shall be affected by any legal pro- 
 ceeding ; in requiring that every complaint be accu- 
 rately and precisely ascertained in writing, and be 
 as pointedly and exactly answered ; in clearly stat- 
 ing the law and the fact ; in deliberately resolving 
 the former and indisputably fixing the latter by a 
 diligent trial ; in correcting such errors as may have 
 arisen in either decision, and in finally enforcing the 
 judgment, when nothing can be alleged to impeach 
 it I So anxious it is to maintain and restore to 
 every individual the enjoyment of his civil rights, 
 without intrenching upon those of any other indivi- 
 dual in the nation, so parentally solicitous is our 
 whole legal constitution to preserve that spirit of 
 
 VOL. II. 2 E
 
 434 LAW REFORM. 
 
 equal liberty, which is the singular felicity of the 
 British nation." * 
 
 I must now tell the House, that besides the 
 99, 14s. taxed costs, this poor widow had to pay 
 30 for extra costs, which she never received a 
 shilling of from the defendant, and which she had to 
 defray after he had handed his share of the costs 
 over to the plaintiff's attorney. In prosecuting an 
 undefended cause she paid this sum, and if it had so 
 chanced that the defendant, instead of being merely 
 a distressed man (for I happen to know the gentle- 
 man in question, and that though a distressed, he is 
 not an oppressive man) ; if he had been such a cha- 
 racter as was once known in the northern provinces, 
 and as we have had represented on the scene, per- 
 tinacious, litigious, grasping, oppressive, with a long 
 purse to back him in defending acts of injustice and 
 cruelty, he would have resisted at every stage of 
 the action by counsel and witnesses ; he would have 
 had the demurrer argued before the Court j he 
 would have tried the issue at Nisi Prius ; he would 
 have carried his Writ of Error through the Exche- 
 quer Chamber into the House of Lords ; and then 
 the extra costs, instead of thirty pounds, would have 
 amounted to I dare not say what sum, knowing that 
 costs to the amount of hundreds have been incurred 
 to recover a debt of twenty pounds. " So tender is 
 the law of England in providing that no man's right 
 should be affected by any legal proceeding so pa- 
 rental its solicitude to maintain and restore to every 
 individual the enjoyment of his civil rights, without 
 intrenching upon those of any other person what- 
 soever !" 
 
 * See page 423, supra, where the same passage is cited,
 
 LAW REFORM. 435 
 
 Sir, after Mr Justice Blackstone had written his 
 beautiful, and, in part, profound Commentaries, there 
 occurred a case, which he published himself in his 
 Reports, and which must, I conclude, have happened 
 after the panegyrics were composed. I marvel much, 
 however, that, when a subsequent edition of his 
 Commentaries appeared, he did not correct the error 
 into which he must then have been convinced that 
 he had been betrayed, by his excessive admiration 
 for the forms and technicalities of our Common Law. 
 The case, as reported by himself, was, in substance, 
 this : A gentleman of the name of Robinson, in 
 Yorkshire, was minded to try the resources of the 
 law in an action of trespass against some poor men, 
 who lived near him. In the course of it, reference 
 was made to the Master, to report by whose fault 
 the pleadings in the action had extended to a most 
 enormous and unprecedented length. The Master 
 reported, that in the declaration there were five 
 counts 5 that twenty-seven several pleas of justifica- 
 tion were pleaded by the defendants, which, with 
 replications, traverses, new assignments, and other 
 monuments of pleading, amounted at length to a 
 paper book of near two thousand sheets. He was of 
 opinion that the fault lay principally in the length 
 and intricacy of the declaration, the action being- 
 only brought to try whether the freeholders and 
 copyholders of the manor, whereof Robinson was 
 lord, were entitled to common in a ground called 
 the Inclosure. He likewise reported that the de- 
 claration was so catching, by ringing changes upon 
 the several defendants, and the several names of the 
 ground, that it was necessary for the defendants to 
 guard every loophole ; which made their pleas so 
 various and so long, especially as Mr Robinson had
 
 436 LAW REFORM. 
 
 declared that he had drawn the declaration in this 
 manner " on purpose to catch the defendants, and 
 that he would scourge them with a rod of iron." 
 The Court was very indignant at this abuse of the 
 technicalities of the law, and the Book says that Mr 
 Robinson appeared in propria persona, to show 
 cause against this report, " no other counsel caring 
 to be employed for him." The Court ordered Mr 
 Sergeant Hewitt and Mr Winn to settle an issue, 
 which they did in a quarter of an hour, and in the 
 space of a quarter sheet of paper, instead of two 
 thousand folios. Talk of scourging with a rod of 
 iron ! Why should he think of it ? The lash of 
 parchment, which is applied to all suitors in our 
 courts of law that flapper, which keeps them awake 
 to the course of justice by the expense and anxiety 
 it inflicts, that truly parental corrector of human 
 errors, manufactured in the engines of practice and 
 pleading, which, pretending to enlighten, serve only 
 to keep the Court and the suitors in the dark as to 
 what they are conflicting about, and oftentimes teach 
 them nothing certain, but that they are ruined, and 
 cannot tell how : this parchment lash was a far more 
 safe as well as powerful scourge for the rich and 
 crafty lawyer, and a far more deadly one for his 
 poor and simple antagonists, than any rod of iron 
 which he could have had forged for his own use in 
 all Colebrookdale ! 
 
 v. The parties being now supposed at issue by the 
 result of their pleadings, the facts in dispute are to be 
 Tried by a Jury through the medium of Evidence, 
 and the comments of the counsel and judge. Before 
 I enter, therefore, on the head of Evidence or Pro- 
 ceedings, or Trial generally, the House will permit 
 me to say a few words upon the subject of Juries,
 
 LAW REFORM. 437 
 
 the rather because this venerable institution has, I 
 lament to say, been of late years attacked by some 
 of the most distinguished legal reformers. Speaking 
 from experience, and experience alone, as a practical 
 lawyer, I must aver that I consider the method of 
 juries a most wholesome, wise, and almost perfect 
 invention, for the purposes of judicial inquiry. In 
 the first place, it controls the Judge, who might, 
 not only in political cases, have a prejudice against 
 one party, or a leaning towards another, but might 
 also, in cases not avowedly political, where some 
 cord of political feeling is unexpectedly struck, if 
 left supreme, show a bias respecting suitors, or, what 
 is as detrimental to justice, their counsel or attor- 
 nies. In the second place, it supplies that knowledge 
 of the world, and that sympathy with its tastes and 
 feelings, which Judges seldom possess, and which, 
 from their habits and station in society, it is not 
 decent that they should possess, in a large measure, 
 upon all subjects. In the third place, what indivi- 
 dual can so well weigh conflicting evidence, as 
 twelve men indifferently chosen from the middle 
 classes of the community, of various habits, charac- 
 ters, prejudices, and ability ? The number and va- 
 riety of the persons are eminently calculated to secure 
 a sound conclusion upon the opposing evidence of 
 witnesses or of circumstances. Lastly, what indivi- 
 dual can so well assess the amount of damages which 
 a plaintiff ought to recover for any injury he has re- 
 ceived ? How can a Judge decide half so well as 
 an intelligent jury, whether he should recover as a 
 compensation for an assault, fifty pounds, orahtindrcd, 
 pounds damages? or for the seduction of his wife 
 or daughter, fifteen hundred, or two thousand, or 
 five thousand pounds damages ? The system is
 
 438 LAW REFORM. 
 
 above all praise it looks well in theory, and works 
 well in practice ; it wants only one thing- to render 
 it perfect namely, that it should be applied to those 
 cases from which the practice in equity has excluded 
 it ; and that improvement would be best effected by 
 drawing- back to it the cases which the courts of 
 equity have taken from the common law, and which 
 they constantly evince their incapacity to deal with, 
 by sending issues to be tried whenever any difficulty 
 occurs.* 
 
 I shall not press this subject further, for I begin 
 to feel that I shall be exhausted with the labour I 
 have undertaken, and I fear that your patience may 
 be exhausted with my strength. I will therefore 
 proceed to the great subject of Evidence ; and, first 
 of all, we are met by the question, Ought the testi- 
 mony of the Parties to be excluded ? The strong 
 opinion expressed by some great authorities on this 
 head requires that, before entering on the Law of Evi- 
 dence, we should touch the fundamental rule which 
 draws so broad a line between parties and witnesses. 
 It is clear that the law on this head requires revis- 
 ing ; it is not so clear that the reform will be best 
 accomplished by receiving every one's testimony in 
 his own cause. The friend of exclusion proceeds 
 upon the supposition that the situation of a party 
 differs wholly from that of another person ; whereas 
 it only differs in the degree of the bias arising out of 
 interest, from the situation of many who are every 
 
 * It is fitting that we speak with reverence even of the unfounded 
 doubts of so great a man and profound a Jurisconsult as Mr Bentham. 
 He was, beyond all dispute, the first who taught men to examine the 
 foundations of our Legal Institutions, and the abuses that have grown 
 up with them. Sir S. Romilly was the first to question them in Par- 
 liament.
 
 LAW REFORM. 439 
 
 day allowed to depose. He also maintains that it is 
 dangerous to receive the party's evidence, because 
 of the temptation afforded to perjury. That there 
 is much in this argument, I admit ; but, speaking 
 from my own observation, I should say that there is 
 
 more risk of rash swearing, than of actual perjury 
 
 of the party becoming zealous and obstinate, and 
 seeing things in false colours, or shutting his eyes to 
 the truth, and recollecting imperfectly, or not at all, 
 when his passions are roused by litigation. I shall 
 not easily forget a case in which a gentleman of 
 large fortune appeared before an able arbitrator, 
 now filling an eminent judicial place, on some dis- 
 pute of his own, arising out of an election. It was 
 my lot to cross-examine him. I had got a great 
 number of letters in a pile under my hand, but 
 concealed from him by a desk. He was very eager 
 to be heard in his own cause. I put the question 
 to him, "Did you never say so and so?" His 
 answer was distinct and ready, " Never." I re- 
 peated the question in various forms, and with more 
 particularity, and he repeated his answer, till he had 
 denied most pointedly all he had ever written on the 
 matter in controversy. This passed before the rule 
 of evidence laid down by the Judges in the Queen's 
 case ; consequently I could examine him without 
 putting the letters into his hand. I then removed 
 the desk, and said, " Do you see what is now 
 under my hand?" pointing to about fifty of his let- 
 ters. " I advise you to pause before you repeat 
 your answer to the general question, whether or not 
 all you have sworn is correct." He rejected my ad- 
 vice, and not without indignation. Now, those 
 letters of his contained matter in direct contradic- 
 tion to all he had sworn. I do not say that he per-
 
 440 LAW REFORM. 
 
 jured himself far from it. I do not believe that he 
 intentionally swore what was false ; he only forgot 
 what he had written some time before. Neverthe- 
 less, he had committed himself, and was in my client's 
 power. I said, " My advice is, that you pay the 
 whole demand before to-morrow." This only in- 
 creased his anger. He " scorned the offer and the 
 
 o 
 
 imputation." Turning- to his solicitor, I asked if he 
 concurred in his client's view of my proposition ? 
 " Very far from it," was the answer. The meeting- 
 broke up, the arbitration terminated, and the money 
 was paid the next morning. Now, had this trial oc- 
 curred in an open court, the gentleman would have 
 been ruined for ever ; he would have had no oppor- 
 tunity of explaining, nay, all explanation would have 
 been useless ; if he had escaped prosecution, he would 
 have been suspected of perjury ever after, when all 
 that he was guilty of was too much eagerness, too 
 much impetuosity, and a little vvrong-headedness, 
 arising from confidence in his own cause, and a de- 
 sire to defeat his adversary. But this anecdote is 
 fruitful in matter of reflection. On the one hand, 
 we see the risks of admitting impure or uncertain 
 evidence, and the probability of receiving wrong im- 
 pressions respecting a witness's bias while under- 
 going the question ; on the other hand, we perceive 
 that, to a certain degree, the same consequences 
 flow from our present practice of allowing such evi- 
 dence in some cases, and not in all. Our system is 
 clearly inconsistent in this particular. At least we 
 ought to be uniform in our practice. Why refuse to 
 allow a party in a cause to be examined before a jury, 
 when you allow him to swear in his own behalf in 
 your Courts of Equity, in your Ecclesiastical Courts, 
 and even in the mass of business decided by Common
 
 LAW REFORM. 441 
 
 Law Judges on affidavit ? Why is the rule reversed 
 on passing 1 from one side of Westminster-hall to the 
 other, as if the laws of our nature had been changed 
 
 O 
 
 during 1 the transit, so that no party being 1 ever allowed 
 before a Jury to utter a syllable in his own cause, 
 in all cases before an Equity Judge, parties are fully 
 sworn to the merits of their own cause ? If it be said 
 that there is no cross-examination here, I answer, 
 that this is a very good argument to show the ineffi- 
 cacy of Equity proceeding's for extracting- truth from 
 defendants, but no reason for following- a different 
 rule in the two jurisdictions. Indeed, the inconsist- 
 encies of our system in this respect almost pass com- 
 prehension. All pleas at law are pleaded without 
 any restriction upon their falsehood ; in Equity the 
 defendant answers under the sanction of an oath. 
 But Equity is as inconsistent with itself as it is dif- 
 ferent from Common Law ; for the plaintiff may aver 
 as freely as he pleases, without any oath or any risk 
 at all. When an inquiry is instituted into these 
 things, I do venture to hope that something will be 
 done to diminish the number of matters decided on 
 affidavit. This is, indeed, a fruitful parent of fraud 
 and perjury, and not only a great departure from the 
 principle which excludes the testimonies of parties, 
 but an abuse of all principle ; for he who would al- 
 low such testimony, under due restraints, may very 
 naturally argue that suffering men to swear for them- 
 selves, without being exposed to cross-examination, 
 must lead to endless equivocation, suppression of 
 truth, and all the moral guilt, without the danger, of 
 actual perjury. If it be right to exclude the parties 
 from giving evidence in their own behalf in one 
 case, it is not right to admit them to give evidence 
 in others ; and more especially it is absurd to admit
 
 442 LAW REFORM. 
 
 them where they have the power of deceiving with 
 impunity, and exclude them where they would swear 
 under checks and restraints.* 
 
 1. The first matter that presents itself to my at- 
 tention, when I come to the subject of Evidence, is 
 the great question (intimately connected with what 
 I have been discussing), how far Interest should dis- 
 qualify a witness. The ancient doctrine upon this 
 point has, of late years, been so much restricted by 
 our Courts of Law, so little is left of the principle 
 on which this objection to competency rested, that, 
 for my own part, I will confess I cannot see any ade- 
 quate reason why all witnesses of good fame, that is, 
 all not convicted of an infamous offence, should not 
 be admitted, leaving the question of their credibility, 
 and the weight of their testimony, to the considera- 
 tion of the Jury. In the case of " Bent, v. Baker," 
 an action against one underwriter of a policy, the 
 Court held that another underwriter of the same 
 policy was a competent witness for the defendant, 
 because the verdict could not be evidence in an ac- 
 tion against himself, although it was clear that the 
 first action must, in fact, decide both claims. After 
 that decision, it cannot be said that there is any ra- 
 tional ground for exclusion on account of interest 
 in the event, any more than interest in the question. 
 The rule thus established has ever since been fol- 
 lowed ; and now, in all cases, a person is competent, 
 whatever bias he may have from interest, provided 
 the verdict cannot be given for or against him in an- 
 other cause ; the bias under which he swears being 
 only a circumstance that goes to his credit. After 
 this it is in vain to exclude any evidence upon the 
 
 * This defect remains as before.
 
 LAW REFORM. 443 
 
 ground of interest in the event, and the principle 
 should be extended to all interest, direct or indirect. 
 For let the House look at the inconsistency of the 
 present system. If I have the most distant interest, 
 even the interest of a shilling, in reversion on an estate 
 of 50,000 a-year, I am incompetent to give evi- 
 dence on any point affecting that estate ; but suppose 
 I have a father ninety years of age, lunatic, bedrid- 
 den, at the point of death, and quite incapable of doing 
 any legal act whatever that he is in possession of 
 an estate in fee-simple that I expect to be his heir 
 or that he had formerly made a valid will in my 
 favour, so that nothing can prevent me from suc- 
 ceeding the moment he dies, I may be a witness to 
 give him the estate j I am competent to swear into 
 the possession of my father a property of 50,000 
 a-year, to which, in the common course of events, I 
 must myself succeed in a few weeks. But pecuniary 
 interest is not the only feeling that biasses the mind 
 of a witness ; and yet any one may swear for a pa- 
 rent, a brother, a sister, a child, on questions most 
 nearly affecting the peace, and honour, and happi- 
 ness of the whole family. I therefore think that a 
 line ought to be drawn, not between one sort of 
 interest and another, but between competency and 
 credit j and that all should be admitted to give evi- 
 dence, leaving it to the Jury to determine what 
 dependence may be placed upon their testimony. 
 This is rendered the more fit by the nature of the 
 shifts resorted to for the purpose of restoring the 
 competency of interested witnesses ; I allude, of 
 course, to that notable expedient, a release of all 
 actions or causes of action. When a witness has an 
 interest, if he is deprived of it by a release, there is 
 no objection to his competency. Evidence is thus
 
 444 LAW REFORM. 
 
 often cooked up for the Court, nay, in the Court, 
 while the witness is in the box, which, according to 
 the existing rules, is not admissible, without such a 
 process. Now, what is the real effect of the release 
 on the mind of the witness ? Just nothing- for if 
 he be an honourable man, he gives it up the moment 
 he leaves the box, and while swearing he knows that 
 he is to do so ; so that the operation which has been 
 performed upon him adds a pound to the .year's re- 
 venue, nothing to the credit of his testimony-* 
 
 2. With regard to written evidence, I must say that 
 it appears to be no less capriciously required than 
 dispensed with. I think as highly as any lawyer 
 ever did of the Statute of Frauds ; I would go the 
 full length of the Learned Judge who said that every 
 line in it was worthy a subsidy ; and it is, therefore, 
 that I could wish a few lines might be added, so as 
 to increase the number of subsidies at which I may 
 value it. First, I would extend the number of cases 
 in which written evidence is exacted. The French 
 law requires that all contracts for sums above 150 
 franks should be reduced into writing, and even 
 authenticated by notarial forms. I would adopt 
 some such extension of our statute ; and as almost 
 all men are able to write at the present day, I do 
 not think this would occasion any inconvenience. 
 But then the outlets should be stopped up, by which 
 the exigency of the statute is escaped. I think, as 
 far as I can discern from reading the French Code 
 Civile, and the Conferences upon it (a wonderful 
 monument of Napoleon's genius, as well as of the 
 talents of his counsellors), that no part performance 
 takes a case out of the French enactment. With us, 
 
 * Tljis is still unaltered.
 
 LAW REFORM. 445 
 
 the things are so numerous which take transactions 
 out of the Statute of Frauds, that the memorandum 
 in writing- is only in a small proportion of cases 
 required. Hence, among- other consequences, much 
 subtlety of construction often needlessly extended 
 by jurisconsult exercitations, as the distinction be- 
 tween crops growing and severed, or a right and an 
 easement, in determining- what is an interest in land.* 
 A judicious enactment, restoring the force of the 
 Statute in these particulars, as well as extending it 
 to other cases, would be highly beneficial in pre- 
 venting fraud, perjury, and litigation ; and could 
 offer no impediment to commerce, further than the 
 beneficial one of narrowing the credit given by small 
 tradesmen. 
 
 3. The rule by which a man's Books are let in, 
 or excluded, after his decease, is also, in my mind, 
 extremely defective. They are evidence, if he has 
 entered the receipt of sums by which he makes him- 
 self chargeable to any amount. If he only debits 
 himself with the receipt of 5, which very likely he 
 may have received, he makes his books evidence for 
 his representatives, who may gain 500 to which 
 he never was entitled. The ground on which they 
 ought to be excluded is, the general probability of 
 their having been made for the purpose of creating 
 evidence ; but that probability is never weighed at 
 all in the particular instance. We had much dis- 
 cussion of this matter in the case of Barker v. Wray, 
 before Lord Eldon, who appeared exceedingly to 
 
 * Thus a License for any number of years to stack coals on a close 
 is not within the statute ; such a complete occupation of every inch of 
 the surface, and exclusive of all other use of it, even by way of ease- 
 ment, is not held to be an interest in laud. There is a case to this 
 effect in Saver's lleports,
 
 446 LAW REFORM. 
 
 question the soundness of the received rule ; this at 
 least was certainly the impression of the Bar. Would 
 it not be better to abolish the legal presumption, 
 exceedingly ill-founded in fact, which lets in all such 
 documents generally, and as generally excludes all 
 others, and to substitute in its place the rule, that 
 any deceased person's books or memorandums may 
 be received, provided it appear that they were not 
 prepared with a view of making evidence for his 
 successors, but plainly olio intuitu ? Observe, too, 
 that in one case we admit, without any qualification, 
 the books of a predecessor, in his successor's behalf. 
 I mean entries made by a deceased rector or vicar 
 of the receipt of tithes, which are always admitted 
 as evidence for succeeding incumbents, because he 
 is supposed to have had no interest in mis-stating 
 the fact as if the clergy were always entirely free 
 from the influence of a corporation spirit. 
 
 4. Than the rules for the Examination of wit- 
 nesses, I am of opinion that nothing can be better, 
 generally speaking. Every facility is afforded to 
 counsel for extracting the truth. Upon this import- 
 ant head, therefore, my remarks will be few. There 
 is a want of uniformity in the practice of the judges 
 towards counsel engaged in examination. Some 
 will not allow them to cross-examine a witness they 
 have called themselves, even though he is stated 
 when produced to be a hostile one ; and others will 
 not allow them to put a leading question to an 
 adversary's witness, in cross-examination, if he be 
 really friendly to them. The sound rule seems to 
 be that it depends on the connexions and demeanour 
 of the witness, whether he shall be regarded as the 
 witness of the party producing him or no. Again, 
 certain tests are excluded, by which the capacity
 
 LAW REFORM. 447 
 
 and the credit of a witness may best be tried. If I 
 wish to put a witness's memory to the test, I am 
 not allowed to examine him as to the contents of a 
 letter or other paper which he has written. I must 
 put the document into his hands before I ask him 
 any questions upon it ; though by so doing 1 he at 
 once becomes acquainted with its contents, and so 
 defeats the object of my inquiry. That question was 
 raised and decided in the Queen's case, after solemn 
 argument, and I humbly venture to think, upon a 
 wrong ground, namely, that the writing is the best 
 evidence and ought to be produced, though it is 
 plain that the object here is by no means to prove 
 its contents. Neither am I, in like manner, allowed 
 to apply the test to his veracity : and yet how can a 
 better means be found of sifting a person's credit, 
 supposing his memory to be good, than examining 
 him to the contents of a letter, written by him, and 
 which he believes to be lost ? 
 
 There is a test, excluded in cases of libel, of which 
 I shall say the less, that I brought in a Bill some 
 years ago to remedy this defect. The main ques- 
 tion in any prosecution for Libel being the inno- 
 cence or guilt of the publication, is it not preposte- 
 rous to keep the proof of its truth or falsehood from 
 the view of the Court ? Almost every thing else is 
 admitted which can throw any light upon the mo- 
 tives of the party ; but that is carefully shut out 
 which is the best test by far of their nature, though 
 certainly only an unilateral test, inasmuch as there 
 must always be guilt, if there is falsehood, though 
 truth does not of necessity prove innocence. Nay, 
 the defendant cannot even be allowed to urge the 
 truth in mitigation of punishment after conviction ; 
 as if there were the same criminality in publishing
 
 448 LAW REFORM. 
 
 that a man had been tried and sentenced to the gal- 
 lies for forgery, who was sentenced, and that an 
 innocent individual had been sent thither, who never 
 had been tried or even suspected of the offence a 
 case which lately occurred within my own expe- 
 rience. 
 
 Another test, of a still more important kind, is 
 excluded by a very injudicious refinement of our 
 law, its repugnance to try Collateral Issues. A foul 
 charge is brought against a man, of rape, or some 
 yet more horrid offence, and the liberty of cross- 
 examining the prosecutor or his witness, whom I 
 may assume to be his fellow conspirator, is, in a 
 most important particular, restrained. The defend- 
 ant's counsel may address the witness thus " Were 
 you not examined on different occasions, at four or 
 five several sessions, when you sought, by your tes- 
 timony, to convict as many different individuals of 
 an offence similar to that which you now accuse this 
 prisoner of committing ; and were not all those per- 
 sons whom you so prosecuted acquitted ? Did not 
 the Court reprimand you for prevarication, nay, 
 order a bill for perjury to be preferred against you ?" 
 True, the counsel is at liberty to put questions like 
 these ; but what, if the witness answers, as in all 
 probability he will, be the fact how it may " No ?" 
 The prisoner cannot give evidence in contradiction 
 of the wretch's assertion, at least the practice goes 
 the full length of this. But at any rate it is quite 
 clear law that, if the witness is asked, " Have you 
 not yourself been guilty, repeatedly, of this very 
 crime which you now wish to fasten on the prisoner?" 
 and he should reply, as doubtless he will, " No," 
 the prisoner is not allowed to adduce evidence of 
 the fact, because, forsooth, the Court cannot try
 
 LAW REFORM. 44<J 
 
 " collateral issues," unless the record of a conviction 
 is produced. Nay, I have known judges, though on 
 this they differ, who would not suffer the prosecutrix 
 in a case of rape, to be asked if she had not led an 
 unchaste life before, because a common whore may 
 be ravished, as if the probability of the event were 
 the same in all cases, arid were nothing to the ques- 
 tion under consideration. 
 
 5. Furthermore, I ask, why should any class of 
 persons be excluded from giving 1 evidence in criminal 
 cases on account of their Religious opinions, not- 
 withstanding their testimony is admissible in cases 
 of a civil nature ? A Quaker is precluded by his 
 religion from taking an oath ; his affirmation is 
 received in civil, but rejected in criminal cases. I 
 was once employed, with two of my learned friends, 
 to defend a man, prosecuted by the Attorney-Gene- 
 ral, for a misdemeanour. We had a very worthy 
 and learned physician, by whose testimony we ex- 
 pected to rebut the charge ; but it turned out, when 
 he came to the witness-box, that he was a Quaker ; 
 of course he would not swear, and equally of course 
 he could not affirm. Our client, also of course, was 
 convicted. This is bad every way ; it is bad, for 
 that it suffers guilt to escape ; it is bad, for that it 
 suffers innocence to be destroyed. The Quakers, it 
 is true, desire not to see a change, because, being- 
 averse to capital punishments, they do not wish their 
 testimony to be used in capital cases ; but they for- 
 get that their evidence may be the only means of 
 saving an innocent person from the very punishment 
 of death to which they object, and that, rather than 
 help to hang the guilty, because they dislike the 
 punishment, they are allowing the innocent to suffer 
 by the self-same punishment. There is, in my opi- 
 
 VOL. II. 2 F
 
 450 LAW REFORM. 
 
 nion, no reason for excluding any individual, be be 
 of what religion, sect, or persuasion he may, from 
 giving testimony in cases of every kind, provided he 
 believes in the existence of a God, and a state of 
 future rewards and punishments ; and is not openly 
 infamous by sentence of a court.* 
 
 6. I have already, in speaking of competence of 
 evidence, said somewhat of Presumptions ; but there 
 is a class of presumptions which has found its way 
 into the practice of all Courts, and ought, in my 
 opinion, to be carefully excluded ; I mean presump- 
 tions affecting the weight of evidence, tending to 
 withdraw the attention of the Court from the facts 
 of the particular case, and to produce a decision 
 founded upon some kind of average taken from other 
 cases, and because taken at a former period, of course 
 excluding the case in hand. It has thus become 
 almost a rule of law, that perjury can only be proved 
 by two witnesses, or, perhaps, by one witness and 
 the defendant's handwriting. Why may not other 
 circumstances exist, quite as sufficient to cast the 
 balance against the oath of the accused, and give 
 credit to his accuser ? This presumption goes in 
 favour of the defendant ; but there is another, by 
 which he is often, I am convinced, improperly con- 
 victed j I mean the rule that an accomplice is enti- 
 tled to credit in all particulars, provided he be con- 
 firmed in some. I once, many years ago, endea- 
 voured to contend for a limitation of this rule, when 
 the late Chief Baron Thompson presided in the Spe- 
 cial Commission at York. I maintained that it was 
 necessary to give the confirmation upon some fact 
 
 This disability of Quakers and other sectaries has since been 
 removed by statute.
 
 LAW KEl'ORM. 451 
 
 which could not be true consistently with the de- 
 fendant's guiltlessness. It is certain, however, that 
 the law knows no such qualification, and the Judge 
 whom I have named, than whom no greater criminal 
 lawyer, or more humane and upright man ever ex- 
 isted, ruled, with his reverend brethren, against me ; 
 and seventeen men suffered death, some of whom 
 were convicted on the testimony of accomplices. I 
 do not exactly recollect, whether the confirmation 
 was as slight as would barely satisfy the exigency of 
 the rule ; but I am very sure, that instances fre- 
 quently occur in which the story of an accomplice 
 leads to conviction, while all the witnesses of credit 
 swear only to slight or wholly equivocal circum- 
 stances. 
 
 7- It is a somewhat similar anomaly in the rules 
 of evidence, that the Court always takes upon itself 
 to Construe Written instruments, of whatever kind, 
 as if their sense must be matter of law, while the 
 weight of all parole evidence is as invariably left to 
 the Jury. Why should the assistance of the Jury be 
 wholly rejected in this province ? It is another and 
 a kindred rule, that where, on the face of a writing, 
 there is an apparent, or as the lawyers term it, a 
 Patent Ambiguity, no other evidence can be allowed 
 to explain it ; where the Ambiguity is Latent, or 
 raised by extrinsic evidence, there, other evidence 
 may be adduced to remove it. This principle has 
 been laid down by high legal authority ; for it is 
 first clearly stated by Lord Chancellor Bacon but 
 I am much disposed to question its correctness. 
 Coupled with the other rule, which precludes the 
 Jury from construing written evidence, it tends 
 greatly to narrow and darken the path to correct 
 decision.
 
 452 LAW REFORM. 
 
 This naturally leads us to examine a little how the 
 Courts have exercised this, which they have thus 
 claimed as their exclusive province ; and we are 
 thus conducted to a variety of other Presumptions 
 respecting evidence, which have been received and 
 acted upon, so as now to have become Rules of In- 
 terpretation, and parcel of the law of the land. With 
 much unfeigned respect for the authority of the 
 great names whose sanction this large branch of our 
 jurisprudence has enjoyed, and with much admira- 
 tion of the ingenuity and astuteness which it has 
 called forth, I must be permitted to say, that, con- 
 sidering the paramount object of all law its use as a 
 rule of life for the people, no part of our system is 
 less entitled to praise. 
 
 It should seem that one obvious principle of con- 
 struction would be to take words in their plain or- 
 dinary sense, and always to construe them alike, in 
 whatever instrument they might be used. Only let 
 lawyers consider what a mass of technical niceties 
 and real difficulties this would get rid of; only let 
 them reflect on the consequences that do result from 
 following the very opposite course. Why should 
 the same words be differently construed in a will 
 and in a deed ? Why do words, which in one species 
 of instrument give an estate in fee, convey only a 
 life-interest in the other ? Why should the last words 
 employed in a will overrule the earlier ones, and not 
 in a deed, on the vain refinement that those express a 
 man's latest intention as if the whole taken together 
 were not his latter will, as much as the whole, taken 
 together, are his deed ? But even in wills, where we 
 affect most to follow the intent, so nice is the con- 
 struction, so technical has it become through many 
 decisions of the courts, and so imperfect consequent- 
 ly is the knowledge generally possessed by people
 
 LAW UEl'OKM. 453 
 
 on the subject, that a man cannot well be more in 
 the dark on the subject of the distribution of his pro- 
 perty after his will has taken effect, by his being 
 naturally dead, than he is at the very moment of 
 making it. In fact, most men, while disposing, or 
 fancying they dispose of their property, do not, in 
 the least, know what they are doing. An unlearned 
 individual thinks he is giving a life-estate when he is 
 giving an estate in fee, or in tail, and vice versa. 
 The testator, J. Williams, whose will gave rise to 
 the case of Perrin v. Blake, where the rule in Shel- 
 ley's case was extended, little dreamt that the first 
 taker was to have the absolute control over the pro- 
 perty, when he directed him to take an estate for his 
 life and no longer. Observe, I am far from com- 
 plaining of that any more than of Shelley's case. 
 The refinement which unites the particular estate 
 with the remainder, in the issue of the first taker, is 
 little more than an application of the simplest rule 
 in law, that an estate to a man and his heirs (or, 
 which is the same thing, to a man for life, with re- 
 mainder to his heirs) is a fee simple. But the law 
 should prevent the niceties, occasioned by following 
 out its principles, from misleading those who are ig- 
 norant of those principles. By freeing it from such 
 technicalities you would, I think, rather elevate the 
 study of jurisprudence and raise its professors ; I 
 am certain you would benefit all the rest of the 
 King's subjects.* 
 
 It is hardly to be conceived how much, as mat- 
 ters at present stand, a man who makes his will is in 
 the dark as to its final operation. Thus the creditor 
 who appoints his debtor executor of his will, is con- 
 
 * Some remedy has been afforded for this evil by the Willy Act.
 
 454 LAW REFORM. 
 
 sidered as having 1 granted a release of the debt : 
 what ordinary person would think he had done so ? 
 The very same reasons that induced him to lend the 
 money, and to count upon its faithful repayment, 
 friendship, blood, confidence, naturally lead him to 
 appoint the borrower his executor. I have known 
 it happen in this way fifty times in the country; yet 
 the debt is gone at law; and equity will only relieve 
 by holding the executor a trustee, where there are 
 other debts and no free fund to pay them, or some 
 words showing an intention to revive the debt 
 words not very likely to be used by a person who 
 never dreamt of its being extinguished. Then sup- 
 pose a man has made two wills of the same date, 
 and cancels one of them ; it is held that, in certain 
 circumstances, he cancels the other. If one of the 
 wills is at his banker's, the law raises a strong pre- 
 sumption that by cancelling his own copy he intend- 
 ed to cancel that, when the probability is that he 
 cancels because he is aware there is a duplicate, and 
 does not wish to have the first lying about his house. 
 When both copies are in his own possession, the law 
 does not entertain so strong a suspicion of the inten- 
 tion to annul the will, by cancelling one ; still, how- 
 ever, the presumption is raised. An individual may 
 be thus held to have died intestate, who never enter- 
 tained any intention of the kind ; and his property 
 may pass away from those near relatives or favoured 
 friends to whom he destined it, and be given to his 
 hundred and fiftieth cousin, or, for default of legiti- 
 mate relatives, may be vested in the Crown. But 
 it is not in this way only that a person may revoke 
 his will without knowing it, and die intestate while 
 he thinks he is disposing of his property. He may 
 happen to do so by the very act he performed with
 
 LAW UK I' O KM. 155 
 
 a view of confirming- his testament and establishing 
 his purpose. A recovery suffered, unless the will 
 be republished, destroys it entirely, upon the nicety, 
 quite consistent, I admit, with strict legal principle, 
 that a new estate is taken back, different from that 
 which was in the testator when he devised.* This 
 happens frequently to frustrate the plain intent of 
 parties. Lately in the Court of King's Bench, we 
 had an instance of large property in this immediate 
 neighbourhood, going any where rather than accor- 
 ding to its owner's intention, because a recovery had 
 been suffered ; and a recovery, suffered for the ex- 
 press purpose of confirming the will, deprived Lord 
 Erskine of a considerable estate in Derbyshire. So 
 a conveyance, which divests an estate though but for 
 an instant, to serve a use, with the intention of im- 
 mediately taking back the former uses, which are 
 accordingly taken back, totally revokes the will 
 made before, t Nay, no less a judge than Lord 
 Hardwicke has expressly laid it down, that where a 
 man, supposing he had only an estate tail on which 
 a devise could not operate, suffers a recovery for the 
 express purpose of taking back a fee in order that 
 his will may be good, it is thereby revoked. }. The 
 most notable part of these excessive refinements is, 
 that they all proceed upon the act being evidence of 
 a presumed intention, when no man can doubt that 
 either there was no such intention, or one of the 
 
 * These things are now altered by the Wills Act. 
 
 f Goodtitle v. Otway, 7 T. R. 399. 
 
 J Sparrow v. Hardcastle, ib. in note. Nor is it necessary to change 
 the estate, in order to operate a revocation, e. g. a feoffment by tenant 
 in fee to another to his use and that of his heirs, 3 Ves. C, and an inef- 
 fectual recovery by tenant for life (reversion in fee, disposed of by will). 
 2 Vcs. jun. 430.
 
 456 LAW REFORM. 
 
 very opposite description. Thus, if I devise lands to a 
 person, and afterwards, for the same reason of favour 
 towards him, by way of making- him more secure, 
 give him a lease in the same, to commence after my 
 death, he being perhaps tenant for years under me 
 at the time, the will is gone.* It thus happens that, 
 in the very act of his life, in which it is most im- 
 portant that a man should see clearly what he is 
 about, and most likely that he should have no pro- 
 fessional assistance, he is often wholly in the dark 
 as to the effect of what he is doing. 
 
 Were I in want of further illustration for this 
 matter, I might go at once to the doctrine of Powers, 
 and show how the thing intended to be permitted is 
 often prevented, and vice versa, by the view which 
 courts have taken of what is and what is not a good 
 execution, and which renders it unsafe to give an 
 opinion upon any Power, the very words of which 
 have not received a judicial construction. I might 
 go to the still greater niceties in the rules respecting 
 the construction of contingent and executory Uses, 
 a chapter of our law, signalized by the utmost learn- 
 ing and ingenuity of those who have treated it. I 
 might, indeed, at once ask what foundation in rea- 
 son, or even in analogy, there is for holding that a 
 purpose should be accomplished, by way of execu- 
 tory devise, which cannot be effected by way of con- 
 tingent remainder ; as the mounting a fee upon a 
 fee, or directing a contingent use to spring and enure 
 without any particular estate to support it ; if, in- 
 deed, I ought not rather to ask why there should be 
 any necessity in either case for a freehold interest to 
 support an after-taken contingent estate, and why 
 
 * Cro. Jac. 40. 5 Yes. jun. 650.
 
 LAW REFOU.M. 457 
 
 there should be any horror of mounting 1 a fee upon 
 a fee, an idea so familiar to the feodists in the sister 
 kingdom, that their strict settlements (always made 
 by deed, for they, having their niceties like ourselves, 
 though of another sort, allow no devise of real pro- 
 perty at all) consist of a succession of fees, under 
 restraints specifically prescribed as to alienation and 
 incumbrances. But I will satisfy myself with what 
 has been said on this head, and suggest, as the obvious 
 corollary, for remedy of the great bulk of the mis- 
 chief I complain of, the laying down by the Legisla- 
 ture of certain Formulas, couched in plain language, 
 and of an import recognised by written law. You 
 give this help to Justices, to prevent convictions and 
 orders being set aside for technical error. Why not 
 give it to men often less learned than they, for dis- 
 posing of their property necessarily without profes- 
 sional assistance ? Why not say, that whoever would 
 give a fee, should use these words ; an estate for 
 life these ; that whoever would clothe the takers 
 of that estate with certain powers, may do it thus 
 and so forth- not stating that such are the only 
 words which shall effect the same purpose, but that, 
 at any rate, those shalL* 
 
 By such a plan, and by retrenching some refine- 
 ments which the fund is ample enough to spare, in 
 rules of construction, I know that much curious 
 learning will be brushed away ; but I also know 
 that the law will be rendered accessible to those 
 whose rights it is to govern, and that the lay people 
 will gain far more than the learned lose. Thus much 
 for amending the rules of construction. But for the 
 
 * The Wills Act has removed some of the defects hero stated. It is 
 to be regretted that formulas were not added to it.
 
 458 LAW REFORM. 
 
 general establishment of sound rules of evidence, I 
 should recommend, first of all, an introduction of 
 one rule as to the manner of examining witnesses, 
 instead of trying issues of fact in one court by writ- 
 ten depositions, and in another by viva voce exami- 
 nation (whereby the same Will may be, and some- 
 times has been, supported in Doctors' Commons, 
 upon personalty, which a Court of Nisi Prius after- 
 wards set aside altogether), in one court by affi- 
 davit, by sworn answers to unsworn bills, by yet 
 more clumsy and ineffectual examination, on written 
 interrogatories previously drawn ; in another only 
 by parole examination. I would have all matter of 
 fact, wheresoever disputed, tried by a jury. For 
 sifting the truth by such a trial, I would admit all 
 records between the parties or their privies, and all 
 instruments and writings of every kind of the parties 
 against whom they are used ; so much the law now 
 permits ; but I would let in whatever documents, 
 written by persons deceased, appear plainly to have 
 been made without any view to manufacturing evi- 
 dence. In a word, excluding inferior evidence where 
 better can be obtained, and, therefore, all hearsay 
 absolutely, I would admit whatever could not be 
 deemed to have been done with a view to the fabri- 
 cation of proof, by the knowledge that such would 
 be receivable. Allowing objections from interest in 
 the event, as well as from interest in the question, 
 to weigh only in estimating a witness's credit, I 
 would make no man incompetent to give evidence 
 in any cause, civil or criminal, who was not either 
 an unbeliever in God and a future state, or convict- 
 ed of some infamous offence. In examining the 
 witnesses, I would suffer a person to be contradicted 
 as to matters directly affecting his credit, and on
 
 LAW U El- OHM. 15<) 
 
 which he had been questioned ; * and in the event 
 of a witness turning- out hostile to the party calling 
 him, there can be no sound reason why, subject to 
 the Judge's discretion, he should not be treated as 
 adverse, and even contradicted, without which the 
 latitude at present given by some Judges, only 
 amounts to a power of putting leading questions. 
 Of nonsuits for variance, and other technical defects, 
 I have already spoken. 
 
 The law respecting Limitations comes as an ap- 
 pendix to the chapter of Evidence. No branch of 
 our jurisprudence is more important, and hardly any 
 more demands revision. Why should there be no 
 statutory limitation of a bond or other specialty ?t 
 For want of it the Courts have adopted a sort of 
 rule, founded upon presumption of payment, that 
 where the instrument is twenty, or even eighteen 
 years old, sometimes less (so accurate is the rule), 
 and no interest has been paid, or other acknow- 
 ledgment made of the subsistence of the debt, it may 
 be assumed to be satisfied ; that the instrument is 
 cancelled they cannot presume, for there it is, seal 
 and all, staring them in the face ; but there being- 
 no receipt or discharge, and the bond being in the 
 obligee's hand, is surely quite enough to rebut any 
 presumption of payment so that the courts have 
 really made a law, though a bad and uncertain one, 
 to meet the case. It would be far better to fix at 
 once a period of ten years, after which no action 
 should be maintainable upon specialties. 
 
 But even in cases where we have a statute of 
 
 * This is really only a nominal relaxation of the rule in Spcm-dy v. 
 rle Willct; the spirit of that rule is preserved, for the credit of the wit- 
 ness is not a collateral issue. 7 East, 108. 
 
 t This is now provided hy the late Acts of 183:3.
 
 460 LAW REFORM. 
 
 limitation, there is hardly any vestige left of the 
 relief which it was intended to afford, owing- to the 
 labours of the Courts in finding means of evading 
 its beneficial operation. It was plainly meant as 
 an act of peace and quiet. My Noble Friend * 
 who presides in the Court of Common Pleas of 
 the sister kingdom, once said, with his usual feli- 
 city of expression, that Time is armed with his 
 scythe to destroy the evidence on which titles rest, 
 but the lawgiver makes him move with healing on 
 his wings to stay the ravages of his weapon. To 
 thwart the designs of the Legislature, the Courts 
 have been setting up their rules of presumption. 
 At one time they seemed really to hold that any 
 thing, even the simplest expression, would take a 
 debt out of the statute of limitations ; for instance, 
 if a defendant had said " I have paid the debt," 
 he was taken as admitting it, unless he could prove 
 payment. Again, if he said " I owe you nothing," 
 the assertion was taken as an acknowledgment ; and 
 he was also required to prove an acquittance of the 
 plaintiff's claim. The reply " Six years have ex- 
 pired" was equally dangerous, though it was only 
 saying out of Court what the statute itself allowed 
 him to say in pleading. In fact, so deeply did Lord 
 Erskine feel the difficulties which encompassed the 
 defendant under these efforts of judicial acuteness, 
 that he said the only safe course a defendant could 
 take when his adversary sent a fishing witness, was 
 to knock him down j for though he might be pro- 
 ceeded against for the assault, he retained the bene- 
 fit of the statute, as regarded the debt. Although 
 of late the current of decisions (as it is pleasantly 
 termed) has set in more in an opposite direction, 
 
 Lord Plunkett.
 
 LAW REFORM. 461 
 
 there is still abundant room for a provision to give 
 this wholesome law effect. The means are obvious ; 
 let nothing- but an acknowledgment in writing take 
 any debt out of the statute. In a word, prop the 
 main pillar of security against stale and unjust de- 
 mands, the Statute of Limitations, by a beam from 
 that other bulwark against perjury, the Statute of 
 Frauds.* 
 
 The law of Limitation seems to require alteration, 
 not additional enforcement, in the case of Real 
 Actions. The period for a Writ of Right is thirty or 
 sixty years, according as the 'demandant counts on 
 his own or his ancestor's seisin. But in a Forme- 
 don, which is often termed, as in truth it is, the 
 tenant in tail's writ of right, it is no more than 
 twenty years. The difference surely is founded on 
 no sound reason, and ought to be done away, by a 
 law fixing thirty years as the period of limitation in 
 all real actions, and removing the important diifer- 
 ence in construction which Sir T. Plomer's late 
 decision has raised from the different expressions 
 used in the statute of Henry VIII. and James I., 
 so as, in many cases of property under lease, to de- 
 prive the defendant of his remedy altogether. t 
 
 But in one case there is no limitation at all ; I 
 mean that of Church rights. Why should there not 
 be ? I admit that the same period ought not to be 
 adopted respecting the Church as the nulluin tcm- 
 pus act prescribes for the Crown ; but I confess I 
 do not see the necessity of leaving the law as it now 
 
 * This salutary alteration was effected by Lord Tenterden's Act, 
 passed in 1829. 
 
 t The whole law of Real Actions has been changed and simplified 
 by the labours of the Real Property Commissioners, and the Acts of 
 1835 ; and the changes here proposed as to limitation of such actions 
 have been introduced.
 
 462 LAW REFORM. 
 
 stands, and exempting ecclesiastical claims from all 
 restriction whatever. What is the consequence ? 
 It was admirably pointed out by a most learned 
 Judge,* in one of the ablest tracts ever written, 
 no less distinguished by closeness of legal argu- 
 ment, than by that pure and concise diction pecu- 
 liar to him. A composition real may have been 
 made between a clergyman and his parishioners, 
 at any time since the restraining statute of Eliza- 
 beth ; for 200 years the land may have been pos- 
 sessed by the parson, and yet if the original agree- 
 ment should have been lost, as it is almost sure to 
 be amongst farmers, though no tithe has been taken 
 during all that time, there would be no bar by limi- 
 tation, in the event of the clergyman claiming the 
 tithes ; so that it could not be ascertained by whom 
 the land had been given, and the land could not be 
 restored for want of claimants ; indeed there are 
 cases in which the clergyman has thus retained the 
 land originally given for the composition, and has 
 his tithes paid to boot. I would say, then, with 
 Mr Burke, take not away from the Church its power 
 of being useful, but deprive her only of that which 
 makes her odious. The reign of Richard I. is the 
 period up to which all rights as against churchmen 
 must be carried ; nay even as against lay impropria- 
 tors, to whose case none of the reasons for favour- 
 ing ecclesiastical claims apply. Yet that period 
 becomes daily more remote and more inapproach- 
 able by evidence. Does not every principle of jus- 
 tice require, that lay titles to tithes should be put on 
 the footing of other property ; and that for Church 
 rights, properly so called, a period of limitation 
 should be affixed, longer than for other rights, to 
 
 * Mr Baron Wood.
 
 LAW RKl'OKM. -l<>;5 
 
 prevent collusion between incumbents and tithe 
 payers, and combined, if necessary, with the number 
 of two or three vacancies ? * 
 
 vi. The course of my observations has now 
 brought me to the Trial of the Issues, raised by the 
 Pleading's, on the Process, and investigated by means 
 of the Evidence. On this branch of the subject I 
 have little to offer. The principles are plain which 
 should guide us, and they are not so widely depart- 
 ed from in practice as to require any great change. 
 Each party should be allowed fully to propound his 
 case in the way most advantageous to himself. All 
 new matter advanced by the one should receive an 
 answer from the other ; each should be encouraged 
 and not hindered to bring- forward whatever evi- 
 dence may tend to throw light upon the matter in 
 question. Our practice, at least in modern times, 
 departs a good deal from these principles, but is very 
 easily restored to them. We compel the plaintiff to 
 explain his case, and comment upon it before his 
 witnesses are examined : unless his adversary pro- 
 duces evidence, he has no means of observing 1 , even 
 upon his own case, after he has proved, or attempted 
 to prove it. Hence his opening must be often very 
 general, for fear of his evidence falling short ; and 
 hence he often labours under a prejudice from that 
 cautious and imperfect opening, which a little expla- 
 nation might remove. Counsel are every day obli- 
 ged to state their cases in the dark ; experience 
 teaches us in some degree the difference between 
 what is set down and what will be actually sworn ; 
 so that a young advocate will give a very different 
 
 * This important reform has also been made by Lord Tenterdcn's 
 second Act of 1832.
 
 464 LAW REFORM. 
 
 statement on the same brief from a practised one, 
 no great compliment to our method of trying- causes, 
 in which as little as possible should depend on the 
 forensic skill of practitioners ; but even the most 
 experienced are constantly deceived by their instruc- 
 tions ; the cause may change its aspect, especially in 
 the cross-examination of the witnesses ; and they 
 have no opportunity of correcting the error and 
 preventing the result from turning on a matter 
 wholly foreign to its merits, the discretion of those 
 who prepared the brief unless the other party gives 
 evidence. Now, for this very reason, and to gain 
 by his adversary's failure (a failure not necessarily 
 connected with merits,) he will avoid doing so ; he 
 will also avoid it generally, to prevent his own re- 
 marks from being answered. Hence much impor- 
 tant evidence is every day shut out, by this play of 
 counsel to avoid giving a reply, which the plaintiff 
 should have, whether the defendant calls witnesses 
 or no. Here, as in other things, the system is far 
 from uniform : in Appeal cases, both before the 
 House of Lords and the Privy Council, there is a 
 reply, as of course ; and in the Committees of this 
 House, as well as in trials for High Treason, there is 
 an opportunity given to each party of commenting 
 on his case, after it has been presented in evidence, 
 by a summing up. The practice is the same in the 
 Ecclesiastical Courts, and the Delegates. I under- 
 stand that a summing up, or speaking to evidence, 
 as they call it, is allowed in Ireland ; in Scotland 
 both prosecutor and prisoner are heard on the evi- 
 dence after it has been adduced, the want of an ex- 
 planatory opening being in part supplied by the 
 debate upon the relevancy of the indictment. I 
 believe in civil cases they have adopted our modern
 
 LAW REFORM. 4C5 
 
 practice, instead of the older method to which the 
 Irish adhere. 
 
 Before leaving- this head I may be allowed to sug- 
 gest an amendment of a minor kind, but of very 
 considerable importance. It would be advantageous 
 to have a Sworn Shorthand Writer in every Nisi 
 Prius case. Those who attend our Courts of Nisi 
 Prius are aware how sorely the Judge is hampered, 
 and his attention diverted from more important 
 considerations, by being obliged to take such full 
 notes of the evidence. This practice is necessary, 
 because the only record of the facts of the case is to 
 be found in his notes. Now, the judge is often a 
 slow writer, and, in this respect, men differ so 
 much, that one judge will try three or four causes 
 while another will dispose of only one, and one will 
 impede a cross-examination so as to render it quite 
 ineffectual, while another will never interrupt it at 
 all. It happens likewise that a judge may be an in- 
 correct taker of notes, which not unfrequently leads 
 him to an incorrect decision, at least to an incorrect 
 report of the case when a new trial is moved for. 
 No judges ever write shorthand, and for no other 
 reason, than that their notes may have to be read 
 by another, if the record comes not out of their own 
 court. My Honourable Friend, the member for Dur- 
 ham,* whose suggestions have ever been found most 
 beneficial to judicial proceedings, introduced the 
 great improvement of shorthand writers in our com- 
 mittees, and abridged the delay and expense of those 
 inquiries incalculably. I would have them, if intro- 
 duced into our courts, take full notes of the proceed- 
 ings; at the same time I would not hold their notes as 
 
 * Mr Michael Angelo Taylor. 
 VOL. II. 2 G
 
 466 LAW REFORM. 
 
 conclusive ; they might be subject to the correction 
 of the judge on any important matter misappre- 
 hended; for he, of course, would take his own note, 
 but only of the principal and the more delicate 
 things, likely to be misunderstood by one ignorant 
 of law. He would soon find where he could trust 
 the shorthand writer and where not ; he would be 
 relieved from much labour merely mechanical, and 
 left free to regard all the bearings of the case, and 
 to take a commanding view of it, so as to bring on 
 a more speedy decision of its merits. 
 
 But, Sir, I cannot leave the subject of trial with- 
 out saying somewhat of the general principles regu- 
 lating Real Actions, sinning as they do against all 
 sense and justice. In other cases the plaintiff be- 
 gins the attack, and on him it rests to prove his case, 
 to stand or fall by his proof; but, in a Writ of 
 Right, the person in possession fifty-nine years and 
 three-quarters must, according to the existing law, 
 expose his title, pedigree, and all, to his opponent, 
 who can lie by and pick holes to his own advan- 
 tage, without being even asked on what ground he 
 relies, until his adversary has proved his case ; a 
 great benefit, whatever be his ground ; for the Jury 
 must give the property to somebody, and it is likely 
 that the party in possession having failed, the claim- 
 ant may get in. In Ejectment, though the plain- 
 tiff may have held possession for almost twenty years 
 previous to the cause of action rising, yet, if he has 
 been out of possession for one single day, it is in- 
 cumbent on him to prove his title, and the defendant 
 is not bound to budge if he fail. In this case, too, 
 the plaintiff must pay costs if defeated, even though 
 the person he attacks has been but a day in posses- 
 sion, and cannot have been in above twenty years.
 
 LAW REFORM. 467 
 
 In the real action, where the possession may have 
 been near sixty years, the claimant pays not one 
 shilling of costs, for making you prove your title, 
 though he fail entirely in impeaching it.* 
 
 Nor let it be imagined that these evils never oc- 
 cur ; I have seen them fully exemplified twice with- 
 in the last eighteen months. We had a writ of 
 right at York in the spring of 1826, to try the title 
 to many thousands a-year. On the eve of the trial 
 we, for the demandant, discovered a defect in the 
 proof of taking the esplees, and were forced to with- 
 draw the record. It came down for trial at the 
 next assizes, when we were astonished to find the 
 defect we had reckoned upon in the tenant's title 
 removed, and on asking where the document pro- 
 duced had been discovered, we were told that if had 
 come to light on searching the Bishop's chancery, at 
 Salisbury, some weeks after the spring assizes, in 
 which he would have been defeated had we gone to 
 trial. Only see by what an accident the possession 
 of this large estate was saved ! Our client was de- 
 feated on the freehold, as not being the eldest son ; 
 he afterwards brought a plaint, in the nature of a 
 real action, in the Court of Lambeth, as youngest 
 son, for the copyhold, which was descendible by 
 Borough English. He again failed ; but, of course, 
 he paid costs in neither suit. 
 
 vii. The Trial being had and the Judgment pro- 
 nounced, there follows the Execution ; and in this 
 most important branch of the law, which may be 
 emphatically called the law of Debtor and Creditor, 
 I feel perfectly justified in declaring our system to 
 be the very worst in Europe, departing the most 
 
 * All Real Actions, except Quare Impedit, are now abolished, by the 
 Act of 1833
 
 468 LAW REFORM. 
 
 widely from the principles which ought to regulate 
 a creditor's recourse against his debtor. Those prin- 
 ciples are abundantly plain. In proportion as, 
 before the debt has been proved, the person and 
 property of the party charged should be free from 
 all process not necessary to prevent evasion ; so, 
 after judgment, ought the utmost latitude be given 
 to obtain satisfaction from all the defendant's pro- 
 perty whatever land, goods, money, and debts 
 for to himself they no longer belong. To allow 
 any distinction between one kind of property and 
 another seems the height of injustice. No consis- 
 tent reasoner can maintain the propriety of exempt- 
 ing land more than chattels ; no honest debtor can 
 claim the privilege which he waived when he con- 
 tracted the debt. In the case of a person deceased, 
 all kinds of debts and all creditors should come in 
 equally upon an insolvent estate ; and preference 
 only be given to a mortgage or other lien. The 
 chattel itself sued for should be returned, and da- 
 mages only given where it has been lost. The per- 
 son of the debtor should not be taken in execution, 
 unless there is either a wilful concealment of pro- 
 perty, or there has been criminal or grossly impru- 
 dent conduct in contracting the debt ; for the two 
 objects should be kept carefully distinct, of what is 
 done to satisfy the creditor, and what is done to 
 punish the debtor. Lastly, the former should obtain 
 his satisfaction as speedily as may be, and as conve- 
 niently for the latter as is consistent with the credi- 
 tor's security. How widely does our law depart from 
 these obvious and natural principles, by dint of refine- 
 ments, blunders, and openly-avowed injustice!* 
 
 * The new Bill proceeds wholly upon these principles, gives the 
 creditor the full remedy, and only restrains Or confines the debtor when
 
 LAW REFOim. 469 
 
 First of all, there are only t\ro actions for recovery 
 of chattels, in which we are expected to give the 
 thing- specifically sued for, Replevin and Detinue ; 
 yet in neither can the party compel a delivery in 
 kind ; and detinue is besides useless, because the 
 defendant may wage his law. In all others the claim 
 is avowedly for damages only. A horse is taken from 
 
 me, and I sue for it; yet I only obtain damages for 
 
 
 
 its detention: but suppose I want the horse, and not 
 
 the money, the law will not aid me ; nay, it will 
 give me not a farthing in consideration of being thus 
 compelled to part with it ; I only receive what it 
 would fetch in the market if I chose to sell it. 
 Equity and common law differ widely here ; the for- 
 mer always performs in specie ; the latter looks to 
 damages only, unless indeed where it is inconsistent 
 with itself, as in the summary process to make parties 
 perform awards, and attornies and other officers of 
 the Courts deliver up deeds, and pay monies by means 
 of attachment. But all these defects are compara- 
 tively trifling, and rather absurd in principle, than of 
 extensive injury in practice. What is quite substan- 
 tial, and of hourly occurrence, is the frustration of a 
 creditor after he has obtained judgment, and taken 
 out execution. His debtor has a landed estate ; if 
 it be copyhold, the creditor cannot touch it in any . 
 way whatever ; if it be freehold, he may take half by 
 elegit, and receive the rents and profits, but no more, 
 in the lifetime of his debtor. The debt for which he 
 has received judgment may be such that the rent of 
 the land will not even keep down the interest j still 
 he can take nothing more ; he cannot turn the land 
 
 he either refuses to do what is in his power, Las been guilty of fraud, or 
 is about to abscond.
 
 470 LAW REFORM. 
 
 into money ; so that, when a man sties for a thing 
 detained unlawfully, you give him money which he 
 does not ask ; and when he asks for money by suing 
 for a debt, you give him land which he does not 
 want. But if his debtor dies before judgment can 
 be obtained, unless the debt is on bond, he has no 
 remedy at all against any kind of real property of 
 any tenure ; nay, though his money, borrowed on 
 note or bill, has been laid out in buying land, the 
 debtor's heir takes that land wholly discharged of 
 the debt. 
 
 But not only is land thus sacred from all effectual 
 process of creditors, unless the debtor be a trader ; 
 the great bulk of most men's personal property is 
 equally beyond reach of the law. Stock in the pub- 
 lic funds debts due in any manner of way nay, 
 bank notes, and even money, are alike protected. I 
 may owe a hundred thousand pounds in any way, 
 and judgment may have passed against me over and 
 over again ; if I have privilege of Parliament, live 
 in a furnished house or hotel, and use hired carri- 
 ages and horses, I may have an income from stock or 
 money lent, of twenty thousand a-year, and defy 
 the utmost efforts of the law ; or if I have not pri- 
 vilege, I may live abroad, or within the Rules, (as 
 some actually do), and laugh at all the courts and 
 all the creditors in the country. So absurd are our 
 rules in this respect, that if I have borrowed a thou- 
 sand pounds, and the creditor has obtained judgment, 
 the Sheriffs-officer appointed to levy upon my per- 
 sonalty, may come into my room and take a table or 
 a desk ; but if he sees the identical thousand pounds 
 lying there, he must leave it he touches it at his 
 peril : " For this quaint reason," says Lord Mans- 
 field, " because money cannot be sold, and you are
 
 LAW REFORM. 471 
 
 required by the writ to take your debt out of the pro- 
 duce of goods sold." It is true that great Judge, 
 whose merits as a lawyer were never underrated, 
 except by persons jealous of his superior fame, or 
 ignorant of the law, (among whom was a writer 
 much admired in his day, but of very questionable 
 purity, and certainly no lawyer), leaned to a con- 
 trary construction of the creditor's powers, and 
 might have somewhat irregularly introduced it. 
 But Lord Ellenborough afterwards denounced such 
 attempts as perilous innovations on the fundamental 
 principles of our jurisprudence ; * and the law is now 
 settled on this point, t 
 
 And here, Sir, let me step aside to ask who is the 
 innovator he who would adhere to such rules, in 
 violation of the manifest intent and spirit of our old 
 law, or he who would re-adjust them so as to give 
 it effect ? In ancient times there were none of 
 those masses of property in existence, which are ex- 
 empt from legal process. When the law, therefore, 
 said " Let a man's goods and chattels be answer- 
 able for his debts," it meant to include his whole 
 personalty at the least. Things have now changed 
 in the progress of society ; trade has grown up ; 
 credit has followed in its train ; money, formerly 
 used as counters, has become abundant ; paper cur- 
 rency and the funds have been created. Three- 
 fourths of the debtor's personalty, perhaps nine- 
 tenths, now consist of stock, money, and credit ; 
 and the rule of law which leaves those out of all 
 execution, no longer can mean as before " Let all 
 his personalty be liable" but " Let a tenth-part of 
 
 * Knight v. Griddle, 9 East, 48. 
 f All these anomalies are removed.
 
 472 LAW REFORM. 
 
 it only be taken." Can there be a greater change 
 made upon, or greater violence done to, the old law 
 itself, than you thus do by affecting to preserve its 
 letter ? The great stream of time is perpetually 
 flowing on ; all things around us are in ceaseless 
 motion ; and we vainly imagine to preserve our re- 
 lative position among them, by getting out of the 
 current and standing stock still on the margin. The 
 stately vessel we belong to glides down ; our bark 
 is attached to it ; we might " pursue the triumph 
 and partake the gale"; but, worse than the fool who 
 stares expecting the current to flow down and run 
 out, we exclaim Stop the boat ! and would tear it 
 away to strand it, for the sake of preserving its con- 
 nexion with the vessel. All the changes that are 
 hourly and gently going on in spite of us, and all those 
 which we ought to make, that violent severances of 
 settled relations may not be effected, far from ex- 
 citing murmurs of discontent, ought to be gladly 
 hailed as dispensations of a bountiful Providence, in- 
 stead of filling us with a thoughtless and preposte- 
 rous alarm. 
 
 But the imperfect recourse against the debtor's 
 estate, although the grand opprobrium of our law, is 
 by no means its only vice : the unequal distribution, 
 in case of Insolvency, is scarcely a less notable de- 
 fect. Only traders, or those who voluntarily take 
 the benefit of the act, are compelled, when insolvent, 
 to make an impartial division of their property. All 
 others may easily, and with impunity, pay one cre- 
 ditor twenty shillings in the pound, and the others 
 sixpence, or nothing. So when a man dies insol- 
 vent, his representatives may, by acknowledging 
 judgments, secure one creditor his full payment at 
 the expense of all the rest. Then, lax and impotent
 
 LAW REFORM. 473 
 
 as the law is against property, wide as are its loop- 
 holes for fraud and extravagance to escape by, ut- 
 terly powerless as is its grasp to seize the great bulk 
 of the debtor's possessions, against his useless person 
 it is equally powerful and unrelenting. The argu- 
 ment used is, that the concealed property may thus 
 be wrung from him : the principle, however, of the 
 law, and on which all its provisions arc built, is, 
 that the seizure of the body works a satisfaction of 
 the claim ; and this satisfaction is given alike in all 
 cases alike where there is innocent misfortune, 
 culpable extravagance, and guilty embezzlement. 
 Surely, for all these evils the remedy is easy ; it 
 flows at once from the principles I set out with 
 stating under this head. Let the whole of every 
 man's property, real and personal his real, of what 
 kind soever, copyhold, leasehold, freehold ; his per- 
 sonal, of whatever nature, debts, money, stock, chat- 
 tels be taken for the payment of all his debts 
 equally, and, in case of insolvency, let all be distri- 
 buted rateably ; let all he possesses be sifted, bolted 
 from him unsparingly, until all his creditors are 
 satisfied by payment or composition ; but let his per- 
 son only be taken when he conceals his goods, or 
 has merited punishment by extravagance or fraud. 
 This line of distinction is already recognised by the 
 practice of the Insolvent Courts ; but the privilege 
 of the Rules is inconsistent with every principle, 
 and ought at once to be abrogated as soon as arrest 
 on inesne process is abolished.* 
 
 * This arrest, the end of which it is hoped fast approaches, was not 
 generally given by the common law. The capias ad respondendum is 
 given in Debt and Detinue by the Statute of West, v. 2 (13 Ed. I.) 
 cap. 11 ; in Case only so late as 19 H. 7. c. 9. All this is remedied 
 by the Bill.
 
 474 LAW REFORM. 
 
 viii. The last subject which presents itself to our 
 notice, is the Appeal from judgments recovered. 
 Here, as in every other branch of our jurisprudence, 
 the Courts of Law and of Equity proceed on oppo- 
 site principles, though dealing with the same matter. 
 In the former, you can only appeal on matter of 
 law appearing upon the face of the record, or added 
 to it by bill of exceptions, and never in any case be- 
 fore final judgment. In the latter, you can appeal 
 from any interlocutory order as well as from the 
 final decree, and upon all matter of fact as well as of 
 law. So it is in the Ecclesiastical Courts, where a 
 Grievance (or complaint upon interlocutory matter) 
 is as much the subject of appellative jurisdiction as 
 the appeal from the final sentence ; and the Court 
 above sits on all the facts as well as on the law. 
 But the Courts of Common Law are as much at 
 variance with themselves ; for it depends on the 
 Court you sue in, and the process you sue by (Bill 
 or Original) how many stages of review you have. 
 
 The principal evil of Courts of Error, is the stay 
 of execution which they affect, thereby giving the 
 losing party in possession an interest in prosecuting 
 groundless appeals. The Bill of the Right Honour- 
 able Gentleman,* being a partial measure, while it 
 intended to remedy this evil, has rather increased it ; 
 because another more costly mode of obtaining the 
 same delay being left open, the parties by defending 
 actions in themselves without defence, avail them- 
 selves of it, to the enormous multiplication of frivo- 
 lous trials. The true remedy I take to be this. 
 Let the party who obtains a judgment be so far pre- 
 sumed right as to get instant possession or execu- 
 
 * Sir Robert Peel.
 
 LAW REFORM. 475 
 
 tion,upon giving ample security for restitution should 
 the sentence be reversed. This is the rule in the 
 Cape and other of our Colonies ; in the Cape, two 
 sureties, each in double the amount, are required. 
 It would also be an excellent modification of this 
 principle, to vest in judges the discretion of ordering 
 the execution to be levied by instalments, upon rea- 
 sonable security being given. Hurried seizures, and 
 sales for next to nothing, would thus be avoided ; 
 as would the destruction of many valuable concerns, 
 to the ruin of the debtor, and the loss of the creditor 
 also. The reasonable delay thus safely granted would 
 further tend to prevent groundless appeals and fri- 
 volous defences, for mere dilatory purposes. The 
 details of this measure would be easily arranged ; I 
 am sure that it well merits inquiry, if I shall obtain 
 a Commission.* 
 
 I have now followed the proceedings in our Courts 
 through their whole course ; and it will be observed, 
 that I have said little or nothing of Costs an im- 
 portant subject 5 perhaps, taken in all its bearings, 
 the most important of any ; but which has so far 
 been disposed of, in its principal relation, by the 
 discussion of whatever tends to shorten litigation. 
 A great, perhaps the greatest, evil of our system, as 
 at present constituted, is the excess of the costs 
 which a party succeeding is obliged to pay, over and 
 above what he can recover from his antagonist. 
 This is so certain and so considerable, that a man 
 shall in vain expect me to recommend him either to 
 bring forward a rightful claim, or to resist an unjust 
 demand for any such sum as twenty, or even thirty 
 
 * There has been material improvement since the late rules as to 
 process in execution under the Act of 1833.
 
 476 LAW REFORM. 
 
 pounds at least, upon a calculation of his interest, 
 I should presently declare to him, he had much bet- 
 ter say nothing in the one case, and pay the money 
 a second time in the other, even if he had a stamped 
 receipt in his pocket, provided his adversary were a 
 rich and oppressive man, resolved to take all the 
 advantages the law gives him. I have here before 
 me some samples of taxed bills of costs, taken quite 
 at random, and far from being peculiar cases in any 
 one respect. There is one of 428, made out by a 
 very respectable attorney, and from which the Master 
 deducted 202 ; of this sum, 147 were taken off, 
 which had been paid for bringing witnesses. In this 
 other, amounting to 217, ?6 were taxed off; 
 and in a third of 63, there were nearly 15 dis- 
 allowed ; it was an undefended cause, to recover 
 50 : had the defendant been obstinate and oppres- 
 sively inclined, he would have made the extra costs 
 a good deal more than the whole debt, although the 
 suit was in the Exchequer, where the taxation is 
 known to be more liberal. We had lately, in the 
 King's Bench, a bill of above 100, to recover 
 19, and, probably, of that 100 not above 60 
 would be allowed. As things now stand, a part of 
 this master evil is inevitable ; for if practitioners 
 were sure of receiving all their bills, they would run 
 up a heavy charge wherever they knew the case to 
 be a clear one. But as the fundamental principle 
 for which I contend is, to alter no part of the law 
 by itself, or without considering all the other parts, 
 there can be no difficulty, consistently with this doc- 
 trine, to enlarge the allowance of costs as soon as 
 other amendments have prevented the abuse of liti- 
 gation by professional men. 
 
 Some erroneous rules of taxation may, even in a 
 partial or insulated reform, be altered. Whatever
 
 LAW REFORM. 477 
 
 is fairly allowed as between attorney and client, 
 should be allowed between party and party, except 
 only such needless charges as have been ordered 
 expressly by the client himself. There can surely 
 be no reason for disallowing, as a general rule, all 
 consultations, often absolutely necessary for the con- 
 duct of a cause, generally more beneficial than much 
 that is allowed ; nor can it be right, that so little of 
 the expense of bringing evidence should be given, 
 and that the cost of preparing the case by inquiries, 
 journeys, &c., should be refused altogether. The 
 necessary consequence of not suffering an attorney 
 to charge what he ought to receive for certain things, 
 is that he is driven to do a number of needless things, 
 which he knows are always allowed as a matter of 
 course, and the expense is thus increased to the client 
 far beyond the mere gain which the attorney derives 
 from it. I have a great doubt whether benefit would 
 not result from leaving the costs more in the discre- 
 tion of the court which tries a cause than they now 
 are : in equity, they are always so in the fullest ex- 
 tent ; at law, almost all is fixed by statute. 
 
 Sir, in casting an eye over the wide field which 
 we have been surveying, I trust the House will per- 
 ceive that, although I have for the most part ar- 
 ranged my observations under the different stages 
 through which causes are carried in our superior 
 courts, I have yet been enabled to discuss the great- 
 er and by much the more important parts of our 
 municipal jurisprudence. Indeed, with the excep- 
 tion of Commercial law, I am not aware of having 
 left any branch untouched that seemed to require 
 amendment. I stated, in the outset, the reason why 
 that formed no immediate part of my plan. A great 
 portion of it is common to all trading countries, the
 
 478 LAW REFORM. 
 
 Law-merchant, and is extremely well adapted to its 
 purpose, being of comparatively modern growth, 
 and framed according to the exigencies of commerce. 
 Some other parts, however, are exceedingly defec- 
 tive. It would be difficult to point out greater 
 uncertainty, or more caprice, in any branch of the 
 system, than are to be found in the law of Partner- 
 ship.* A man can hardly tell whether he is a part- 
 ner or not : being a partner, the extent of his liabi- 
 lity is scarcely less difficult to ascertain ; and he 
 will often find it in vain to consult his lawyer 01? 
 these important matters.! The distribution of estates 
 under the Bankrupt law is likewise capable of very 
 great improvement. After all that was lately done 
 in arranging and simplifying this code, it remains 
 full of contradictions, and the source of innumerable 
 frauds arid endless litigation. But into these things 
 I abstain from entering. I must, however, once 
 more press upon the attention of the House, the 
 necessity of taking a general view of the whole sys- 
 tem in whatever inquiries may be instituted. Par- 
 tial legislation on such a subject is pregnant with 
 mischief. Timid men, but still more blind than 
 they are timid, recommend taking a single branch 
 at a time, and imagine that they are consulting the 
 
 * Enquiries have lately been carried on by the Law Commissioners as 
 to the Law of Partnership, and an able report drawn up by Mr B. Ker. 
 
 f The execution of judgments on partnership property is a remark- 
 able example. The Sheriff must sell an undivided share, say a moiety 
 of the whole ; and the purchaser becomes tenant in common with the 
 solvent partner, who may find the East India Company or Government 
 his co-tenant, and be still liable to account to the other partner for his 
 share of the profits; because the very effect of the execution which has 
 let in so disagreeable a co-tenant of the stock, will naturally be, to save 
 the necessity of going to prison (the only involuntary act of bank- 
 ruptcy), and thus prevent a dissolution of the partnership.
 
 LAW REFORM. 479 
 
 safety of the mass. It is the very reverse of safe, 
 In the body of the law, all the members are closely 
 connected ; you cannot touch one without affecting 
 the rest ; and if your eye is confined to the one you 
 deal with, you cannot tell what others may be in- 
 jured, and how. Even a manifest imperfection may 
 not be removed without great risk, when it is not 
 in some wholly insulated part ; for it oftentimes 
 happens that, by long use, a defect has given rise to 
 some new arrangement extending far beyond itself, 
 and not to be disturbed with impunity. The topi- 
 cal reformer, who confines his care to one flaw, may 
 thus do as much injury as a surgeon who should set 
 himself about violently reducing a luxation of long 
 standing, where nature had partially remedied the 
 evil by forming a false joint, or should cut away 
 some visceral excrescence in which a new system of 
 circulation and other action was going on. Depend 
 upon it, the general reformation of such a mechan- 
 ism as our "law, is not only the most effectual, but 
 the only safe course. This, in truth, alone deserves 
 the name of either a rational or a temperate re- 
 form.* 
 
 Then, what ground can there be for taking alarm 
 at the course I recommend of amendment, and pro- 
 ceeding by careful, but general inquiry ? It is, 
 indeed, nothing new, even of late years, in this 
 country. We appointed a Commission to investi- 
 gate the whole administration of justice in Scotland ; 
 and it ended in altering the constitution of the 
 Courts, and introducing a new mode of trying causes. 
 Yet Scotland, to say nothing of the treaty of Union, 
 so often set up as a bulwark against all change, 
 
 * The labours of the Law Commissions upon Codification have been 
 most important ; their reports are of great value on this subject.
 
 480 LAW REFORM. 
 
 might urge some very powerful reasons for uphold- 
 ing her ancient system, which we in England should 
 vainly seek to parallel. She might hold up her sta- 
 tute book in three small pocket volumes, the whole 
 fruit of as many centuries of legislation, while your 
 table bends beneath the laws of a single reign and 
 of your whole jurisprudence, it may be said, as of 
 the Roman before Justinian, that it would overload 
 many camels. But I do not merely cite, against 
 alarms and scruples, that bold and wise and safe 
 measure of Lord Grenville ; older authorities, and 
 in the Courts of Westminster, are with me. I will 
 rely on Lord Hale, whose celebrated Treatise Of 
 ike Amendment of the Law (far less studied, I fear, 
 by our jurisconsults, than that of Fortescue *) well 
 exposes the folly of such fears, with their origin. 
 " By long use and custom (says he), men, especially 
 that are aged, and have been long educated to the 
 profession and practice of the law, contract a kind 
 of superstitious veneration of it beyond what is just 
 and reasonable. They tenaciously and rigorously 
 maintain these very forms and proceedings and prac- 
 tices, which, though possibly at first they were sea- 
 sonable and useful, yet by the very change of mat- 
 ters they become not only useless and impertinent, 
 but burthensome and inconvenient, and prejudicial 
 to the common justice and the common good of 
 mankind j not considering the forms and prescripts 
 of laws were not introduced for their own sakes, but 
 for the use of public justice ; and therefore, when 
 they became insipid, useless, impertinent, and pos- 
 sibly derogatory to the end, they may and must be 
 removed." Such is the language of Sir M. Hale. 
 
 * De Laudibus Legum Angliae. 

 
 LAW REFORM. 481 
 
 After Lord Coke arid Littleton himself, there is no 
 higher authority in the law than Shepherd, the author 
 of the Touchstone, who, in another of his works, called 
 " England's Balm, or Proposals by way of Grievance and 
 Remedy, &c., towards the Regulation of the Law and 
 better Administration of Justice," reminds his legal 
 brethren, that " taking away the abuse of the law will 
 establish the use of the law stabilit usum qui tottit 
 abusum and that rooting up the tares will not destroy 
 the wheat."* If the House require further authorities 
 upon this point, I can refer them to one of the most in- 
 structive books published of late years upon this matter, 
 that of Mr. Parkes, a respectable solicitor in Warwick- 
 shire, who, in giving a history of the Court of Chancery, 
 has collected most of the authorities upon the subject of 
 Legal Reform. 
 
 But our predecessors, members of this House in the 
 17th century, an age fruitful of great improvements, 
 most of which were retained in more quiet times, un- 
 dertook the amendment of the Law systematically, 
 and with a spirit and a wisdom every way worthy of 
 so great a work. In 1654, a Commission was formed 
 partly of the House, partly of learned strangers. At 
 the head of the former, I find my honourable friend 
 the Solicitor General's less learned and more martial 
 predecessor, called in the Journals " Lord General 
 Cromwell."f But in front of the latter stands " Mr. 
 Mathew Hale," afterwards the great Chief Justice, 
 whose name is ever cited amongst the most venerable 
 
 * There is certainly a notion of Mr. Justice Doddridge being the 
 author of this excellent book, or at least standing in the same relation 
 to it that C. B. Gilbert does to Bacon's Ah. ; for the dates of some 
 works cited in it make it impossible he should have written it all. 
 
 t 0. Cromwell was member for Cambridge town ; Mr. Tiridal for 
 the university. 
 
 VOL. II. 2 II
 
 482 LAW REFORM. 
 
 supporters of our civil and our religious establishment. 
 With them were joined all the great jurisconsults and 
 statesmen of that illustrious age. They sat for five 
 years, and proposed a number of the most important 
 and general reforms. I will read the titles of a few 
 Acts, the draughts of which the Commissioners 
 prepared. 
 
 1. For taking away fines upon bills, declarations, 
 and original writs. 
 
 2. For taking away common recoveries, and the 
 unnecessary charges of fines, and to pass and charge 
 lands entailed as lands in fee-simple. 
 
 3. For ascertaining of arbitrary fines upon descent 
 and alienation of copyholds of inheritance. 
 
 4. For the more speedy recovery of Rents. 
 
 5. For the better regulating of Pleaders and their 
 Fees. 
 
 6. For the more speedy and easy recovery of Debts 
 and Damages not exceeding the sum of Four Pounds. 
 
 7. For the further declaration and prevention of 
 Fraudulent Contracts and Conveyances. 
 
 8. Against the Sale of Offices. 
 
 9. For the recovery of Debts owing by Corporations. 
 
 10. To make Debts assignable. 
 
 11. To prevent solicitation of Judges, Bribery, Ex- 
 tortion, Charge of Motions, and for restriction of 
 Pleaders. 
 
 12. An Act for all County Registers, Will, and 
 Administrators; and for preventing Inconvenience, 
 Delay, Charge, and Irregularity, in Chancery and 
 Common Law, (as well in common pleas as criminal 
 causes.) 
 
 13. Acts for settling County Judicatures, Guardians 
 of Orphans, Courts of Appeal, County Treasurers, and 
 Workhouses, with Tables of Fees and Short Forms of 
 Declaration.
 
 LAW UK KOI! M. 48:;; 
 
 14. An Act to allow Witnesses to be Sworn for 
 Prisoners. 
 
 The House is aware that, till much later in our 
 history, by the great wisdom, justice, and humanity of 
 our ancestors, it was provided that the witnesses for a 
 defendant should not deliver their testimony upon 
 oath ; until the time of Queen Anne, the prosecutor 
 only was allowed to prove his case by sworn evidence ; 
 and the communication of the same right to the de- 
 fendant, may be looked upon by some as a rude inva- 
 sion of the ancient system, and a cruel departure from 
 the perfections of the olden time. 
 
 This is not the only measure prepared by that 
 celebrated Commission which has been since adopted, 
 as the House will see by the enumeration I have 
 given.* But steps were taken immediately after the 
 restoration, for prosecuting its plans more systemati- 
 cally. A Committee was appointed by this House 
 to examine the state of the Law and its practice ; 
 Sergeant Maynard and other eminent lawyers were 
 members of it. From their numbers, fifty-one, I pre- 
 sume they subdivided themselves for the convenience 
 of inquiring separately into different branches of the 
 subject. Upon their reports several Bills were brought 
 in for the general Reform of the Law ; but in tracing 
 their progress through the House, the prorogation 
 appears to have come before any of them was passed. 
 After a long interval of various fortune, and filled 
 with vast events, but marked from age to age by a 
 steady course of improvement, we are again called to 
 
 * Sir S. Romilly's valuable MSS., as lias been already stated, contain 
 the exposition and discussion of many reforms in the law, written 
 forty or fifty years ago. More than one-half of the measures there 
 propounded, have, of late years, and most of them since his lamented 
 decease, been adopted by the legislature ; a strong presumption in 
 favour of his plans generally.
 
 484 LAW REFORM. 
 
 the grand labour of surveying and amending our Laws. 
 For this task it well becomes us to begird ourselves, as 
 the honest representatives of the people. Dispatch 
 and vigour are imperiously demanded ; but that deli- 
 beration, too, must not be lost sight of which so mighty 
 an enterprise requires. When we shall have done the 
 w r ork, we may fairly challenge the utmost approval of 
 our constituents, for in none other have they so deep 
 a stake. 
 
 In pursuing the course which I now invite you to 
 enter upon, I avow that I look for the co-operation of 
 the King's Government ; and on what are my hopes 
 founded ? Men gather not grapes from thorns, nor 
 figs from thistles. But that the vine should no longer 
 yield its wonted fruit that the fig-tree should refuse 
 its natural increase required a miracle to strike it 
 with barrenness. There are those in the present 
 Ministry, whose known liberal opinions have lately 
 been proclaimed anew to the world, and pledges have 
 been avouched for their influence upon the policy of 
 the State. With them, others may not, upon all 
 subjects, agree ; upon this, I would fain hope there 
 will be found little difference. But, be that as it may, 
 whether I have the support of the Ministers or no 
 to the House I look with confident expectation, that 
 it will control them, and assist me ; if I go too far, 
 checking my progress ; if too fast, abating my speed ; 
 but heartily and honestly helping me in the best and 
 greatest work which the hands of the lawgiver can 
 undertake. The course is clear before us ; the race 
 is glorious to run. You have the power of sending your 
 name down through all times, illustrated by deeds of 
 higher fame, and more useful import, than ever were 
 done within these walls. You saw the greatest war- 
 rior of the age conqueror of Italy humbler of Ger- 
 many terror of the North saw him account all his
 
 LAW REFORM. 4.8J 
 
 matchless victories poor, compared with the triumph 
 you are now in a condition to win saw him contemn 
 the fickleness of Fortune, while, in despite of her, he 
 could pronounce his memorable boast, " I shall go 
 down to posterity with the Code in my hand !'" You 
 have vanquished him in the field ; strive now to rival 
 him in the sacred arts of peace ! Outstrip him as a 
 lawgiver, whom in arms you overcame ! The lustre 
 of the Regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and 
 enduring splendour of the Reign. The praise which 
 false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys, 
 the Justinians of their day, will be the just tribute of 
 the wise and the good to that Monarch under whose 
 sway so mighty an undertaking shall be accomplished. 
 Of a truth, the holders of sceptres arc most chiefly to 
 be envied for that they bestow the power of thus con- 
 quering, and ruling thus. It was the boast of Augus- 
 tus it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies 
 of his earlier years were lost that he found Rome of 
 brick, and left it of marble ; a praise not unworthy a 
 great prince, and to which the present reign also has 
 its claims. But how much nobler will be the Sove- 
 reign's boast, when he shall have it to say, that he 
 found law dear, and left it cheap ; found it a sealed 
 book left it a living letter; found it the patrimony 
 of the rich left it the inheritance of the poor ; found 
 it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression left 
 it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence ! 
 To me much reflecting on these things, it has always 
 seemed a worthier honour to be the instrument of 
 making you bestir yourselves in this high matter, than 
 to enjoy all that office can bestow office, of which 
 the patronage would be an irksome incumbrance, the 
 emoluments superfluous to one content with the rest 
 of his industrious fellow-citizens, that his own hands 
 minister to his wants : And as for the power supposed
 
 48G LAW REFORM. 
 
 to follow it I have lived near half a century, and I 
 have learned that power and place may be severed. 
 But one power I do prize ; that of being the advocate 
 of my countrymen here, and their fellow-labourer else- 
 where, in those things which, concern the best inte- 
 rests of mankind. That power, I know full well, no 
 government can give no change take away ! 
 
 I move you, Sir, " That an humble Address be pre- 
 sented to his Majesty, praying that he will be gra- 
 ciously pleased to issue a Commission for inquiring 
 into the defects, occasioned by time and otherwise, in 
 the Laws of this realm, and into the measures neces- 
 sary for removing the same." 
 
 [Upon the adjourned debate on Mr. Brougham's 
 motion, on Friday, February 29, the following Reso- 
 lution, substituted by him with the assent of the 
 Government, was unanimously carried : 
 
 " That an humble Address be presented to his 
 Majesty, respectfully requesting that his Majesty may 
 be pleased to take such measures as may seem most 
 expedient for the purpose of causing due inquiry to 
 be made into the origin, progress, and termination of 
 actions in the superior Courts of Common Law in this 
 country, and matters connected therewith ; and into 
 the state of the Law regarding the Transfer of Real 
 Property."]
 
 UI'ON T 
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 APRIL 29, 1830.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 I RISE, Sir, to call the attention of the House to u 
 subject which I had the honour, some two years and 
 a half ago, to bring under its consideration ; and, in the 
 first place, I will state the reason which has prevented 
 me from again bringing it forward at an earlier period. 
 The motion which I formerly made led to the appoint- 
 ment of two Commissions, and both of them have 
 reported on the subject matters submitted to them 
 for inquiry. One report has been made on the Law of 
 Real Property ; and I am in great hopes that a second 
 report will soon be made. The other Commission 
 has drawn up two reports, with respect to proceed- 
 ings at Common Law. Now if I had renewed the 
 subject after the first report had been made, I must 
 have introduced it at a very great disadvantage, 
 because the Commissioners had disclosed their inten- 
 tion to follow up that report, with suggestions upon 
 many of those questions to which I had turned my 
 attention. I have, therefore, waited till the second 
 report was before the House, that I might perfectly 
 know what the Commissioners propose. Let it not, 
 Sir, for one moment be supposed, that in again calling 
 the attention of the House to this most important sub- 
 ject, I have any ground of complaint as to the manner
 
 490 LAW REFORM. 
 
 in which the Commissioners have conducted these 
 inquiries ; for, in every part of them, those learned 
 persons seem to me to have proceeded with great zeal 
 as well as discretion. 
 
 The Commissioners appear to have proceeded with 
 the greatest possible caution, with the utmost degree 
 of deliberation. That evils exist in the system of our 
 administration of the law is not attributable to them ; 
 and, although much remains to be performed, the por- 
 tion of the subject which they have investigated is, 
 unquestionably, of paramount importance. They have 
 acted faithfully and meritoriously ; and I do not com- 
 plain of their powers either as being too limited or 
 inadequately exercised. Their inquiries have been con- 
 ducted in a proper spirit ; they have held their course 
 in a becoming and exact mean, between inconsiderate 
 rashness and undue subserviency, keeping a middle 
 line, and neither setting at nought the long pon- 
 dered decisions of authority, nor evincing that over- 
 strained respect for existing institutions which too 
 often degenerates into a veneration of existing abuses. 
 The great learning and experience of the Commis- 
 sioners, and the knowledge which, as practical men 
 well acquainted with the law, they have brought to 
 the consideration of the subject, are of the utmost 
 importance, and every body admits the ability with 
 which they have applied their resources to the subject 
 matter of their investigations. The vast body of 
 evidence of other practical men which they have col- 
 lected, their own suggestions and recommendations, 
 which, more especially in the second report, contain 
 matter worthy of the greatest attention, a report 
 that is full of profound thought, and, if I may be 
 allowed so to speak, of most ingenious invention on 
 the science and the practice of the law all these 
 merits entitled the Commissioners to receive, and no
 
 LOCAL COURTS. .j..0l 
 
 doubt they have received, the unqualified approbation, 
 not only of professional men, but of all persons inter- 
 ested in, and who arc capable of understanding, the 
 subject. I will venture to say, that within the last 
 century and a half there has not been produced in this 
 country any thing like the quantity of important mat- 
 ter which the Commissioners, partly in the fruit of 
 their own suggestions, and partly in the evidence and 
 facts adduced by others, have laid before the House 
 on this subject. 
 
 Having said thus much, it cannot be supposed that I 
 have brought forward the subject which I am about to 
 open in a spirit of hostility or censure towards the 
 Commissioners, with whom, on the contrary, I am pre- 
 pared to go hand in hand to further the Reform of the 
 Law : my object being simply to take up a part of the 
 question which they have left untouched. If I saw 
 any prospect of the Commissioners directing their 
 labours to this part of the subject within any reason- 
 able time, I should be disposed to leave it entirely 
 untouched ; or if I thought the matter intimately and 
 inseparably connected with the residue of the subject 
 the matter of their present and unfinished inquiries 
 I should then think, that for the general convenience, 
 and in order to avoid the necessity of a double discus- 
 sion, it would be better to postpone my motion. But 
 I find, after the best consideration, that neither is there 
 a prospect, within a reasonable time, of the Commis- 
 sioners being able to turn their attention to that part 
 of the question which I have in view, nor is it so mixed 
 up with what is already before them, that I ought to 
 decline directing the attention of the House to the 
 subject. 
 
 If, Sir, it were asserted by some traveller, that he 
 had visited a country in which a man, to recover a debt 
 of 6 or 7, must begin by expending GO or 70,
 
 492 LAW REFORM. 
 
 where, at the outset, to use a common expression, he 
 had to run the risk of throwing so much good money 
 after bad, and to pay almost as much even if he suc- 
 ceeded, it would at once be said, that whatever other 
 advantages that country enjoyed, at least it was not 
 fortunate in its system of law. But if it were further 
 related, that in addition to spending 60 or 70, a man 
 must endure great difficulties, anxiety, and vexation, 
 infinite bandying to and fro, and moving about from 
 province to province, and from court to court, before 
 he could obtain judgment, then our envy of the coun- 
 try where such administration of the law and legal 
 institutions existed, would be still further diminished. 
 If to this information, it were added, that in the same 
 country, after having spent 60 or 70, the adversary 
 of the creditor had the power of keeping all his pro- 
 perty out of his way, so that after all the suitor's ex- 
 pense, all his delay, and all his anxiety, it must still 
 be doubtful whether he could obtain a single farthing 
 of his debt ; if, furthermore, it were stated, that in the 
 same country, although the debtor were solvent and 
 willing to pay what the law required at his hands, the 
 creditor would receive, it is true, his original claim of 
 6 or 7, but not the whole 60 or ?0 which he had 
 expended in costs to recover it, by about 20, so that 
 on the balance he would be some 13 or 14 out of 
 pocket by success, over and above the amount of the 
 debt which he recovered, after being exposed to a 
 variety of needless plagues, beside the unavoidable 
 annoyance of these proceedings ; if we were told 
 of such a case, would not the natural inquiry be, 
 " Whether it was possible that such a country ex- 
 isted ?" Sir, the individual to whom this strange 
 information was given, if he supposed it possible 
 that such a country existed, would at least pro- 
 nounce it to be one of the most barbarous and un-
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 403 
 
 enlightened in the world. That it must be a poor 
 country, he would think quite obvious and equally 
 obvious that it must be of no commercial power of 
 no extent of capital of no density of population, 
 because those circumstances most necessarily produce 
 from hour to hour transactions involving important 
 and valuable interests. Nevertheless, I need not 
 remind the House, for every man who hears me 
 must be aware (many are aware to their cost) of the 
 fact that such a country, so unfortunately circum- 
 stanced is no other than that in which I now speak 
 England. Then arises the question, how is this admit- 
 ted evil to be remedied ? and in order to know how the 
 remedy may be applied, the first point is to ascertain 
 whence proceeds the evil? To give examples of the evil, 
 and its origin, may be the best mode of proceeding. 
 
 I am thus entering at once into the middle of 
 my subject, and I am persuaded that such is the 
 most convenient and expedient course, because it 
 enables me at once to see and grapple with the real 
 difficulties of the inquiry, to which, far be it from me 
 for one moment to shut my eyes. That part of the 
 mischief which can be got rid of, I call upon you to 
 remove. I formerly took the opportunity of stating a 
 kind of experiment I made at one of the Lancaster 
 assizes, when my honourable and learned friend,* was 
 present. I requested the prothonotary to furnish me 
 with a list of all the verdicts recorded : they were fifty 
 in number, during that assize, and the average amount 
 of those verdicts I found to be for sums under fourteen 
 pounds thirteen pounds odd shillings each. I do not 
 mean to represent that there were not three or four 
 actions in which the damages were nominal ; some of 
 them actions of ejectment, and other suits to decide 
 rights ; but the bulk of the verdicts were on actions of 
 
 * Sir James Scarlett.
 
 4<M LAW REFORM. 
 
 debt, or in the nature of debt, and the average was 
 less than the sum for which, by law, a creditor may 
 hold his debtor to bail. I am far from saying that 
 such is the general result of actions, either at the 
 assizes or in London ; but still it is not much out of 
 the general course. Taking the average of the five 
 years ending in 1827, the number of actions brought 
 in all the Courts of Westminster was something under 
 80,000. I believe that the precise amount was 79,000. 
 The number of these actions that were brought to 
 trial amounted to little more than 7000, being one 
 case brought to trial only out of eleven actions com- 
 menced. No doubt many of those actions were not 
 proceeded, with on account of the heavy costs, delay, 
 and vexation that must be incurred in doing so. 
 But, passing by that topic for the present, (having 
 stated the fact with a different view,) if we would 
 form some estimate of the kind of sums for the recovery 
 of which the generality of actions are brought, we are 
 enabled by some documents that have been laid upon 
 the table, to approximate to a conclusion on the sub- 
 ject. This I shall endeavour to do without going too 
 minutely into details. 
 
 In 1827 there was a return of the number of affida- 
 vits of debt in the King's Bench and Common Pleas 
 for two years and a-half. During that period the 
 number of affidavits for sums above 10 was 93,000 
 odd hundreds, but in round numbers we will call it 
 93,000. Of them, of course, a great number were the 
 foundations of the 79,000 actions before spoken of; 
 for an affidavit of debt, as everybody knows, is the 
 earliest proceeding in the commencement of an action. 
 Let us see, then, in what proportion the affidavits were 
 for small sums, moderate sums, and large sums: 
 29,800 were for sums between 10 and 20, and no 
 more ; 34,200 were for sums between 20 and 50, 
 making together 64,000 out of 93,000 for sums not
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 49.> 
 
 exceeding 50. For sums not exceeding 100, and. 
 of course including the 64,000, the number of actions 
 was no less than 78,000 odd hundreds. Thus the 
 House will observe, that of the whole number of 
 93,000 affidavits, there were no less than one-third 
 for sums not exceeding 20 ; no less than two- 
 thirds for sums not exceeding 50 ; and again, that 
 that there were no less than five-sixths for sums not 
 exceeding 100. The House will pardon me for not 
 going more into details what I have stated is the result 
 of recollection, but I think I may pledge myself for 
 its accuracy, and it will be perceived at once that it 
 leads to a most important practical conclusion that 
 the vast bulk of the litigation of the country resolves 
 itself, as far as actions of debt and in the nature of 
 debt go, into actions where the sum in dispute is not 
 more than 100. 
 
 I now beg to draw the notice of the house with 
 greater particularity to the costs of these proceedings, 
 and what a creditor is exposed to who undertakes to 
 prosecute an action. I have hitherto dealt only in 
 general descriptions of his expenses and sufferings. 
 In their first report, towards the close of their Appen- 
 dix, the Commissioners have inserted some valuable 
 tables of costs, and to three or four of them, applicable 
 to actions in the Court of King's Bench, I beg leave 
 to request especial attention. First, I should state, 
 that these are real bills of costs ; and next, that they 
 are reduced to the very lowest scale, the words of the 
 Commissioners being, " they are framed on the lowest 
 possible scale of expenditure." One of these bills is 
 in an action that was tried in London by parties resid- 
 ing in the county of Lancaster. The particulars of the 
 bill itself show, that not only was it framed on the 
 lowest possible scale, but also that neither the length 
 of the proceedings, nor any other incident, had tended
 
 496 LAW REFORM. 
 
 to increase the expense. There was nothing out of 
 the ordinary course ; in fact, the circumstances were 
 the most favourable that could exist, under the pre- 
 sent system, for cheap and expeditious justice. The 
 costs, up to the verdict, amounted to 86, and, in- 
 cluding some further proceedings (it being a special 
 case) necessary to be had before the verdict could be 
 rendered available, the expense was 110. Out of 
 that is to be deducted for delay, only 10 odd shil- 
 lings. There w r as the delay of a term in taking the 
 argument in the second stage of the proceeding, and 
 the delay of one sittings in bringing the cause to trial. 
 On these accounts, from the sum of 86 costs, there 
 is to be deducted 6; and 10 from the entire 
 amount of 110. I will suppose the fact to be, how- 
 ever, that there was no delay in the administration of 
 the law, that all the recommendations of the Com- 
 missioners for preventing it had been carried into 
 effect that we had derived all the good from them 
 which might be anticipated ; I will assume that, under 
 the new system of law, the expected saving of time 
 and expense has been brought about ; and what is the 
 consequence as respects this case ? Why, that we 
 shall have to deduct 6 from the expense of the first 
 stage, and 4 from the expense of the second, leaving 
 80 as the expense of the verdict, and 100 as th< 
 indispensable costs of the entire case. I admit that 
 considerable portion of the expense here was owin^ 
 to the attendance of witnesses. I do not merely meai 
 to say I admit, but I assert and maintain this ; it is 
 one of the principal grounds of the proposition whicl 
 I intend to submit to the House. It is true, this cause 
 was brought from the county of Lancaster to Londoi 
 to be tried ; but if tried in Lancaster, there woul< 
 have been the very same expense, according to all ordi- 
 nary calculation of chances. The witnesses in this case
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 407 
 
 were, an architect, master carpenter, and labourers ; 
 and, in taxing costs, two guineas si-day arc allowed for 
 an architect, or surgeon, physician, or any person of 
 skill and science. Fifteen shillings a-day arc allowed 
 for a master carpenter, and five shillings a-day for a 
 labourer ; to which arc to be added an allowance for 
 mileage, and the maintenance of the witnesses on the 
 road, which, I perceive, is at the rate of eight pence 
 per mile. Then, as to delay, let me remark, that the 
 delay in trying a cause at the assizes is often much 
 greater than in trying a cause in London ; and there 
 can be no manner of doubt that this very circumstance 
 was one of the causes operating upon the plaintiff in 
 inducing him to prefer London to the country, in this 
 case. Either he got the cause tried early in London, 
 or by making the case a special jury case, he had to 
 keep his attorney and witnesses only one day, or at 
 most, two days in town ; while, at York or Lancaster, 
 they might be detained for four, five, six aye, and I 
 have known it to fall out, for ten, twelve, or fourteen 
 days, before the trial was brought on. Attorneys 
 are allowed two guineas a-day, if they have only one 
 cause at the assizes, and one guinea a-day for each 
 case, if they have several : and a plaintiff is not answer- 
 able, if it should happen that his attorney has only one 
 cause ; all his witnesses are to be paid, not only going 
 and returning, but while they are in the assize town, 
 at least at the rate already mentioned ; and as long- 
 as the present system continues, I look upon this as 
 essential to and inseparable from it it may be as 
 necessary a part of the expenditure as the retaining 
 of counsel or the employment of an attorney ; indeed, 
 I am not sure if it be not even more necessary. Now, 
 how much must be added to this, on account of the 
 difference between the costs incurred and the costs 
 taxed? This is to say, after obtaining the cos.ts 
 
 VOL II. 2 I
 
 498 LAW REFORM. 
 
 recovered from an adversary as the consequence of the 
 verdict, how much is a plaintiff out of pocket ? 
 
 It may be remembered that I formerly produced to 
 the House four bills of costs, all from the offices of most 
 respectable attorneys ; in one of 400, about 200 
 (or half) was deducted on taxation ; so that the client 
 who had obtained judgment was 200 out of pocket, 
 unless the debt which he recovered was greater than 
 that sum. Another was a bill from which one-third 
 had been taxed off: 70 was deducted out of 210. 
 In a third case, which was the lowest of the whole, 
 because it was an undefended cause, 15 out of 60, 
 or one-fourth, was taxed off. The successful suitor 
 received 15 less than he had expended. This was 
 a 50 cause ; and if the plaintiffs adversary had had a 
 long purse, and a litigious temper, he could, if he chose, 
 have put his creditor to an expense of 80 before the 
 latter got a verdict, or to 100 costs before final 
 judgment. In point of fact, I might take it higher : 
 the plaintiff might have had to pay 120 before he 
 obtained a verdict, and 150 before judgment. He 
 would be allowed out of this 150 only 100 : 
 50 being struck off for extra costs ; of course he 
 would also be allowed his debt of 50, making pre- 
 cisely the amount expended 150 ; and so the man is 
 a gainer in money of not one farthing (saying nothing 
 about his debt,) and has been exposed to all the delay, 
 harassing vexation, embarrassment, and anxiety, of a 
 year and a half or two years' legal proceedings, together 
 with the risk of losing his suit, and having to pay 100 
 instead of receiving any thing. I say, Sir, in addition 
 to that, he would have been exposed to all the vexa- 
 tion of delay, and to the distress of uncertainty ; and 
 if he be a man who, for the first time, has brought an 
 action into a court of justice, it is most likely to be his 
 last experiment of the kind. I am here taking an
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 499 
 
 instance most favourable to the other side of the ques- 
 tion, and it is needless to say that it is anything 
 rather than an average case ; in general, those who 
 succeed have to pay more than they receive, and are 
 often considerably out of pocket. What is the prac- 
 tical result ? Simply this that any man acquainted 
 with the proceedings of courts of justice, and exercis- 
 ing a sound discretion upon the mere pecuniary ques- 
 tion, would never think of suing for a debt of less than 
 20 or 30. I should rather say, hardly for a sum 
 under 40 or 50. Upon the same principle, a man 
 would hardly think of resisting an unjust claim for such 
 an amount, even if he had a receipt on a stamp in his 
 pocket. He would pay the demand rather than enter 
 a court of justice, and endure the annoyance and ex- 
 pense of a trial, with a certainty of being out of pocket 
 if he gained the cause, and a chance of being still 
 more out of pocket if he failed. 
 
 I had very lately occasion to speak with an attor- 
 ney of extensive practice, residing only twenty-two 
 miles from an assize-town, upon this point, and he said, 
 that if he himself were a party in a cause, he should 
 never think of going into court there for a less sum 
 than .40 or 50. This was the solicitor's private 
 opinion about the matter ; but whether he recom- 
 mended a similar course to his clients, I do not under- 
 take to say. To be sure a man would, in many cases, 
 be justified in bringing actions for small sums, or 
 resisting flagrant and extortionate demands, on other 
 grounds than those of mere pecuniary interest ; but 
 with reference to his pecuniary interest alone, and if 
 he merely consulted that, there would be every in- 
 ducement not to sue. I am well aware that it is not 
 only always easier to point out defects than to apply 
 remedies ; but also, that he who propounds a cure for 
 mischief of the widest extent, the most intolerable,
 
 500 LAW REFORM. 
 
 and recognised as such by the unanimous admission 
 of all persons of all ranks, who have observed others 
 suffering from its effects, or experienced it themselves, 
 somewhat exposes himself, and gives an opponent a 
 decided advantage ; he is always more or less in the 
 predicament of an inventor; he always seems to be a 
 person who sets his wits above other men, and affects 
 to be wiser than those who have gone before him ; and 
 I therefore unfeignedly avow, that I feel much distrust 
 of myself, in bringing forward that which appears to 
 me a remedy. In doing so, it is necessary to examine 
 into the causes of the evil. Here I may say, I am 
 perfectly sensible that something will be done when 
 the recommendations of the Commissioners are carried 
 into effect ; I know, and I rejoice to know, that some 
 of the great evils will be removed, as the result of 
 their inquiries ; but I am equally certain that still 
 much will remain to be done, and I trust the kind of 
 remedy I propose will be one which, while it carries 
 further the design of the Commissioners themselves, 
 will be found most accurately and nicely to chime in 
 and harmonize with, instead of being repugnant to, 
 their principles. 
 
 I have stated the principal causes of the evils we 
 all see and suffer; and I shall by-and-by proceed 
 to the remedy. The great evil arises out of the dis- 
 tance to which parties are necessarily dragged, in 
 order to obtain a decision upon their rights. For 
 many, many ages it has been the system of English 
 jurisprudence, that justice should originate and be 
 to a great extent administered in the centre of the 
 kingdom, or what is politically, though not geographi- 
 cally, its centre. The metropolis has been made as it 
 were the great mart of justice, from whence all pro- 
 cesses issue, and to which all processes are returned. 
 It has been fixed, that all litigants should more or less
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 501 
 
 resort to London, to derive from it the remedies which 
 they seek at the hands of the law. This is not of it- 
 self the cause of the expense of legal proceedings, 
 because the mere difference between sending to Lon- 
 don from Lancashire or Yorkshire for a writ, and send- 
 ing for it to Lancaster or York, is not alone worth 
 being considered. But out of that arises another part 
 of the system to which this observation does not apply. 
 The Judges come from the metropolis, as well as the 
 writs and legal processes which give rise to their juris- 
 diction, and the country litigant must wait till the 
 Judge visits his county, which is once in each half 
 year. You must wait, but that is not all. In order 
 to have your cause tried, you must go perhaps to the 
 remote corner of the county to the assize town ; there 
 you must consult your law advisers ; thither you must 
 send your agent and witnesses ; they must be kept 
 there perhaps during the whole assizes ; and it is often 
 a race between the respective agents as to who shall 
 enter his cause latest, in order that he may have the 
 longest bill. Respectable witnesses must be paid for 
 loss of time and skill witnesses of inferior condition 
 must be better paid, and at a higher rate than their 
 time is worth ; common day-labourers receiving 5s. a- 
 day. Then there is the expense of entertaining the 
 witnesses, and in this respect there is frequently a 
 good deal of competition between the agents of oppo- 
 site parties, it being pretty well understood, that the 
 party who pays witnesses shabbily is sure to pay for it, 
 in the course of the assizes, by the conduct of some of 
 them. All this is essential to, and inseparable from, 
 the scheme of requiring parties to go twice a-year to 
 the assize-town, and there have the causes tried. 
 Then comes another stage of the proceeding equally 
 attended with heavy costs ; if any point be reserved 
 on an appeal made from the decision, it must be dis-
 
 502 LAW REFORM. 
 
 cussed in London, and to London the agents must be 
 sent with great delay, and a great and unnecessary 
 expense. What is the obvious remedy? To that I 
 shall come presently ; but, in doing so, as I have be- 
 fore stated, I wish to steer clear, as far as possible, of 
 the difficulties and objections to which the prescribing 
 of remedies is liable. 
 
 In the propositions of the Law Commissioners some 
 slight remedies may be found for the evil of which I 
 complain. For instance, the proposed alterations in 
 the mode of issuing processes will effect a diminution 
 of expense : they will save a few shillings out of the 
 80. Another, which tended to lessen the arrears of 
 the Court, would, of course, save time, and thus cur- 
 tail the expense arising from delay ; it would cut off 
 10 from the larger, and 6 from the smaller bill. 
 Upon these follow many other excellent propositions 
 for the despatch of business, for effecting improve- 
 ments in the administration of justice, for removing 
 uncertainty, and for the regulation of costs. I allude, 
 in particular, to that proposition which regards the 
 proof of written documents. There is not, however, 
 a single document in the case to which I have alluded ; 
 and this proposition, therefore, does not bear upon my 
 argument; so that, if it should prove in practice as 
 successful as I unfeignedly hope and believe it will, 
 still it would not cut off one farthing from the expense 
 which I pointed out as being so great an evil. In 
 like manner, the form and substance of pleadings will 
 be materially improved by the propositions of the 
 Commissioners. This part of the report contains 
 some of the happiest thoughts, some of the most in- 
 genious, and, allow me to call them also, some of the 
 most profound suggestions for the improvement and 
 advancement of the science of pleading, which are 
 well worthy the attention of every man, and of every
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 503 
 
 lawyer, as well as of those whose skill and leurniiiff are 
 
 O 
 
 chiefly employed upon subjects connected with that 
 science. These propositions, however, important and 
 valuable as they are, do not tend to remedy the abuse 
 of which I complain, and which arises, first, from the 
 distance of the places at which causes are tried ; and 
 next, from the fact of their being heard at London 
 in the last resort. 
 
 I trust the House will pardon me if I remind them 
 that they have now seen how the principal mischief 
 and the chief cause of complaint relates to actions 
 under a certain amount. I have shewn that it 
 relates to actions which are confined to a moderate 
 amount. If, however, the amount were large instead 
 of small, that would be no reason why the complaint 
 should not cease. The abuse would still call for 
 remedy ; but the crying evil of which I am now speak- 
 ing attaches to actions for from 20 to 100. Now I 
 would fain call the attention of the House to the 
 old scheme of administering justice, which formerly 
 prevailed in this country, with respect to such actions, 
 and which Avas evidently intended to avoid expensive 
 litigation. Let me not be misunderstood. I am too 
 fully sensible of the great and manifest advantages 
 which result from that arrangement which makes 
 the capital the seat of justice, to attempt to alter 
 it, even if I supposed I could succeed in the attempt. 
 With this explanation, let me observe that, long ante- 
 cedent to our jurisprudence assuming its present form, 
 there existed a more convenient and less expensive 
 mode of trial, in the County Courts. The origin of these 
 Courts is lost in remote antiquity, and learned men 
 have differed with respect to the constitution and 
 jurisdiction of them ; but all agree upon one point 
 namely, that in the time of the Saxons they were the 
 great tribunals of the country, and that they possessed
 
 504 LAW REFORM. 
 
 a most extensive jurisdiction. My opinion I know 
 that in holding it I differ from many learned men my 
 very humble opinion is, that the County Court possessed 
 originally a criminal as well as a civil jurisdiction. Be 
 that, however, as it may, it is certain that, in the Saxon 
 times, the County Court had jurisdiction in matters as 
 well ecclesiastical as civil. We find a law in the 
 time of Edgar or Canute, Let the bishop and the earl 
 meet the county, the one to state the law of God, and 
 the other the law of the land ; or, as the phrase is, the 
 one to teach the people the law of God, the other the 
 law of the land. 
 
 This practice continued down to the time of the 
 Conquest ; but soon after that event, the ecclesiastical 
 part of the jurisdiction of the County Court was sepa- 
 rated from the civil. Before that, however, the prin- 
 ciple of the law was, that a man should in the first 
 instance, seek justice at home ; and that he should not 
 seek it from the King, until his attempts to obtain it 
 from the sheriff in the County Court had failed. Sir 
 Harry Spelman, commenting upon this law, observes, 
 that the reason of it was, that the suitors should not 
 be obliged to go far off to obtain justice. In the sixth 
 year after the Conquest, the sixth of William I., there 
 was a celebrated cause tried in the county of Kent, in 
 which the archbishop, three bishops, and the earl pre- 
 sided ; Lanfranc was the archbishop, and one of the 
 parties in the suit was Odo, half-brother to the King. 
 This meeting of the county lasted somewhat longer than 
 some recent meetings in the same place, for it lasted 
 three days, and the court decided upon the claim to 
 manors of very considerable value, which decision was 
 afterwards confirmed in Parliament. In process of time 
 the Sheriff's Court appears to have fallen into dis- 
 repute, and, perhaps, an institution well adapted to 
 a simple state of society, was not found to answer
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 50.5 
 
 the purposes of a more improved state. As early 
 as the sixth year of Edward L, it was provided by 
 the Statute of Gloucester, that the County Court 
 should have exclusive jurisdiction in pleas of debt and 
 damages under the value of 40s. That Statute only 
 provided that the jurisdiction of these courts should 
 be exclusive in sucli pleas; it did not confine their 
 jurisdiction to such pleas. Probably, however, in the 
 course of a century after, 40s. became the maximum. 
 Certainly this happened not very long afterwards. 
 
 Such, then, was, at that period, the constitution of 
 the County Courts in England : and now, I would fain, 
 with the permission of the House, call their attention 
 to the constitution of the County Courts of the sister 
 kingdom Scotland ; for when we are trying to apply 
 a remedy, it is right, before we adopt any change, to 
 see if, among many remedies, there is one which has 
 been adopted elsewhere; and if so, to inquire how it has 
 been found to work there. I need not remind, perhaps, 
 any one, but certainly I need remind no lawyer that 
 however widely the general jurisprudence and practice 
 of the two countries may at this moment differ, the 
 early laws of the two were very much alike ; so alike, 
 indeed, that while in England it is contended that 
 the book called Rec/iam Majestatem was copied from 
 GlanviPs book on the laws of this country so, on the 
 other hand, it has been asserted in Scotland, that the 
 Regiam Majestatem was the original of Glanvil's work. 
 This dispute proves at least the remarkable similarity 
 which subsisted between the early laws of the two 
 countries. The same similarity existed also in the 
 administration of justice ; and, while no one can 
 doubt that many most valuable improvements have 
 been effected in this country, of which the benefits 
 have not been shared by Scotland, still, with all my 
 prejudices in favour of the English system, I cannot
 
 506 LAW REFORM. 
 
 help regretting that Scotland has retained some parts 
 of the ancient system which was originally common to 
 both, but which have been laid aside in England. In both 
 countries the constitution of the County Court was ori- 
 ginally the same; in both the jurisdiction was unlimited. 
 The original County Court was that at which the 
 bishop and earl or alderman, with the viscount or 
 sheriff, presided. In Scotland the Sheriff's Court 
 took cognizance of the four pleas of the Crown, 
 with the permission of the Justiciary, and in all civil 
 suits, the County Court was of unlimited jurisdic- 
 tion. The appointment to the office of Sheriff soon 
 took a different turn ; originally elective, it was 
 made an appointment for years, and afterwards for 
 life ; it then came in Scotland to be conferred in 
 fee. This led to what is called, in Scotland, " herit- 
 able jurisdiction," the earl became hereditary, and 
 the viscount or sheriff a privileged individual, well 
 known to the laws of that country. It was not very 
 long ago that, at the abolition of these heritable juris- 
 dictions, the County Court was put upon its present 
 advantageous footing. The number of forfeitures in 
 the rebellions of 1715 and 1 745 vested many of those 
 jurisdictions in the Crown. There are none of the 
 hereditary jurisdictions not open to serious objection, 
 except perhaps the hereditary jurisdiction vested in the 
 Peers of this realm of England, to which no objec- 
 tions of that nature apply. In the year 1746, an Act 
 was passed abolishing all the hereditary jurisdictions, 
 giving compensation to some of the parties, and vest- 
 ing all the shrievalties in the Crown ; and the first step 
 taken thereupon was to appoint sheriffs depute for life 
 in all the counties. The persons appointed to that office 
 are for the most part gentlemen of some professional 
 standing at the Bar, and the courts over which they 
 preside take cognizance of all matters, to which a
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 507 
 
 very extensive civil jurisdiction can be applied. Those 
 officers are paid a moderate, reasonable salary, and 
 their appointment is attended with the best effects to 
 the administration of justice in Scotland. I should be 
 happy to Avitness a still farther improvement ; I should 
 be glad to see a sheriff depute residing- within his 
 county, holding his court himself, and not leaving it 
 to be held by his substitute ; and I think the system, 
 in its main principle, and thus improved, could be in- 
 troduced into this country with the highest advantage. 
 Those courts are found to have worked well in Scot- 
 land, and to afford cheap and convenient justice. The 
 Sheriff's Court there is competent to entertain nearly 
 all ordinary causes of actions all actions of debt to any 
 amount actions of damages, for defamation, assault, 
 false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, criminal 
 conversation, trespass, trover, seduction, and almost 
 all actions of tort. Now, let us look to the working of 
 this system upon an average of three years the 
 years 1821, 1822, and 1823, there were 22,000 
 some odd hundred causes tried in the Sheriffs' Courts 
 in Scotland, in each year, for the amount of 5 
 and upwards this was of course exclusive of such 
 matters as were tried before Justices of the Peace. 
 Take the proportion between England and Scotland, 
 assuming that the law were the same here, and we 
 might say that we should have six times as many in 
 England that is to say 130,000. That amounts to 
 many more than the number of actions brought in 
 England to a vast many more than the number 
 tried, for I have shewn that not more than 7000 
 out of the 80,000 commenced, have been brought 
 to trial. Of these 22,000 in Scotland, somewhere 
 about 12,000 were disposed of in the absence of the 
 defendant, being what we should call in England 
 undefended causes; and somewhere about 10,000 were
 
 508 LAW REFORM. 
 
 disposed of in fwo contentioso. From the decision of 
 these courts there is an appeal to the Court of Ses- 
 sion ; but the number of appeals is small. It is one 
 in 117 of the actions brought : one in 53 of the 
 actions brought to trial. The House will see then, 
 how much satisfaction this system has given in Scot- 
 land ; and from that I think I may draw the conclu- 
 sion, not a fanciful one, that the only cases in which 
 the decisions of the County Courts are not allowed to 
 be final, are actions of importance actions in which 
 difficult questions of law are raised, or actions in which 
 there is involved sufficient interest to tempt the un- 
 successful party to appeal. Taking the number of 
 cases, and the value of the property involved in them, 
 brought in the County Court of Lanark, which includes 
 Glasgow, it will be found that 500,000 worth of 
 property is adjudicated upon yearly by that court. 
 Taking the same proportion for England, and multiply- 
 ing it by six, we shall have an amount of 3,000,000 
 sterling, which would be disposed of yearly, if the 
 same system prevailed here. 
 
 And now, have we not, let us ask, something to 
 learn from this statement ? May we not put to our- 
 selves the question, " Can we not amend oiiv own sys- 
 tem ?" I do not say, do this because it has been tried 
 and found to answer in Scotland ; I do not ask you to 
 import the law of Scotland into England. No ; I ask 
 you only to revert to your own ancient laws to those 
 laws which were established in England before they 
 became the laws of Scotland. If the Scotch continue 
 those laws and find them to answer, all that I wish to 
 argue from this fact is, not that for this reason the 
 English should re-adopt them, but only that it might 
 be advisable to consider whether to a mischief, which 
 it is admitted does exist, thi$ remedy is not the best 
 we could apply.
 
 LOCAL COURTS. .309 
 
 And here, if the House will permit me, I should 
 wish to state what is the expense of proceedings in 
 the County Courts of Scotland. I have examined 
 this matter, and found that, where the sum in ques- 
 tion amounts to 12, and where there is no litiga- 
 tion, where, as we should say, the cause was unde- 
 fended, the expense is 1 Os. ; where the sum amounts 
 to 25, the expense is 15s. ; where the sum amounts 
 to 50, the expense is 15s.; and where the sum 
 is as high as 100, the expense is not more than 
 20s. This is in cases in which there is no litigation, 
 and where decrees are pronounced in the absence of 
 the defendant. Where the cause is defended and the 
 matter litigated, if the sum in dispute amounts to 
 12, the expense is 5, and the party who is suc- 
 cessful is only 5s. out of pocket. If the sum in dis- 
 pute amounts to 25 or 50, the expense is greater; 
 but still the successful party is only 1 Os. out of pocket ; 
 and where the sum amounts to 100, the costs would 
 amount only to 13, and on taxation they would not 
 be reduced below 12. 
 
 Now, I cannot help envying Scotland this cheap 
 justice; for cheap I must call it, when a man can 
 recover 100 for an outlay of 13 instead of 160, 
 which would be the cost of proceedings in England ; 
 when, moreover, this man would pocket the whole of the 
 100 except 20s., instead of throwing away one half of 
 the 100, as a man must here, even though he should 
 obtain a verdict and a judgment in his favour. With 
 all my partiality, and with all my prejudices in favour 
 of the English system, I cannot help envying Scotland 
 this part of her law. Is it, then, possible so to extend 
 the jurisdiction, so to amend the constitution of the 
 County Courts of England, as to make them capable of 
 bestowing the same advantages ? Is not this a question 
 worthy of our most serious consideration ? I feel that I
 
 510 LAW REFORM. 
 
 am taking up too much time of the House, and yet the 
 importance of the subject leads me still further into 
 detail. It is the greatest possible error to imagine 
 that inferior suitors ought to have inferior Judges ; 
 that when questions are to be decided respecting per- 
 sons of superior rank, wealth, and intelligence, men 
 of superior intellect and station should be provided 
 for that purpose; that when a matter of 100 or up- 
 wards is to be decided, a high and distinguished Judge 
 should be employed for the purpose ; but that in a 
 matter only involving two, three, five, or six pounds, 
 any one \vill do for a Judge, a Sheriff, or a Sheriff's 
 Assessor, or whatever name he may bear that any one 
 will answer to preside in a court for the decision of 
 such petty concerns, whether he be a man qualified or 
 unqualified, a man of sense or a man of no sense ; for 
 the poor man, it seems to be the opinion, that it does 
 not signify what sort of judicature he has to decide 
 his causes. To my mind, no notions appear to be 
 more crude than these. Forty shillings may be of 
 more importance to the poor man than the sum for 
 which the great man litigates ; the poor man contests 
 not only for the sake of the sum at issue, but that he 
 may not be subject to wrong and oppression ; and 
 he feels that oppression the more grievous and in- 
 tolerable, seeing that it is an evil reserved for the 
 class to which he himself belongs. It is not always 
 for the sum disputed that he goes to law ; he proceeds 
 in resistance of wrong and oppression, and he sues as 
 readily for 2s. as for 40s. In this frame of mind, then, 
 he goes away from court as much dissatisfied as the 
 wealthier suitor who has lost 1000; and, give me 
 leave to say, he has a right to be dissatisfied, and his 
 is a dissatisfaction which will not be appeased other- 
 wise than by a full supply of that for which he has 
 gone before his judge justice. I know these Judges
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 511 
 
 in the Courts of Requests do good I say they do good 
 by comparison better something of justice than no- 
 thing it may be slovenly justice, but so precious a 
 thing is justice, that I should rather have even slovenly 
 justice than the absolute, peremptory, and inflexible 
 denial of all justice. It happens that tradesmen, who 
 know nothing of law, and who may not have much 
 occupation in their own business, preside in these 
 Courts of Requests, and administer justice as well as 
 might be expected. I say it is better to have these 
 than to have none. There are 240 of those courts, 
 with jurisdiction of from 40s. to 5 ; but that is not 
 enough ; the system of cheap justice ought to be more 
 widely extended. 
 
 I shall now advert to a prevailing error that opi- 
 nion which goes to recommend the use of a local 
 appellate jurisdiction. I think it open to this, among 
 other objections that it would lead to one system 
 of law for one district, and a different system for 
 another. I may here step aside to observe, that I wish 
 the appellate jurisdiction received more attention in 
 the quarter which ought to attend to it, than I find it 
 does ; and while upon this subject, I cannot help ex- 
 pressing a desire, with reference to Colonial appeals, 
 that there should be upon the Privy Council some 
 Judges, who, by their knowledge of, and residence in, 
 the Colonies, may have acquired some acquaintance 
 with their manners and habits, as well as their laws 
 and regulations, instead of that body, as it now does, 
 knowing nothing of the feelings of the people whence 
 those appeals come. I have thrown out, in passing, these 
 few observations on the nature of the appellate juris- 
 diction, and the evils which in it seem to me to require 
 remedy, although that branch of the administration of 
 justice is not immediately connected with the question
 
 512 LAW REFORM. 
 
 before me.* While, however, I am on that part of 
 the subject, I may as well say a few words on the 
 nature of the appellate jurisdiction, as it operates on 
 our brethren of Scotland, who have, in my opinion, 
 very great reason to complain of the practice which 
 sends them, in all cases of the last resort, to the House 
 of Lords in this country. I do think that the anomaly 
 which this practice presents in the case of Scotland 
 an anomaly which has existed ever since the Union 
 affords them very reasonable ground of complaint; 
 and the patience with which they have borne the evil, 
 has always appeared to me quite unaccountable. Our 
 neighbours seem to be well aware of the nature of 
 their rights, and to be by no means unwilling to enter 
 into litigation, as, indeed, all persons have a right, 
 nay a duty, to do, who feel that they are wronged ; 
 and I confess, I can explain their patient endurance 
 of the evil I have described, and which must be so 
 great an obstacle to their attaining cheap and sub- 
 stantial justice, only by supposing it to have been 
 owino- to a concurrence of accidental circumstances. 
 
 o 
 
 In the first place, there were not many appeals imme- 
 diately after the Union ; and in the next place, there 
 happened soon after that time to be a succession of 
 Lord Chancellors in this country, who, to the very 
 highest fame as lawyers at the English Bar who, to 
 a reputation paramount above that of all their con- 
 temporaries, and which at once pointed them out as the 
 most fit for being raised to such an eminence added 
 that other it appears a most essential qualification, 
 a thorough knowledge of the nature and the practice of 
 Scotch appeals, from having been, during many years of 
 their lives, employed in them as advocates. First, there 
 
 * The Judicial Committee Act of 1S33 has now introduced this reform.
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 513 
 
 was Lord Hard wick e, who, in addition to the amplest 
 qualifications for the performance of the duties of Lord 
 Chancellor as an English lawyer, possessed the repu- 
 tation of being well acquainted with the law admin- 
 istered in Scotch appeals. Then there came Lord 
 Mansfield, who, in addition to the greatest name 
 as a lawyer, was himself a Scotchman, and long em- 
 ployed as an advocate in Scotch cases. Then there 
 followed, after the interval of Lords Bathurst and 
 Thurlow, Lord Loughborough, also an eminent Scotch 
 lawyer. To these eminent men succeeded Lord Eldon 
 a man who, beside standing higher in reputation as 
 an English lawyer than any Judge since the time of 
 
 o / v 
 
 Lord Coke himself; who, beside, I say, being mar- 
 vellously and supereminently skilled in every branch 
 of English law, added to his extraordinary acquire- 
 ments, that of being learned in every part of the 
 law of Scotland, having been employed for full 
 fifteen years of his life in almost every appeal which 
 was heard before the House of Lords. It is to a 
 succession of these great men in England, as Lord 
 Chancellors, that we are doubtless to look, when called 
 on to account for the patience with which our brethren 
 of Scotland have hitherto borne the inconvenience of 
 the system of appeals. But if the time should ever 
 come when a person should fill the situation of Judge 
 in the last resort, who, having but a moderate ac- 
 quaintance with English law, gained his first know- 
 ledge of Scotch law from being called upon, by any 
 arrangement that might be made, to decide on the 
 merits of appeals from the decision of the Courts of 
 Scotland, then the anomaly would be seen in its full 
 force, though the means of accounting for it would 
 be gone. I cannot, indeed, avoid let it give offence 
 where it may expressing my opinion on this occa- 
 sion, that the nature of the arrangements, with respect 
 
 VOL. II. 2 K
 
 514 LAW REFORM. 
 
 to the disposal of Scotch appeals, is a subject extremely 
 worthy of the best, the most serious, and the earliest 
 consideration of His Majesty's Government. 
 
 I have been somewhat drawn aside from the ques- 
 tion before me, by the observations I have felt it my 
 duty to make on the nature of the appellate jurisdic- 
 tion ; but having said thus much, I shall now proceed 
 to explain in what manner I propose carrying into 
 execution the principles I have laid down, and to 
 shew how a tribunal may be constituted, through 
 which the people of this country may be able to obtain 
 that most desirable object, Cheap Justice, in the 
 speediest manner, in causes of a moderate amount. 
 What I suggest then, is, that there be appointed in 
 each county or district, as the case may be, a lawyer 
 of a certain number of years' standing, who is to be the 
 Judge in the last instance, in causes under a certain 
 sum, and in the first instance, under certain regula- 
 tions, in causes over that sum. In the first case, I 
 would enable this Judge, in all cases where the 
 sum in litigation is under 10, to call the parties 
 before him to examine the claimant as well as his 
 adversary to dispose of the claim to give judgment 
 to award execution and to specify the time when, 
 and the amounts in which the instalments in further- 
 ance of that execution are to be paid. Above the 
 sum of 10, I would give any party power to go 
 before the same Judge, who should be authorised to 
 call on the adverse party to answer, both having power 
 to employ professional assistance if they should deem 
 it necessary, and to determine the matter in dispute, 
 and examine witnesses if they should think fit. I 
 would limit the jurisdiction of the officer, or Judge 
 as I call him, in this instance, to the sum of 100 
 in point of value ; but I would not limit him with 
 respect to the nature of the causes to be tried for I
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 515 
 
 would give him jurisdiction over all causes except 
 those relating to freehold or copyhold property. I 
 would give him jurisdiction in all matters of torts, as 
 well as of debts ; but I would make his decision in 
 these cases open to appeal, final in all matters under 
 10 open to review in all causes from 10 up to 
 100, and in all cases of tort. 
 
 I now proceed to shew in what way I think this 
 appeal should be managed, and I cannot but think 
 that it would be a great relief to the suitors if it 
 should lie to the Judges on circuit, and not to the 
 superior courts of Westminster-hall. There might, 
 however, be good reasons in some cases for not bring- 
 ing the appeal before a particular Judge going circuit, 
 and I should therefore remedy that inconvenience by 
 allowing the option of an appeal to Westminster-hall, 
 with certain restrictions only as to costs. I would 
 allow, therefore, an appeal either to Westminster-hall 
 or to the Judges on circuit ; but, if the party carried 
 the cause to the more distant and expensive tribunal, 
 I would allow the opposing party double, or, in some 
 cases, perhaps, treble costs. It is hardly necessary 
 to add at least to those professional gentlemen who 
 hear me that by these appeals I mean motions for 
 new trials in all cases where the Judge may have 
 ruled a disputed point of law, or the jury be supposed 
 to have decided contrary to the evidence. In these 
 cases I would allow a motion to be made to the Judge 
 going the ensuing circuit, for a new trial, notice being 
 given to the other side that it is intended to make the 
 motion, in order that he may be present at the assizes, 
 and have counsel ready to argue the case if he thinks 
 fit. I do not mean that this is to be according to the 
 practice usual in the courts of common law, where the 
 party, without notice to the other side, obtains a rule 
 to shew cause, and the matter is afterwards heard
 
 516 LAW REFORM. 
 
 upon that rule being served on the other side ; but I 
 mean it to be according to the long-established prac- 
 tice of the equity courts, where the notice is served 
 before the hearing, and the Judge has an opportunity 
 of knowing the whole merits of the case by having 
 both parties before him. 
 
 I am now giving an outline of the measure which 
 I think necessary to accomplish my object ; but I have 
 not yet mentioned the necessity of having recourse to 
 trial by jury. Far be it from me to say that there 
 are not many cases in which the trial by jury might 
 fairly be dispensed with ; but when in connection with 
 the question of trial by jury, the name of Mr. Jeremy 
 Bentham is forced on my recollection, a man, whose 
 merit as a philosopher, and as a benefactor of man- 
 kind, is admitted by all of that man who is both most 
 distinguished as a lawyer, and foremost amongst the 
 advocates of legal reform whose name will go down 
 to posterity with an honourable remembrance of 
 which few, if any, are more deserving when I men- 
 tion that name, I think, after this humble but sincere 
 tribute to his great and disinterested benevolence, I 
 shall detract but little from it when I state that I do 
 not agree with him in all the reforms which he pro- 
 poses in our law. I differ from him upon some points, 
 only in degree, Mr. Bentham going further than I 
 should be disposed to follow ; and on other points, I 
 differ from him in kind, as when I am not prepared to 
 concur with him in his view of trial by jury. But 
 the necessity of that mode of trial in all cases, I deny 
 with him. It is not from any indifference to the 
 incalculable advantages of this most important in- 
 stitution that I now state my opinion that in many 
 of the actions which would probably be brought 
 in the County Court, I think that mode of trial 
 not applicable, and therefore that it may be dis-
 
 LOCAL COLTxTS. M? 
 
 pensed with to the great advantage of both parties. 
 In cases, indeed, where there is conflicting- testimony 
 in cases where it may be necessary to contrast 
 documentary with oral evidence in cases of that 
 kind I would have a jury, for I know of no mode 
 so perfect, where there is to be a decision on contra- 
 dictory evidence, as that of assembling a number of 
 men I will not say twelve, for there is nothing in 
 the particular number of different feelings and habits 
 of thinking, and let them, after an investigation of 
 the whole case, pronounce upon it by their verdict ; 
 but I would not have that verdict the verdict of the 
 majority, for, paradoxical as it may seem, I would 
 have a forced unanimity am on 2; the iurv. Were it 
 
 / o tf > 
 
 otherwise, there would never be that patient investi- 
 gation which is necessary to come at the truth. There 
 would be cries of " Question," such as are sometimes 
 heard in larger and less judicial assemblies. There 
 is, in short, no more effectual way of coming at the 
 truth than such a trial in such cases. In them, then, 
 I would have the matter decided by the jury. I would 
 also have juries in cases where damages are to be 
 assessed, in cases of tort, seduction, assault, and tres- 
 pass, and even in attacks on property, as well as in 
 personal wrongs ; but there are many cases in which 
 they might well be dispensed with. I repeat, that I 
 state this not from under-valuing, in any degree, the 
 advantages of that great institution ; for I hope the 
 time is not far distant when it will become general 
 throughout every part of the empire. I am aware 
 that it is difficult to classify those cases, in winch the 
 decision should be left to the Judge without the aid 
 of the jury. And this difficulty presents itself, not 
 from not having duly considered the subject, for I 
 have given it long and anxious consideration, but 
 the difficulty is not of a nature to prevent the adoption
 
 518 LAW REFORM. 
 
 of the plan. I would allow the Judge to decide in all 
 cases not exceeding 10, whether or not it ought to 
 be sent to a jury ; and when those improvements shall 
 have been made in pleading, which are recommended 
 by the Common Law Commissioners, when the story 
 of the plaintiff and the answer of the defendant shall 
 be laid before the court in such a manner, as that the 
 Judge can at once comprehend the whole, and when 
 plaintiff and defendant -respectively know what they 
 have to prove and to answer, it will not be difficult 
 for the Judge to say to them, " I think this is a case 
 which I may decide without the assistance of a jury ;" 
 but I would not allow the Judge to be the sole arbiter 
 of the propriety of dispensing with that mode of trial. 
 It should also be left to the consent of both parties 
 to the suit ; and if they agree, then the cause should 
 be decided by the Judge alone. I have stated that I 
 would give the Judge of this court jurisdiction in most 
 kinds of civil actions ; and when it is considered that 
 the present state of the law, and the practice under it, 
 entail an enormous but essential expense, for carrying 
 into effect its administration from distant parts of the 
 country, I contend that it is imperative on Parliament 
 to give such relief as that which I have pointed out. 
 
 Now, with respect to the qualifications of the 
 Judge who should be selected to preside in those 
 County Courts, I think he ought to be of considerable 
 learning and skill, and of some practice of the law ; for 
 without that, one great object of those courts, effec- 
 tual administration of justice, would not be obtained. 
 He ought also to be well paid ; for if the public ex- 
 pects that his whole time should be devoted to his 
 duties, they ought to pay him well for it. I would 
 suggest that he should sit once a month for ten 
 months of the year, and that six of those sittings 
 should be in the chief town of the county, and that
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 51.9 
 
 the four other sitting's should be in such towns in 
 distant parts of the county as would bring the ad- 
 ministration of justice home to every man ; and thus, 
 twice in the year at least, a suitor in any part of the 
 county would have an opportunity of having his claim 
 tried without being put to the trouble of going to any 
 inconvenient distance from his home. The advantage 
 of a court in many things similar to that which I pro- 
 pose to establish, has been long felt in Ireland, where 
 a Judge, called "the Assistant Barrister," goes through 
 the county at stated periods of the year, holding 
 sessions for the trial of actions for small sums, but 
 excluding all trials connected with the freehold. The 
 Assistant Barrister has also the power of deciding 
 certain cases without the aid of a jury ; but in those 
 cases where he thinks juries necessary, they are sum- 
 moned, and the case disposed of with their assistance. 
 This court was instituted in 1796', and has since been 
 found of great convenience to the public in disposing 
 of small causes, which would otherwise have to be 
 sent, at much greater expense to the parties, for the 
 decision of the superior courts. 
 
 I have said that there should be a power of moving 
 for a New Trial, in certain cases which may have been 
 tried before this new Court, and that the motion might 
 be made before the Judge of Assize. It would, in 
 that case, be necessary for the new Judge to attend 
 the Assizes, and be named in the Commission. He 
 should sit on the Bench, and, as occasion required, 
 should read his notes of the case in which the New 
 Trial was sought ; but he should have no voice in the 
 decision. The Judge of Assize alone should decide 
 on the question. Reason and experience have shown 
 to those who are conversant with the practice of our 
 Courts, the very great inconvenience of allowing 
 the Judge, from whose opinion an appeal is made,
 
 520 LAW REFORM. 
 
 to have a voice in the decision on that appeal. It 
 often happens, that he gives a tone to the feeling of 
 the Court in favour of the opinion which he has 
 given in the Court below ; and the result is, in some 
 instances, where a Judge has fallen into an error, for 
 Judges may err as well as other men, that the error 
 is adopted by his brother Judges, and thus confirmed 
 by the decision of the whole Court. I have seen this 
 practice lead, in some instances, to decisions which I 
 have no doubt on earth were erroneous ; and I have 
 not been the only person present, on such occasions, 
 who have come to the same conclusion. This never 
 would have happened had the appeal been made from 
 the opinion of a Judge who was not a member of the 
 Court. I, for these reasons, would not give to the 
 Judges of the new County Courts any voice in the 
 decision of the appeal which might be taken from them 
 to the Court of Assize. By the adoption of this prac- 
 tice, with respect to them, there would be established 
 a uniformity of practice in those Courts throughout 
 the country, and we should not have one mode of ad- 
 ministering the law in one county, and a different one 
 in another. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be objected, that this establishment 
 of so many Courts would entail a very considerable 
 expense on the country ; for that, beside the Judge 
 in each Court, there must be a Registrar and Clerk, 
 and one or two Ushers. No doubt the appointment 
 of such officers would be necessary ; for, if we are to 
 have establishments, they should be complete, to 
 answer the proposed end. But the expense of the 
 whole on the country will be but trifling, when com- 
 pared with the important advantages which must 
 accrue to the public. I would suggest that the Judge 
 should have a salary of 1500 a-year. I observe my 
 honourable and learned friend, the Solicitor-General.
 
 LOCAL COURTS. .-',21 
 
 smiles at this, as if he considered it too much ; but if 
 the public are to have the whole of the time of a 
 professional man of talent and experience, they ought 
 not to expect it without giving an adequate remu- 
 neration. Taking the whole expenses of the Judges, 
 registrars, clerks, and other officers, I estimate that it 
 will not exceed from 120,000 to 130,000 a-year 
 for the whole kingdom. Now, in judging of this, I 
 would beg the attention of the House for a moment 
 to what is the expense of the judicial administration 
 in France. In that country, there are between 3000 
 and 4000 local magistrates scattered over the whole 
 country, called juges de pai<r, who have jurisdiction in 
 actions for small sums. The expense of these amounts 
 to 121,000 a-year. There arc next the Courts of 
 First Instance for the several arrondissements, amount- 
 ing to from 300 to 400, and having from 1GOO to 1700 
 Judges ; the annual expense of these amounts to 
 125,000. There are then the several Courts of 
 Appeal, at an annual expense of 70,000 ; and, 
 beside all these, and over them, is the Court of Cassa- 
 tion, in Paris, which is a Court of Appeal in the last 
 resort, or rather, a Court of Error, which costs the 
 country 25,000 annually ; making, in the whole, for 
 the civil administration of justice, an annual expense 
 of from 300,000 to 400,000 : And if to this be 
 added the expense of the administration of criminal 
 justice, it will amount to about 525,000 a-year; or, 
 taking it pound for pound, and considering the com- 
 parative value of money in that cheap country and in 
 this dear one, it is equal to about 800,000 of our 
 money. But why do I mention this ? Merely to show 
 that our neighbours do not think that any price is too 
 high to pay for an effectual administration of justice ; 
 and most certainly it would be extremely difficult to 
 convince me that the price ought for an instant to
 
 522 LAW REFORM. 
 
 be put into competition with the advantages which 
 would result to the public from such a system. Let 
 it be considered, that if the sum should amount to 
 150,000 a-year, it would be still less than three 
 weeks' proportion of the extra expenditure to which 
 the country was subjected in the last year of the 
 war, beside the cost of the national debt, of the civil 
 list, and all the ordinary expenditure of the year. I 
 do not mean to say that the extra expense was no 
 more than 50,000 per week ; what I mean is, that 
 three weeks' amount of the extra expenditure of that 
 year would, if taken into the market, be sufficient to 
 purchase an annuity of 150,000 for ever. I do not 
 intend to inquire how far that expense was or was not 
 necessary ; but I contend that the sum I have named 
 would purchase by far the greatest blessing that Par- 
 liament ever conferred upon the people a cheap, 
 speedy, and certain administration of justice. 
 
 I have said that the new Judges will not act 
 merely as presiding Judges ; they \vill also have to 
 act as arbitrators, and in that way many cases will be 
 settled without ever going to a public decision, and 
 thus a great saving of time and expense will be made 
 to the parties. This of itself is a most important 
 consideration. What is so likely to give satisfaction, 
 or to prevent law-suits from misdecision, as the ena- 
 bling a person to decide cases as a Judge would 
 decide them, but sitting in the character of an arbi- 
 trator ? 
 
 Sir, there is a subject for which I have hardly left 
 myself strength, and I am sure I have left the House 
 no patience to go into it, but to which I shall very 
 generally and cursorily refer I mean the subject of 
 Conciliation. In many foreign countries, Courts of Con- 
 ciliation are established, with a view to the prevention 
 of law-suits, by having the parties called before them
 
 LOCAL COURTS. .523 
 
 by talking to them familiarly, kindly, and privately 
 by telling one that it is very foolish to go into court 
 where the facts are so clear against him, and that he 
 will lose his cause by telling another that he ought 
 not any longer to resist payment, as it is quite clear 
 that he is wrong ; in short, by giving the parties 
 sound advice, to which they may attach the weight 
 that does and will always belong to the disinterested 
 counsel of a prudent and worthy man, and of one 
 experienced in such disputes. It has been found 
 in some countries not, I confess, in all that the 
 best possible results have accrued from such a sys- 
 tem. Where the reference has been compulsory, 
 the experiment has entirely failed. In France, it has 
 signally failed. I have the authority of not only many 
 learned and excellent persons, but I have also the dis- 
 tinct admission of M. Levasseur, in his Manuel, in 
 which he says " That where the parties settle their 
 differences before the Court of Conciliation without 
 going farther, the principle of the measure is fulfilled 
 le veu du kyislateur est complet ;" but he adds, " these 
 cases are infinitely rare." I have to make, also, excep- 
 tion of the Netherlands and Holland, for the result of 
 the experiments of the Code, since it has been applied 
 to those countries, has been so exactly the same, that 
 they have resolved not to renew it. I understand that 
 in Sweden the measure has been attended with better 
 success. But in Denmark it has succeeded best of all ; 
 and if I am not misinformed, in that country the going 
 before a Judge of Conciliation is entirely optional. I 
 know that in Switzerland, at least in two parts of it 
 I mean Geneva and the Pays du Vaud the experi- 
 ment was tried, and was attended with success. The 
 Code Napoleon failed, as there was in it compulsory re- 
 concilement that is, no person could go into a higher 
 Court before he called his adversary to the Court of
 
 524 LAW REFORM. 
 
 Conciliation, and obtained a proces verbal ; if the adver- 
 sary did not appear, he paid a fine of ten francs, and 
 the other got a certificate, and was allowed to go before 
 a higher Court. In Denmark, where the thing is more 
 optional, and where the Court does not call the parties 
 before them, I find that on an average of three years, 
 1825, 1826, and 182 7, one-fourth of the actions brought 
 into those Courts were terminated by the withdrawal 
 of proceedings, or by the parties being reconciled. 
 The returns do not specify the exact numbers of each 
 of those stopped by Conciliation, or by the parties 
 withdrawing proceedings, being hopeless of success. 
 In one instance, however, I have that return, and I 
 find that the numbers are very nearly equal, that is to 
 say, that between one-seventh and one-eighth of the 
 cases not tried were settled by the process of Concilia- 
 tion. 
 
 Now, I propose adding to the power of the Judge 
 the right of calling the parties, if they please, before 
 him; that is, if one is desirous of it, and the other has no 
 objection. I propose that they should go before him ; 
 that it should be compulsory to receive his opinion; that 
 he should act as Judge of Conciliation, and endeavour 
 to reconcile their differences. I will explain in one 
 moment why I regard this measure as desirable, and 
 by no means impracticable ; and I can assure the 
 House, that the suggestions which I have offered are 
 founded strictly on practical experience. When a 
 Court is resorted to, in many cases, no person is more 
 likely to be led into error as to the probable termina- 
 tion of the cause than the party interested. In almost 
 all instances he is more or less misled by the advice 
 he receives. I do not say that gentlemen of the Bar 
 give opinions that the action is maintainable, when 
 they know that it is not. God forbid ! I believe 
 that there is no set of men less apt to do so ; I believe
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 52;, 
 
 they are more apt to dissuade to throw cold water 
 upon law, to give doubtful opinions, and offer discour- 
 aging advice. I say this is the common course of the 
 profession. I say that in ninety-nine cases out of 
 a hundred it is so. I need hardly say it happens 
 to all respectable men : I need hardly say when it 
 happens not, a man is scarcely respectable. But, great 
 as my feeling is for the profession strongly preposses- 
 sed as I am with the belief of its high honour, of its 
 great integrity of all those qualities which entitle it to 
 respect and much as I hope that the exceptions are 
 rare yet I will not say that there are no exceptions, 
 even in that profession to which I have the honour to 
 belong. I will not take upon myself to s.ay, that it is 
 an impossibility to find a man at the Bar who will 
 give an opinion to encourage, when he ought to dis- 
 courage, still less will I take upon myself to deny 
 that there are always to be found men, in the other 
 branches of the profession, who will go to that man to 
 get his opinion, and who, if they cannot get such an 
 opinion, will substitute their own for it, and tell their 
 client that he is sure to gain that which they ought to 
 know there is every probability he will lose. But 
 this I do know, that we have men every day come 
 before counsel, previous to going into court; that a con- 
 sultation is holden, and those present lift up their hands 
 and throw up their eyes, and say, who could have advised 
 such an action ? and that upon other occasions, on the 
 part of the defendant, it is said how could you go on 
 so long with it ? The reason is neither more nor less 
 than this that no sooner have they read the case, 
 than, without any further consultation together, each 
 man comes into the consulting-room, with his mind 
 made up, that they have not the shadow of a case, and 
 thus the poor client is allowed to go into a Court only 
 to be ruined. This happens every day, and it happens
 
 52C LAW REFORM. 
 
 often enough to make one wish that it never hap- 
 pened at all. There are cases where the advice of 
 the counsel is kept back from the client ; other 
 cases, where the favourable opinion is obtained on 
 false statement of facts ; and in all these cases, 
 the man most ignorant of the chance of success, or 
 failure, is the unfortunate client thus dragged into 
 a court of Justice. I ought not to say he is al- 
 ways dragged he is sometimes coaxed ; they who 
 ought to put him on his guard, mislead and urge 
 him on ; and he finds, too late, that he has been de- 
 ceived to his ruin. The men who do so ignorantly, 
 and they are not a few, are not of course so culpable 
 as they who do so knowingly and willingly. Even my 
 respect for that branch of the profession to which I 
 allude I mean solicitors and attorneys will not 
 allow me to deny that I have frequently seen in- 
 stances, in both classes, of such cases, produced more 
 frequently by the ignorance of the attorney, than by 
 a knowledge that his client must lose. In these 
 cases, if you could separate the client from the 
 attorney and the counsel, and get him aside, and tell 
 him that if he goes on with his suit he must be dis- 
 appointed and defeated ; I am sanguine enough to 
 expect that the ruin which now often happens would 
 be saved to the unfortunate and ill-advised clients. 
 
 This system which I have submitted in the House, 
 I trust respectfully, founded as it is upon experience, 
 would produce the best results. I have hopes, and I 
 think they are not visionary hopes, that great benefit 
 would accrue to parties from having conversation 
 with an individual of knowledge and of undoubted 
 respectability. Whether, not merely that part of the 
 subject which relates to Conciliation and Arbitration, 
 by publicly appointed arbitrators, but the whole subject 
 of affording the means of obtaining cheap justice,
 
 LOCAL COURTS. 
 
 327 
 
 will be approved of by the Legislature, I know not ; 
 but this 1 know, that those who reject it are impera- 
 tively called upon by the state of the case to point 
 out another remedy. I care not for the name. If 
 you reform the County Courts, it will only hamper you 
 with certain forms, with obsolete rules, and with many 
 inconveniences, which had much better be got rid of; 
 for nothing is so useless as preserving the shadow when 
 the substance is gone it only disappoints, and harasses, 
 and vexes. But call it by what name you will, the sub- 
 stance of this measure is imperatively required. The 
 exigencies of suitors will no longer allow us to withhold 
 it from them. Of this I am as much persuaded as I 
 am of my existence, or that I am standing here ad- 
 dressing this House. The people have a right to justice 
 they are crying out for it they distrust the Govern- 
 ment for want of it they distrust all plans of reform, 
 whether legal or political reform, because of it ; and so 
 long as they feel this want will they continue to cry out 
 and to distrust. 
 
 I have heard it said, that when one lifts up his 
 voice against things that are, and wishes for a change, 
 he is raising clamour against existing institutions, a 
 clamour against our venerable establishments, a cla- 
 mour against the law of the land ; but this is no clamour 
 against the one or the other it is a clamour against the 
 abuse of them all. It is a clamour raised against the 
 grievances that are felt. Mr. Burke, who was no friend 
 to popular excitement, who was no ready tool of agita- 
 tion, no hot-headed enemy of existing establishments, 
 no under-valuer of the wisdom of our ancestors, no 
 scoffer against institutions as they are, has said, and it 
 deserves to be fixed in letters of gold over the hall of 
 every assembly which calls itself a legislative body, 
 " Where there is abuse there ought to be clamour, be- 
 cause it is better to have our slumbers broken by the 
 fire-bell, than to perish amidst the flames in our bed."
 
 528 LAW REFORM. 
 
 I have been told by some who have little objection to 
 the clamour, that I am a timid and a mock reformer, and 
 by others, if I go on firmly and steadily, and do not allow 
 myself to be drawn aside by either one outcry or another, 
 and care for neither, that it is a rash and dangerous in- 
 novation, which I propound, and that I am taking for 
 the subject of my reckless experiments things which 
 are the objects of all men's veneration. I disregard 
 the one as much as I disregard the other of these 
 charges. I know the path of the reformer is not easy : 
 honourable it may be it may lead to honour ; but 
 it is obstructed by the secret workings of coad- 
 jutors ; and, above all, it is beset by the base slanders 
 of those who, I venture to say some of them at least 
 know better than others the falsehood of the 
 charges which they bring against me. But I have not 
 proceeded in this course rapidly, hastily, or rashly ; 
 for I have actually lived to see myself charged with 
 being in name a Reformer, but in truth in league with 
 the enemies of reform ; in secret and corrupt league 
 with those who batten on the abuses which I denounce. 
 It has been asserted that I have so acted in order 
 to obtain high professional advancement, I, who 
 have refused the highest judicial functions, I, who, 
 at the very time those slanders were propagated, was 
 in the act of preventing such a proposition from being 
 made to me upon political principle upon public 
 principle upon party principle as well as upon per- 
 sonal feelings. Did I regard the slander? Was I 
 stung with such false opprobrium? Did I change 
 my colour, or faulter in my course, or did I quicken 
 that course? Not I, indeed 
 
 False honour charms and lying slander scares 
 Whom, but the false and faulty ?* 
 
 Falsus honor juvat et mendax infamia terret 
 Quern, nisi mendosum et mendacem ?
 
 LOCAL COURTS. J2i) 
 
 It has been the lot of all men, in all ages, who have 
 aspired at the honour of guiding, instructing, or mend- 
 ing mankind, to have their paths beset by every 
 persecution from adversaries by every misconstruc- 
 tion from friends : No quarter from the one no 
 charitable construction from the other. To be mis- 
 construed, misrepresented, borne down, till it was in 
 vain to bear down any longer, has been their fate. 
 But truth will survive, and calumny has its day. I 
 say, that if this be the fate of the Reformer if lie 
 be the object of misrepresentation, may not an in- 
 ference be drawn favourable to myself? Taunted by 
 the enemies of Reform, as being too rash ; by the over- 
 zealous friends of Reform, as being too slow or too 
 cold ; there is every reason for presuming that I have 
 chosen the right course. A Reformer must proceed 
 steadily in his career ; not misled on the one hand 
 by panegyric, nor discouraged by slander on the other. 
 He ,wants no praise. I would rather say " Wo to 
 him when all men speak well of him." I shall go on 
 in the course which I have laid down for myself; 
 pursuing the footsteps of those who have gone before 
 us who, have left us their instructions and success- 
 their instructions to guide our walk, and their success 
 to cheer our spirits. 
 
 I move, Sir, for leave to bring in a Bill for the 
 Establishment of Local Judicatures in certain cases 
 in England. 
 
 VOL. II. L' L
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF PARLIAMENTARY REFORM MR. CAN- 
 NING LORD DUDLEY MR. HUSKISSON MR. WYVlLL 
 
 MAJOR CARTWRIGHT. 
 
 As no subject has ever, in modern times, been 
 brought into discussion, of importance at all equal to 
 that which opened the whole question of our Parlia- 
 mentary Constitution, so none ever excited so general 
 and so lasting an interest among all classes of the 
 people. 
 
 By the lapse of time great changes had been 
 effected in the original structure of the representation, 
 and changes far greater in the structure of the com- 
 munity represented. That which had originally been 
 regarded as a burden from which all were anxious to 
 escape, had become a benefit and an honour which 
 every one was solicitous to obtain. The classes who 
 had at first monopolized the representation of the 
 property and population of the country, no longer
 
 534 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 alone retained this distinction, other classes, formerly 
 scarcely existing, having grown up to influence and 
 power. The kind of property which alone, in the 
 early period of our history, had any existence, the 
 land, and which alone could in those days be repre- 
 sented, either by conferring the right to vote, or by 
 giving the title to sit, was now rivalled in importance 
 by masses of other kinds of wealth formerly unknown, 
 and justly claiming equal regard. The corporate 
 cities and towns, which anciently were governed by 
 the voices of their citizens at large, had become new- 
 modelled by usurpation, which the courts of law 
 sanctioned under the apprehension that popular elec- 
 tion must be attended with danger to the public 
 peace ; and the whole administration of their municipal 
 affairs being now entrusted to small bodies, generally 
 self-elected, these too engrossed the right of returning 
 to Parliament their representatives, who had originally 
 been chosen by the people at large. But the greatest 
 changes of all were in the electoral bodies. Towns 
 formerly of importance had, in the course of time, 
 decayed into insignificance ; nay, some populous and 
 wealthy places had become desolate and uninhabited, 
 while all alike retained the privilege of being repre- 
 sented in Parliament. So that instead of the people of 
 those places being represented, the remains of ruined 
 houses alone sent members to the legislature to consult 
 " circa ardua regni." At the same time, mere ham- 
 lets had grown into towns of vast importance ; and on 
 land once desert, or the site of a few straggling huts, 
 cities had grown up of prodigious extent, numbering 
 thousands and tens of thousands of inhabitants, and 
 containing within their bounds half the opulence and
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 535 
 
 industry of the country. Yet all these continued 
 unrepresented in Parliament, as if they were still 
 desolate regions, while the right to vote was continued 
 to those other places which had become the scenes of 
 solitude and decay. Finally, there had taken place a 
 general improvement in the knowledge and capacity 
 of the people, by the progress of refinement ; and all 
 classes of the community had become both capable of 
 exercising political rights and desirous of enjoying 
 them, instead of being, for the most part, so little 
 solicitous upon the subject of public affairs, that they 
 were as well pleased to have their representatives 
 named for them by those who better understood such 
 matters, as to interfere in the choice themselves. 
 
 It thus was manifest, that, though the constitution 
 of Parliament was nominally the same as it always had 
 been, in reality nothing could be more different in 
 every essential particular. To try this we need only 
 change the language used to describe the structure of 
 the Commons' House, and make it more general. The 
 constitution intended that members should be chosen 
 by real bodies of electors, and that the really existing 
 cities and large towns of the realm should be repre- 
 sented. Was that intention worked out by places which 
 have no inhabitants returning members, while the most 
 populous cities of the empire were unrepresented alto- 
 gether ? It was the original constitution of Parliament, 
 that while the counties were represented by knights of 
 the shire, the cities should be represented by citizens, 
 and the burghs by burgesses. Could that constitution 
 be said to remain, when no members were chosen by 
 the most important cities and burghs ? (for it is a mere 
 quibble to pretend that Birmingham and Manchester
 
 536 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 are not cities or burghs in a Parliamentary view, 
 because they are not legally so, not being bishops' sees, 
 or incorporated by charter.) Or, to try it by another 
 test who will pretend to doubt, that had Birmingham, 
 Manchester, and Sheffield, existed in the time of the 
 Plantagenets, writs would have been issued to them ? 
 Or who will maintain that any king ever would have 
 issued his writ to the ruins of Old Sarum,and the mould- 
 ering foundations of Sarum and Blechingley, which can- 
 not be traced by the eye ? No more needs be urged to 
 show how mere a play upon words it is to hold, that the 
 Parliamentary constitution of 1780 was the ancient 
 and original constitution of the country, or that, in 
 extending the elective franchise so as to give large 
 towns representatives, which they want, and take from 
 decayed places a right of voting, no longer of any use, 
 or even of any intelligible meaning in their case, any 
 departure whatever was made from the principles, or 
 any violation at all offered to the spirit of our old 
 Parliamentary law. On the contrary, the reformers 
 might with far more reason have contended, that they 
 were the restorers of the original constitution, and 
 that their adversaries were its enemies, because they 
 sought to make perpetual the departure from it which 
 time and accident had introduced, and to clothe with 
 the authority of law those deviations from the law, 
 which had unintentionally been introduced, and which 
 had only passed without opposition, because they had 
 been made so gradually as to escape observation. 
 
 The Reformers, however, had a right to occupy 
 much higher ground. They were entitled to hold, 
 that, even if the plans which they propounded were a 
 departure from the original frame of our mixed
 
 PARLIAMENTARY 11EF01LM. 537 
 
 government, and a mere innovation upon its princi- 
 ples, they would not, on that account alone, be liable to 
 insuperable objection ; on the contrary, if new lights 
 of experience, and the altered state of society, re- 
 quired a new adjustment of the political system, or 
 even the adoption into it of novel principles, such a 
 course might be not only justifiable, but requisite. 
 This was the view generally taken by the more zealous 
 and unsparing Reformers, to whom the precedents of 
 ancient times were so far from affording any autho- 
 rity, that they rather disinclined them to their use and 
 application in the present age ; and who, instead of 
 regarding it as any argument against a proposed im- 
 provement, that it was an innovation upon the insti- 
 tutions of earlier times, considered the fact of any 
 thing having existed in those rude ages, as a presump- 
 tion against its being fitted for the present day. 
 
 To these two great classes of Reformers upon 
 principle may be added a third, composed of mere 
 practical men, who regarded the existing abuses in 
 the representation as furnishing sufficient reason for 
 altering and amending it. The power which it con- 
 ferred on individuals of obstructing a good govern- 
 ment in order to further some selfish designs ; the 
 undue influence over the Commons which it gave the 
 Aristocracy ; the facilities which it held out to the 
 executive branch of the government of corrupting the 
 popular branch, and ruling in spite of the popular 
 voice ; in a word, the scope which it afforded for all 
 the engines of intrigue, corruption, and oppression, to 
 play upon the interests of the state, furnished ample 
 reasons of the most practical kind for a reform rea- 
 sons, the result of which Mr. Pitt embodied in a sen-
 
 538 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tence, when he said that the present system both 
 prevented the country from ever having honest minis- 
 ters, and honest ministers from continuing such, or 
 doing their duty. 
 
 But how powerful soever all these arguments had 
 been, and how general soever their acceptance with 
 the reflecting portion of the community, they made 
 but little progress until the public misfortunes during 
 the American war; and the support given to that 
 inauspicious contest by the self-named representatives 
 of the people, long after the people had pronounced 
 their opinion very decidedly against the policy of the 
 Government, set men upon reflecting how their affairs 
 were conducted, and how they who were intrusted 
 with their management happened to pursue the course 
 they took, against the will of their nominal consti- 
 tuents. This inquiry directed the attention of the 
 country at large to the structure of the representa- 
 tion. Great public meetings were held to consider 
 it. Associations of most respectable persons were 
 formed to procure its reform. Men of the highest 
 station in the country, and men who enjoyed its con- 
 fidence in an extraordinary degree, joined with others 
 less known, but of the greatest promise as statesmen 
 and patriots, in demanding the needful change ; and 
 from that time, notwithstanding the untoward occur- 
 rences of after years, the question of Parliamentary 
 Reform lias always occupied a foremost place in the 
 minds of the people, and in the deliberations of the 
 Legislature. 
 
 After it had made such progress as almost ensured 
 a speedy success, at least to a considerable extent of 
 Reform, the alarm excited by the excesses of the
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 539 
 
 French Revolution, and increased by the general sym- 
 pathy expressed among almost all British Reformers 
 with the earlier leaders of the movement in France, 
 for some years checked the progress of the cause in 
 this country. Reform was artfully confounded with 
 Revolution by its adversaries ; and to be a Reformer, 
 became synonymous with being a friend of anarchy, 
 and hostile to the established order of things, ecclesi- 
 astical and civil, That these fears were wholly ficti- 
 tious, it would be altogether absurd to assert ; as it 
 would be most thoughtless to deny that there existed 
 quite danger enough of the Reformers pushing too 
 fast and too far their favourite theories, to make the 
 greatest circumspection necessary for restraining their 
 impetuosity, and preventing its mischievous conse- 
 quences among a people for the first time vehemently 
 excited to action by the contagious influence of the 
 mighty popular movement which was convulsing the 
 whole frame of society in France. But it is at the 
 least equally certain, that nothing but gross misrepre- 
 sentation acting upon ignorance and panic, could 
 have succeeded in making every attempt to improve 
 our institutions, be regarded as another name for 
 indiscriminate enmity to our whole system of govern- 
 ment ; and every friend of Reform, as an enemy of his 
 country and her peace. The cause of order, and the 
 stability of all our institutions, may safely be said to 
 have suffered much more than they could gain, by the 
 consequences of this delusion so skilfully and so suc- 
 cessfully practised ; and had Mr. Pitt, instead of 
 abandoning the cause of Reform, of which he had 
 been the powerful champion in his earlier days, and 
 joining in the persecution of his former fellow-
 
 540 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 labourers, the Reformers, placed himself at the head 
 of the more rational and respectable portion of them, 
 whom temperate and gradual measures of amendment 
 would have satisfied, he would have done more to 
 strengthen and consolidate the system of our govern- 
 ment, and to check the progress of a perilous thirst 
 for mere change, than ever could be expected from 
 coercive laws, even had they succeeded far better 
 than they did, in stifling discussion upon the defects 
 of our constitution, and repressing the exertions for 
 removing them. 
 
 At length came the tranquillity of France under 
 the government of Napoleon, and with it the cessation 
 of the Revolutionary war. A calm ensued among the 
 parties which split this country. A moderate adminis- 
 tration of government succeeded to the times when 
 haughty, unbending, almost persecuting power, on the 
 one side, demanded entire submission from the other, 
 but only provoked hatred and resistance. The fear of 
 revolution at home gave place to the apprehensions of 
 invasion from abroad ; and although men's minds were 
 too much occupied with the question of peace and 
 war, and expense and retrenchment, to renew their 
 care about the constitution of Parliament, it seemed 
 evident that, as soon as any accidental turn of affairs 
 should once more direct their attention to this ques- 
 tion, all the zeal of 1782 and 1790 would be again 
 awakened, and no opposition to its progress could any 
 more be offered by the real or the pretended alarms 
 of its adversaries, grounded upon an allegation of 
 revolutionary designs. Nor was the occasion very 
 long wanting. The gross misconduct of affairs which 
 led to the Walcheren expedition, and the shameful
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 541 
 
 vote of approval expressed upon it by the House of 
 Commons, following in less than twelve months after 
 the scandalous disclosures of traffic in places and in 
 seats, and the other iniquities brought to light in 1809, 
 again roused the energies of the Reformers, and the 
 structure of Parliament that structure which led to 
 the selection of such representatives as had done the 
 deeds of 1809 and 1810 once more occupied the undi- 
 vided attention of all political reasoners, and of many 
 who in no other political question were wont to interest 
 themselves, or to move at all. 
 
 Since that time the subject has been making a 
 steady and an irresistible advance, scarcely ever in- 
 terrupted by other subjects of more immediate and 
 lively, though temporary, attraction ; or, if interrupted 
 for the moment, only to gain fresh accession of strength 
 by new arguments derived from those discussions of 
 more passing interest. While, however, Reform was 
 thus acquiring great and extended support, it had also 
 raised up a new body of formidable antagonists. The 
 friends of Mr. Pitt were no longer found ranged on 
 its side they all joined the ranks of its enemies ; and 
 the Anti-reform party, which had formerly been com- 
 posed only of the old courtiers, the friends of Lord 
 North, and Mr. Burke with his supporters, were now 
 reinforced by the brilliant talents and great debating 
 powers of Mr. Canning, the extensive knowledge and 
 truly business-like capacity of Mr. Huskisson, the 
 acuteness, the fancy, and the learning of Mr. Ward,* 
 in conjunction with some of the leading members of 
 the present administration; A steady and uncompro- 
 
 '"" Afterwards Lord Dueller.
 
 542 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mising resistance to all. reform, was the leading prin- 
 ciple of this party, more powerful from the abilities 
 than formidable from the numbers of its members ; 
 and it formed indeed their principal hold over the 
 Tory party at large, whose jealousy of them was, 
 generally speaking, more than a match for its prudence 
 in securing the aid it stood so much in need of. 
 
 It is difficult to over-rate the effects of this resis- 
 tance in obstructing the progress of reform. Mr. Can- 
 ning and Lord Dudley especially, the men of the 
 greatest talents in the party, were truly formidable 
 antagonists. Possessing in an equal degree all the 
 resources of accurate and extensive information, all 
 the powers of acute reasoning and lively fancy, and 
 all the accomplishments of the most finished classical 
 education, they differed rather in the degrees to 
 which habit and accident had fitted them for actual 
 business, and in the strength of their understandings 
 as influenced by their inclinations, than in the genius 
 or the acquirements which might inspire or had 
 trained their oratory. Mr. Canning was the more 
 powerful declaimer Lord Dudley had the more ori- 
 ginal fancy and the sharper wit ; although in every 
 kind of wit and humour Mr. Canning, too, greatly 
 excelled most other men. Lord Dudley could 
 follow an argument with more sustained acuteness, 
 while Mr. Canning possessed a skill in statement 
 which frequently disposed of the matter in dispute 
 before his adversary was aware that his flank had been, 
 as it were, turned, and thus spared himself the labour 
 of an elaborate attack by argumentation. Both prepared 
 for their greater exhibitions with extreme care, and 
 wrote more than almost any other modern orators; but
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. :,I;J 
 
 Mr. Canning bad powers of extempore debating which 
 Lord Dudley had either never acquired, or hardly ever 
 ventured to exert, and he used those powers with the 
 practised dexterity which long and constant exercise 
 can alone bestow, sometimes in pronouncing the whole 
 of a speech, and at other times, in the far more difficult 
 task, the last attainment of rhetorical art, of weaving 
 the extemporary up with the prepared passages, and 
 delivering the whole so as to make the transition from 
 the previous composition to the inspiration of the 
 moment, wholly imperceptible, even to the most ex- 
 perienced eye. In habits of business, and the faculties 
 which these whet, or train, or possibly bestow, Mr. 
 Canning had, of course, all the advantage which 
 could be derived from a long life in office acting 
 upon abilities of so high an order. But that Lord 
 Dudley only wanted such training to equal him in 
 these respects, was apparent from the masterly per- 
 formance of his official duties, which marked his short 
 administration of the Foreign department in 1827- 
 
 Here, however, all parallel between these eminent 
 individuals ends. In strength of mind, in that firmness 
 of purpose which makes both a man and a statesman, 
 there was, indeed, little comparison between them. 
 Both were of a peculiarly sensitive and even irritable 
 temperament ; and this, while it affected their manner, 
 and followed them into debate, quitted them not in the 
 closet or the Cabinet. But in Mr. Canning the weak- 
 ness had limits which were not traced in the nervous 
 temperament of Lord Dudley. He suffered all his life 
 under what afterwards proved to be a diseased state of 
 the system, and, after making the misery of part of 
 his existence, and shading the happiness even of its
 
 544 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 brightest portions, it ended in drawing a dark and 
 dismal curtain over his whole faculties towards the 
 close of his life. The result of the same morbid 
 temperament was a want of fixed inclination a 
 wavering that affected his judgment as well as his 
 feelings an incapacity to form, or after forming, to 
 abide by any fixed resolution so that a man more 
 amply endowed with the gifts both of nature and 
 fortune than any other in any age, although he rose to 
 great station, enjoyed an enviable share of renown, and 
 never appeared in any capacity without raising an admi- 
 ration great in proportion to the discernment of the 
 beholders, passed through life with less effect upon 
 the fate of his fellow r -creatures than hundreds of the 
 most ordinary men on whom, as he was well enti- 
 tled, he daily looked down. The article in which 
 his power has been the most felt, was certainly 
 that of Parliamentary Reform, of which he was, with 
 all his party, the constant and uncompromising adver- 
 sary, and on which the last and perhaps greatest efforts 
 of his genius were made. 
 
 With these men was joined Mr. Huskisson, than 
 whom few have ever attained as great influence in 
 this country, with so few of the advantages which are 
 apt to captivate Senates or to win popular applause, 
 and, at the same time, with so few of the extrinsic 
 qualities which in the noble and the wealthy can always 
 make up for such natural deficiencies. He was not 
 fluent of speech naturally, nor had much practice ren- 
 dered him a ready speaker ; he had none of the graces 
 of diction, whether he prepared himself, (if he ever did 
 so) or trusted to the moment. His manner was 
 peculiarly ungainly. His statements were calculated
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 5-1-5 
 
 rather to excite distrust than to win confidence. Yet, 
 with all this, he attained a station in the House of 
 Commons, which made him as much listened to as the 
 most consummate debaters ; and upon the questions to 
 which he, generally speaking, confined himself, the great 
 matters of commerce and finance, he delivered him- 
 self with almost oracular certainty of effect. This 
 success he owed to the thorough knowledge which he 
 possessed of his subjects ; the perfect clearness of his 
 understanding; the keenness with which he could apply 
 his information to the purpose of the debate ; the 
 acuteness with which he could unravel the argument, 
 and expose an adversary's weakness, or expound his 
 own doctrines. In respect of his political purity he 
 did not stand very high with any party. He had 
 the same intense love of office which was and is 
 the vice of his whole party, and to which they 
 have made such sacrifices, reducing indeed into a 
 principle, what was only a most pernicious error, 
 the source of all unworthy compliances, the cloak 
 for every evil proceeding, that no one can effec- 
 tually serve the state in a private station. One 
 immediate result of this heresy was, to make Mr. 
 Huskisson, like his leader, mistake place for power, 
 and cling to the possession of mere office when the 
 authority to carry those measures which alone make 
 office desirable to a patriot, was either withheld or 
 removed for preferment's sake. Yet whoever has 
 known either of these three great men, and casts his 
 eye on those followers whom they have left behind, 
 may be justified in heaving a sigh as he exclaims, 
 " Eheu ! quam multo minus est cum reliqnis rermri, quam 
 meminisse tui /" 
 
 VOL. n. 2 M
 
 546 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Such were the adversaries whom the Parliamentary 
 Reformer had to contend with during the long struggle 
 that began at the Walcheren vote, and only ended, 
 if it indeed be yet ended, with the Bill of 1831-2. 
 For although Mr. Canning's hostility to reform had 
 been the most often signalized, yet his death in 
 Autumn 1827, in no degree relaxed the opposition of 
 his surviving followers, all of whom remained united 
 upon this point. They no doubt departed widely from 
 his course, in other respects : and they so far deserted 
 the ground which he had latterly taken, as even to 
 join those with whom his hostility had become the 
 most personal, evincing their habitual love of place 
 by holding office with the Duke of Wellington and 
 Mr. Peel, after their new Whig allies had been some- 
 what cavalierly ejected from office by the Court. Nor 
 was it till the following Summer that they received 
 the reward due to such place-loving propensities, by 
 being ejected as unceremoniously as the Whigs had 
 been before. Lord Dudley and Mr. Huskisson, with the 
 lesser members of the party, Lords Palmerston, Mel- 
 bourne, and Glenelg, were once more in opposition, 
 and gradually resumed the Whig connexion ; but their 
 hostility to reform remained unabated. Nor is it one 
 of the least remarkable events in their history, that to 
 a reform question they owed the last misfortune of 
 losing their places in 1828. They had taken the long- 
 headed, not to say crafty, view of their new leader, 
 Mr. Huskisson, that giving members to Birmingham on 
 the disfranchisement of Retford for corruption, would 
 tend more to prevent further mischief that is, as he 
 explained it really effectual reform, than merely 
 opening the franchise to the adjoining hundreds. On
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 547 
 
 this the Duke and Sir Robert Peel differed with them, 
 possibly deeming it a poor stratagem, and conceiving 
 it better to oppose reform altogether in a fair and 
 manly way, than by means of a trick. On this the 
 parties quarrelled ; and when the general question of 
 Parliamentary Reform was debated in 1830, the re- 
 mains of the Canning party gave it their unmitigated 
 opposition, as they continued to do until, being in 
 office with Lord Grey and other Reformers, they all at 
 once became root-and-branch adversaries of the ex- 
 isting system, and wholesale proselytes to the reform- 
 ing creed. 
 
 Having noticed the chief adversaries of reform, it 
 is fit that its most strenuous supporters should be 
 mentioned. At the head of these stood Mr. Wyvill 
 and Major Cartwright. The former was a clergyman, 
 but possessed of an ample private fortune, and he had 
 been one of the earliest coadjutors of Sir George 
 Saville and Mr. Pitt. He was a man of sound and 
 extensive constitutional information, of steady perse- 
 verance in whatever he undertook, a most ardent 
 friend of civil and religious liberty, and one who made 
 universal and unlimited toleration the fundamental 
 article of his faith. For the rest, his views were some- 
 what confined, like all those of the earlier Reformers, 
 who, like their predecessors in the Church, satisfied 
 themselves with making the first step of throwing off 
 Antichrist, and were regardless of the exact limits 
 within which lesser abuses of practice or errors in faith 
 might be confined. As the Reformers of the sixteenth 
 century at first left the real presence in their creed, so 
 did the Savilles and Wyvills allow rotten burghs to 
 deform their system, and instead of giving represen-
 
 548 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tatives to the great towns, extended the number of 
 county members. 
 
 Major Cartwright was a politician of another school. 
 But it was as a restorer, not an innovator, that he 
 came forward. Conceiving that the original constitu- 
 tion of the Gothic Parliament was that of annual 
 elections, in which he was undoubtedly right, and also 
 that previous to the statute of Henry VI. limiting 
 the freehold franchise to forty shillings, all men had a 
 right to vote, in which he was as clearly wrong, for the 
 freeholders and burgesses only possessed the franchise 
 he insisted upon bringing back the system to that 
 standard, and had as great a horror of triennial as of 
 septennial elections. He was a man of unwearied 
 perseverance and indomitable courage ; of very mode- 
 rate information, even on constitutional subjects ;* 
 of extreme devotion to one subject, and indeed one 
 branch of that subject, and consequently, like all 
 " men of a single idea," extremely apt to make gross 
 mistakes in pursuing it. He was also extremely ob- 
 stinate in his own opinions, and would neither reason 
 nor listen to reason, but contented himself with re- 
 peating a set of phrases embodying dogmas, the ac- 
 ceptance or rejection of which he somewhat in- 
 tolerantly and very blindly made the test of all men's 
 honesty or dishonesty. When he had hit upon a view 
 or an argument, he held it to be decisive ; and even 
 
 * A ludicrous instance of this was afforded bv his arguing, in a 
 pamphlet, from the title of Mr. Prymie's work, that short Parliaments 
 were the old law of the land ; for so he translated Brevia Parlia- 
 inentaria, (Parliamentary writs), the title of the book being Brevia 
 Parlinntentaria Herf/viva.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 540 
 
 went so far as to offer Sir Samuel Romilly and Mr. 
 Brougham (in 1812) the representation of Middlesex, 
 which he supposed lie could influence as he chose, 
 provided they would take a test viz. that Parliaments 
 must be annual, and for this single reason, that other- 
 wise every person who becomes of age during a Parlia- 
 ment is deprived of his right to vote for so many years, 
 to which both these gentlemen made answer, that 
 this proved also the justice of monthly, or even weekly 
 elections. His views were also somewhat tinged with 
 pedantry ; witness the horror of men becoming candi- 
 dates, which he always professed, and which only led 
 himself to a very unworthy mockery, when anxiously 
 intent upon being elected for Westminster ; namely, 
 that of addressing a letter in the newspapers to a gentle- 
 man who lived next door to him, expressing how use- 
 ful to reform his election would prove, reiterating 
 the statement of his reform principles, but adding an 
 avowal that nothing should induce him to become a 
 candidate. He failed on this occasion, and still more 
 signally a few years afterwards, when, still refusing to 
 be called a candidate, he daily appeared on the hust- 
 ings, to receive few or no votes, and had committees 
 in vain canvassing all Westminster in his behalf. 
 
 But with all these weaknesses, and with the yet worse 
 principle to govern his political creed, that all reform 
 must be confined to restoring the constitution of the 
 Gothic ages, a principle which made him ever speak 
 with veneration of Magna Charta and the times of baro- 
 nial tyranny and general tervitude, of which it was the 
 licence under seal ; the Major was, nevertheless, a 
 most invaluable advocate of reform, from the undaunted 
 front which he steadily opposed to all its adversaries,
 
 550 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 the uncompromising boldness with which he stood 
 by its friends, and the singleness of purpose with 
 which it appeared that his whole existence was devo- 
 ted to this one object. Among all the wavering of 
 some, the backslidings of others, and the desertions of 
 not a few, he kept his hopes unabated, and seemed 
 even most sanguine when the prospect of success was 
 the least cheering. No coldness of the people upon 
 a subject in which their interest was the greatest, ever 
 damped the ardour of his zeal ; no diversion of other 
 questions, which would, from time to time, attract 
 the whole attention of the country, leaving none alive 
 to the cause of reform, could ever draw him off for 
 an hour from his great subject. Standing alone at 
 times, he would continue to address a hard-hearted 
 generation with the sounds which no ears were open to 
 receive. Ever ready to rally them when the least 
 opening presented itself never for an instant despair- 
 ing of the good old cause at seasons when the very 
 mention of reform seemed to have ceased out of the 
 land, and its name was a strange and uncouth sound 
 to every ear, he would declare that he plainly descried 
 the coming triumph of the constitution, and that he 
 seemed to see " the days of Runnymede dawn once 
 more." They alone who have experienced how much 
 less easy it is to find unflinching supporters, than 
 highly accomplished ones, for the people's cause, so 
 often betrayed by the people's fickleness, can duly 
 estimate the vast importance of such an advocate, and 
 be fully aware how much mbre is to be hoped, in the 
 conduct of great affairs, from dauntless courage and 
 unwearied steadiness, than from the most brilliant 
 gifts which nature can bestow, or culture improve.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 551 
 
 In Parliament, the exertions of Mr. Grey,* and 
 afterwards of Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Brand, f Sir Francis 
 Burdett, Lord John Russell, Lord Archibald Hamilton, 
 and Mr. Lambton,! ought ever to be enumerated with 
 distinguished praise. After Lord Grey's removal to 
 the Upper House, Sir Francis Burdett became the 
 most unwearied and powerful champion of reform, 
 and the extensive influence which his station and 
 abilities gave him with the people, had an incalculable 
 effect in keeping alive their zeal for the question at 
 times when extraordinary efforts were required to 
 prevent its total extinction. Mr. Lambton's motion 
 in 1821, though his plan was exposed to many serious 
 objections, was of very great service to the question, 
 supported as it was by the influence out of doors, as 
 well as in debate, which his talents, his spirit, and his 
 fortune, gave to whatever cause he chose to espouse 
 But no one did more real and lasting service to the 
 question than Lord John Russell, whose repeated 
 motions, backed by the progress of the subject out of 
 doors, had the effect of increasing the minority in its 
 favour, insomuch that, when he last brought it for- 
 ward in 1826, Mr. Canning, finding he could only 
 defeat it by a comparatively small majority, pro- 
 nounced the question substantially carried. It was 
 probably from this time that his party perceived the 
 prudence of staying a change which they could not 
 prevent, and of defeating the efficient reform which 
 they so much dreaded, by substituting a paltry and 
 elusory measure, of mere mock reformation. How 
 
 Now Earl Grey. t Now Lord Dacrc.
 
 552 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 long such a policy could have succeeded, had others 
 of the Tory party agreed to attempt it, we have now 
 no means of guessing. Happily the experiment was 
 never tried. 
 
 On the proposal of the great plan of 1831, the whole 
 country at once awoke from its slumber, and would, 
 from that moment, listen to no terms short of unqua- 
 lified and unconditional surrender of the ancient cor- 
 rupt system. The history of that measure is fresh in 
 the recollection of all. The following speech was 
 delivered in support of the bill, when it was before 
 the House of Lords, in October 1831, and was then, 
 by a majority of fort^-one votes, rejected. Next 
 summer it was carried ^y means not likely soon to be 
 forgotten ; and since that time a sufficient period has 
 elapsed to show what have been the defects of the 
 measure, and how far the system of our representation 
 requires further amendment. 
 
 It is doubtful if the great feature of the Reform, 
 and that which chiefly recommended it to the coun- 
 try, has not been carried too far. In November 1830, 
 when Mr. Brougham, then member for Yorkshire, in 
 redemption of the pledge given to his constituents, 
 gave notice of a motion for Parliamentary Reform, 
 which was to have come on the day that the Tory 
 ministry resigned, he announced to a meeting of 
 members held in Lord Althorp's chambers, that he 
 should propose to cut off, at the least, one member 
 from every close borough, and to abolish some of 
 those boroughs altogether ; but that he greatly ques- 
 tioned the expediency of wholly abolishing this class 
 of seats, regard being had to certain practical uses 
 which they served. Their total extinction by the Bill
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 553 
 
 may have been right ; but then, provision has not 
 been made for those practical uses thus lost. A pub- 
 lic servant, as an Attorney-General, for instituting a 
 necessary, though unpopular prosecution, or a Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, for maintaining a requisite 
 but odious tax, may lose their seats, and thus hamper 
 an administration nay, even occasion its dissolution. 
 Since the bill passed, it has actually happened that, 
 the Attorney-General being excluded from Parlia- 
 ment during a whole session, all the measures for 
 reforming the law were stopt for a year. It is pretty 
 certain that some changes in the distribution of office, 
 which are now much called for, cannot be attempted, 
 on account of the determination, probably a tempo- 
 rary determination, of some populous places, not to 
 return the official persons who now represent them. 
 To remedy this great defect, the giving seats without 
 votes to certain members of the Government has often 
 been proposed, and the subject was broached in the 
 House of Lords, when the bill was under discussion. 
 To enable a person to change his office without vacat- 
 ing his seat, would be a less violent change, and would 
 answer some at least of the same purposes. 
 
 The number of small constituencies created by the 
 bill is a yet greater defect. There are now above a 
 hundred members chosen by towns which have not 
 above two hundred voters. The evils of this are 
 enormous. Each such burgh is as bad as the worst 
 class of the old burghs, and by far the most corrupt 
 of all, with the single but great exception of non- 
 resident voters being no longer empowered to vote an 
 exception which limits the expense of the elections, 
 without at all limiting the bribery practised in the seve-
 
 554 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ral places. To remedy this glaring defect, it is certain 
 that all householders whatever should vote, which was 
 the plan about to be proposed by Mr. Brougham in 
 November 1 830. The restriction to ten pound house- 
 holders is in every respect objectionable ; and in none 
 more than this, that it is a perfectly different qualifi- 
 cation in different places that sum answering to a 
 large house and a< good income, in remote country 
 towns, while in the capital and neighbouring burghs, 
 no house, even the meanest and occupied by the poor- 
 est person, is rated under double the amount. 
 
 But the gross inequality of the distribution is still 
 more to be reprobated. A million of persons and an 
 enormous wealth, in one or two counties, havenogreater 
 weight in the scale of Parliamentary influence than a 
 few hundred poor persons in some obscure town. It 
 is plain that while this inequality continues, little con- 
 fidence can be given to the resolutions of the Com- 
 mons as an indication of the public opinion. 
 
 The duration of Parliament is clearly far too long. 
 Members chosen while the state of the Sovereign's 
 life presents the prospect of a six or seven years' seat, 
 never think of their constituents any more than if 
 they had none. The most striking examples of this 
 have been afforded during the past Session. No Mi- 
 nister could have obtained the very discreditable votes 
 which the enemies of Negro emancipation, friends of 
 the planters, have obtained, had a general election 
 been nigh at hand. But when five or six years must 
 elapse before the day of reckoning arrives, men of 
 feeble principles, and greedy of promotion, or eager to 
 share in the dispensation of public patronage, disregard 
 the distant and uncertain displeasure of their consti-
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 555 
 
 tuents, and only seek to escape the more swift wrath 
 of the Minister. Triennial Parliaments ought most 
 certainly to be substituted for septennial. 
 
 The necessity of securing the electors by the plan 
 of secret voting, seems at length to have forced itself 
 on the minds of those formerly most reluctant to 
 entertain the subject of the Ballot. To tenants this 
 would assuredly afford no protection ; it seems, how- 
 ever, clear that it would be some shelter to trades- 
 men; and the scenes at the last general election appear 
 to show that some such protection is necessary, if town 
 elections are to be other than a farce. 
 
 But a large extension of the suffrage is the one 
 thing needful ; nor can any consistent Reformer feel 
 very clearly in favour of the Ballot, while so few 
 classes have the right to vote at all. The mere 
 household qualification will clearly not suffice. That 
 comprehends many of the least enlightened and least 
 independent classes in society persons always looking 
 up to rank and fortune, and ever ready to square their 
 conduct to the wishes of those who possess them ; 
 while it wholly excludes the better informed, more 
 virtuous, and incomparably more independent, and less 
 time serving class of workmen who have struggled to 
 educate themselves, and are less beholden to their 
 employers than these are to them. No one, however, 
 can desire to let in any ignorant and profligate person 
 merely because he is twenty-one years of age, and not 
 insane or convicted of a crime. Therefore an educa- 
 tion qualification seems on every account to be the 
 fittest. Lord Brougham's Education Bill provides for 
 this in all votes respecting school affairs, nor can there
 
 556 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be conceived a reason why it should not be extended 
 to Parliamentary elections. 
 
 How far all or any of these salutary and even neces- 
 sary improvements may be introduced into our new 
 Parliamentary constitution within a few years, there 
 are no means of conjecturing. The existing Govern- 
 ment have declared against all further change. Arro- 
 gating to the authors of the Bill an infallibility never 
 before ascribed to any men, and a power of foreseeing 
 future events which no human being can be gifted 
 with, they have decided that the unerring and pro- 
 phetic wisdom of 1831 cannot be appealed from; and 
 that all we now complain of must be endured, rather 
 than alter a final measure, and charge its authors with 
 the proneness to err, which had heretofore been ima- 
 gined to be the lot of man. This delusion will continue 
 as long as Members of Parliament shall regard their 
 own personal interest in promotion and patronage as 
 of more value to them than the favour of their consti- 
 tuents and the good will of the people at large. But, 
 in the meantime, the confidence of the country is 
 wholly alienated from its Government, and the repre- 
 sentative body enjoys fully less of the public esteem 
 and respect than those whom a few years ago, men of 
 big professions and puny performance used to taunt 
 with holding their power of making laws by an here- 
 ditary title. It would be well if their own election 
 had bestowed a better spirit of conduct with a title 
 supposed to be so much more valid.
 
 ON 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 OCTOBER 7, 1831.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 MY LORDS, I feel that I owe some apology to your 
 lordships for standing in the way of any noble lords* 
 who wish to address you : but after much deliberation, 
 and after consulting witli several of my noble friends 
 on both sides of the House, it did appear to us, as 1 
 am sure it will to your lordships, desirable, on many 
 grounds, that the debate should be brought to a close 
 this night ; and I thought I could not better contri- 
 bute to that end than by taking the present opportu- 
 nity of addressing you. Indeed, I had scarcely any 
 choice. I am urged on by the anxiety I feel on this 
 mighty subject, which is so great, that I should hardly 
 have been able to delay the expression of my opinion 
 much longer ; if I had, I feel assured that I must have 
 lost the power to address you. This solicitude is not, 
 I can assure your lordships, diminished by my recollec- 
 tion of the great talents and brilliant exertions of those 
 by whom I have been preceded in the discussion, and 
 the consciousness of the difficulties with which I have 
 to contend in following such men. It is a deep sense 
 of these difficulties that induces me to call for your 
 patient indulgence. For although not unused to meet 
 
 * The Marquess of Cleveland and several others had risen and given way.
 
 560 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 public bodies, nay, constantly in the habit, during 
 many years, of presenting myself before great assem- 
 blies of various kinds, yet I do solemnly assure you, 
 that I never, until this moment, felt what deep respon- 
 sibility may rest on a member of the Legislature in 
 addressing either of its Houses. And if I, now stand- 
 ing with your lordships on the brink of the most 
 momentous decision that ever human assembly came 
 to, at any period of the world, and seeking to arrest 
 you, whilst it is yet time, in that position, could, by 
 any divination of the future, have foreseen in my 
 earliest years, that I should live to appear here, and to 
 act as your adviser, on a question of such awful 
 importance, not only to yourselves, but to your remo- 
 test posterity, I should have devoted every day and 
 every hour of that life to preparing myself for the 
 task which I now almost sink under, gathering from 
 the monuments of ancient experience the lessons of 
 wisdom which might guide our course at the present 
 hour, looking abroad on our own times, and these 
 not uneventful, to check, by practice, the application 
 of those lessons, chastening myself, and sinking 
 within me every infirmity of temper, every wayward- 
 ness of disposition, which might by possibility impede 
 the discharge of this most solemn duty ; but, above 
 all, eradicating from my mind every thing that, by any 
 accident, could interrupt the most perfect candour and 
 impartiality of judgment. I advance thus anxious and 
 thus humbled to the task before me ; but cheered, on 
 the other hand, with the intimate and absolute per- 
 suasion that I have no personal interest to serve, no 
 sinister views to resist, that there is nothing, in my 
 nature, or in my situation, which can cast even the 
 shadow of a shade across the broad path, I will not 
 say of legislative, but of judicial duty, in which I am 
 now to accompany your lordships.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 501 
 
 I have listened, my Lords, with the most profound 
 attention to the debate on this question, which has 
 lasted during the five past days ; and having heard 
 a vast variety of objections brought against this mea- 
 sure, and having also attended to the arguments 
 
 C3 O 
 
 which have been urged to repel those objections, I, 
 careless whether I give offence in any quarter or no, 
 must, in common fairness, say, on the one hand, that 
 I am so far moved by some of the things which I 
 have heard urged, as to be inclined towards the re- 
 consideration of several matters on which I had con- 
 ceived my mind to be fully made up ; and, on the 
 other, that in the great majority of the objections 
 which have been ingeniously raised against this Bill, 
 I can by no means concur ; but viewing them as 
 calmly and dispassionately as ever man listened to 
 the arguments advanced for and against any measure, 
 I am bound by a sense of duty to say, that those 
 objections have left my mind entirely unchanged as 
 to the bulk of the principles upon which the Bill is 
 framed. If I presumed to go through those objections, 
 or even through the majority of them, in detail, I 
 should be entering upon a tedious, and also a super- 
 fluous, work : so many of them have been removed 
 by the admirable speeches which you have already 
 heard, that I should only be wasting your time were 
 I on,e more to refute them ; I should only be doing 
 worse what my precursors have already done far 
 better. I will begin, however, with what fell from 
 a noble Earl,* with whose display I was far less 
 struck than others, because I was more accustomed 
 to it who, viewing this Bill from a remote emi- 
 nence, and not coming close, or even approaching 
 near, made a reconnaissance of it too far off to see 
 
 * Earl Dudley. 
 VOL II. 2 N
 
 562 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 even its outworks who, indulging in a vein of 
 playful and elegant pleasantry, to which no man 
 listens in private with more delight than myself, 
 knowing how well it becomes the leisure hours and 
 familiar moments of my noble friend, delivered with 
 the utmost purity of diction, and the most felicitous 
 aptness of allusion I was going to say a discourse 
 but it was an exercise, or essay of the highest merit, 
 which had only this fault that it was an essay, or 
 exercitation, on some other thesis, and not on this 
 Bill. It was as if some one had set to my noble friend, 
 whose accomplishments I know whose varied talents 
 I admire, but in whom I certainly desiderate sound- 
 ness of judgment and closeness of argument, a theme 
 de rebuspublicis, or de motu cmurn, or de novarum 
 rerum cupiditate, on change, on democracies, on 
 republicanism, on anarchy ; and on these interesting 
 but somewhat trite and even threadbare subjects, my 
 noble friend made one of the most lucid, most terse, 
 most classical, and, as far as such efforts will admit 
 of eloquence, most eloquent exercitations, that ever 
 proceeded from mortal pen. My noble friend pro- 
 ceeded altogether on a false assumption ; it was on 
 a fiction of his own brain on a device of his own 
 imagination, that he spoke throughout. He first 
 assumed that the Bill meant change and revolution, 
 and on change and revolution he prelected volumi- 
 nously and successfully. So much for the critical 
 merits of his performance ; but, practically viewed 
 regarded as an argument on the question before us 
 it is to be wholly left out of view ; it was quite beside 
 the matter. If this Bill be change, and be revo- 
 lution, there is no resisting the conclusions of my 
 noble friend. But on that point I am at issue with 
 him ; and he begins by taking the thing in dispute 
 for granted. I deny that this Bill is change in the
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. oC3 
 
 bad sense of the word ; nor docs it lead to, nor lias it 
 any connexion with, revolution, except so far as it 
 has a direct tendency to prevent revolution. 
 
 My noble friend, in the course of his essay, talked 
 to you of this Administration as one prone to change ; 
 he told you that its whole system was a system 
 of changes ; and he selected as the first change on 
 which he would ring a loud peal, that which he said 
 we had made in our system of finance. If he is 
 so averse to our making alterations in our scheme of 
 finance the very first year we have been in office, 
 what does he think, I ask, of Mr. Pitt's budgets, of 
 which never one passed without undergoing changes 
 in almost every one tax, beside those altogether aban- 
 doned? If our budget had been carried as it was 
 originally brought in, with a remission of the timber 
 duty, and the candle duty, and the coal duty, it would 
 have been distinguished beyond all others only as 
 having given substantial relief to the people on those 
 very trivial and unnecessary articles, I suppose, of 
 human life fire, and light, and lodging. Then, our 
 law reform is another change which my noble friend 
 charged the Government with being madly bent on 
 effecting. Scarcely had the Lord President of the 
 Council risen to answer the objection raised against us 
 on this score, than up started my noble friend to assert 
 that he had not pressed any such objection into his ser- 
 vice. My lords, I am not in the habit of taking a note 
 of what falls from any noble lord in debate it is not my 
 practice but by some fatality it did so happen that, 
 whilst my noble friend was speaking, I took a note of 
 his observations, of which I will take the liberty of 
 reading you the very first line. " Change and revolu- 
 tion ; all is change ; among the first law." I took 
 that note, because I was somewhat surprised at the 
 observation, knowing, as I did, that this Law Reform
 
 5G4 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 had met with the approbation of my noble friend 
 himself; and, what was yet more satisfactory to my 
 mind, it had received the sanction of your lordships, 
 and had been passed through all its stages without 
 even a division. My noble friend then told us, still 
 reconnoitering our position at a distance, or, at most, 
 partaking in an occasional skirmish, but holding him- 
 self aloof from the main battle, he told us that this 
 Bill came recommended neither by the weight of 
 ancient authority, nor by the spirit of modern refine- 
 ment ; that this attack on our present system was not 
 supported by the experience of the past, nor sanctioned 
 by any appearance of the great mind of the master 
 genius of our precursors in later times. As to the 
 weight of ancient authority, skilled as my noble friend 
 is in every branch of literary history, I am obliged to 
 tell him he is inaccurate ; and, because it may afford 
 him some consolation in this his day of discomfiture 
 and anguish, I will supply the defect which exists in 
 his historical recollections ; for an author, the first of 
 satirists in any age Dean Swift, with whom my noble 
 friend must have some sympathy, since he closely 
 imitates him in this respect, that as the Dean satirized, 
 under the name of man, a being w r ho had no exis- 
 tence save in his own imagination, so my noble friend 
 attacks, under the name of the Bill, a fancy of his own, 
 a creature of his fertile brain, and which has no earthly 
 connexion with the real ink and parchment Bill before 
 you Dean Swift, who was never yet represented as a 
 man prone to change, who was not a Radical, who was 
 not a Jacobin, (for, indeed, those terms were in his 
 day unknown ;) Dean Swift, who was not even a 
 Whig, but, in the language of the times, a regular, 
 staunch, tliick-and-thin Tory, while enumerating the 
 absurdities in our system, which required an adequate 
 and efficient remedy, says : " It is absurd that the
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. SG5 
 
 boroughs, which are decayed, and destitute both of 
 trade and population, are not extinguished ;" (or, as 
 we should say, in the language of the Bill, which was 
 as unknown to Dean Swift as it is now to my noble 
 friend, put into schedule A.), " because," adds the 
 Dean, " they return members who represent nobody 
 at all ;" so here he adopts the first branch of the 
 measure ; and next he approves of the other great 
 limb ; for the second grand absurdity which he re- 
 marks is, " that several large towns are not repre- 
 sented, though they arc filled with those who in- 
 crease mightily the trade of the realm." Then as to 
 shortening the duration of Parliaments, on which we 
 have not introduced a single provision into the Bill 
 if we had, what a cry should we have heard about the 
 statesmen in Queen Anne's day, the great men who 
 lived in the days of Blenheim, and during the period 
 sung of by my noble friend, from Blenheim to Water- 
 loo ; how we should have been taunted with the 
 Somerses and Godolphins, and their contemporaries, 
 the Swifts and the Addisons ! What would they have 
 said of such a change ? Yet what did the same Dean 
 Swift, the contemporary of Somers and Godolphin, 
 the friend of Addison, who sang the glories of 
 Blenheim, the origin of my noble friend's period, 
 what did the Dean, inspired by all the wisdom of 
 ancient times, say to shortening the duration of Parli- 
 aments? " I have a strong love for the good old fashion 
 of Gothic Parliaments, which were only of one year's du- 
 ration." Such is the ground, such the vouchers, upon the 
 authority of which my noble friend, in good set phrase, 
 sets the weight of ancient wisdom against the errors 
 of the Reformers, and triumphs in the round denial 
 that we have any thing in our favour like the sanction 
 of authority ; and it turns out, after all, that the wise 
 men of the olden time promulgated their opinions on
 
 566 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 the subject in such clear, and decisive, and vigorous 
 terms, that if they were living in our days, and giving 
 utterance to the same sentiments, they would be set 
 down rather for determined Radicals than for enemies 
 of Reform. 
 
 Then my noble friend, advancing from former times 
 to our own, asked who and what they are that form 
 the Cabinet of the day ? To such questions it would 
 be unbecoming in me to hazard a reply. I do not 
 find fault with my noble friend for asking them; I 
 admit that it is fair to ask who are they that pro- 
 pound any measure, especially when it comes in the 
 shape of a great change. The noble Earl then com- 
 plained of our poverty of genius absence of command- 
 ing talents want of master minds and even our 
 destitution of eloquence, a topic probably suggested 
 by my noble friend's* display, who opened the debate, 
 and whose efforts in that kind are certainly very 
 different from those which the noble Earl seems to 
 admire. But if it be a wise rule to ask by whom a 
 measure is propounded before you give it implicit 
 confidence, it certainly cannot be an unwise rule 
 to ask, on the other hand, who and what be they 
 by whom that measure is resisted, before you finally 
 reject it on their bare authority. Nor can I agree 
 with a noble friend of mine,f who spoke last night, 
 and who laid down one doctrine on this subject, at 
 which I marvelled greatly. It was one of his many 
 allegories for they were not metaphors, nor yet 
 similies some of them, indeed, were endless, especi- 
 ally when my noble friend took to the water, and 
 embarked us on board of his ship, for want of steam, 
 I thought we should never have got to the end of our 
 voyage. When we reply to their arguments against 
 
 * Lord Grey. -j- Lord Caernarvon.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 567 
 
 our measure, by asking what Reform they have got of 
 their own to offer, he compares us to sonic host, who, 
 having placed before his friends an uneatable dinner, 
 which they naturally found fault with, should say, 
 " Gentlemen, you are very hard to please : I have set 
 a number of dishes before you, which you cannot eat 
 now, what dishes can you dress yourselves?" My 
 noble friend says, that such an answer would be very 
 unreasonable for he asks, ingeniously enough, how 
 can the guests dress a dinner, especially when they 
 have not possession of the kitchen ? But did it never 
 strike him that the present is not the case of guests 
 called upon to eat a dinner, it is one of rival cooks 
 who want to get into our kitchen, We are here 
 all on every side cooks, a synod of cooks, (to use 
 Dr. Johnson's phrase,) and nothing but cooks ; for 
 it is the very condition of our being the bond of 
 our employment, under a common master that none 
 of us shall ever taste the dishes we are dressing. 
 The Commons House may taste it ; but can the Lords ? 
 we have nothing to do but prepare the viands. It is 
 therefore of primary importance, when the authority of 
 the two classes of rival artists is the main question, to 
 inquire what are our feats severally in our common 
 calling. I ought perhaps to ask your lordships' par- 
 don for pursuing my noble friend's allegory ; but I 
 saw that it produced an impression by the cheers it 
 excited, and I was desirous to show that it was in a 
 most extraordinary degree inapplicable to the ques- 
 tion, to illustrate which it was fetched from afar off. 
 I therefore must think myself entitled to ask who and 
 what be they that oppose us, and what dish they are 
 likely to cook for us, when once again they get pos- 
 session of the kitchen ? I appeal to any candid man 
 who now hears me, and I ask him whether, it being- 
 fair to consider who are the authors of the Bill, it is
 
 568 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 not equally fair to consider from whom the objections 
 come ? I therefore trust that any impartial man, un- 
 connected with either class of statesmen, when called 
 upon to consider our claims to confidence, before he 
 adopts our measures, should, before he repudiates us in 
 favour of our adversaries, inquire Are they likely to 
 cure the evils, and remedy the defects, of which they 
 admit the existence in our system? and are their 
 motives such as ought to win the confidence of judi- 
 cious and calmly-reflecting men ? 
 
 One noble Lord* there is whose judgment we are 
 called upon implicitly to trust, and who expressed 
 himself with much indignation, and yet with entire 
 honesty of purpose, against this measure. No man is, 
 in my opinion, more single-hearted ; no man more in- 
 corruptible. But in his present enmity to this Bill, 
 which he describes as pregnant with much mischief to 
 the constitution, he gives me reason to doubt the 
 soundness of the resolution which would take him as 
 a guide, from the fact of his having been not more than 
 five or six months ago most friendly to its provisions, 
 and expressed the most unbounded confidence in the 
 Government which proposed it. Ought not this to 
 make us pause before we place our consciences in his 
 keeping, before we surrender up our judgment to his 
 prudence, before we believe in his cry that the Bill 
 is revolution, and the destruction of the empire, 
 when we find the same man delivered diametrically 
 opposite opinions only six months ago ? 
 
 The Earl of WINCHELSEA here shouted out " No." 
 The LORD CHANCELLOR Then I have been prac- 
 tised upon, if it is not so : and the noble Earl's asser- 
 tion should be of itself sufficient to convince me that 
 I have been practised on. But I can assure the noble 
 
 * Lord Winchelsea.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 569 
 
 Earl, that this has been handed to me as an extract 
 from a speech which he made to a meeting of the 
 county of Kent, held at Maidstone, on the 24th of 
 last March : " They have not got Reform yet ; but 
 when the measure does come, as I am persuaded it 
 will come, into the law of the land " (a loud cry of 
 " No," from the Opposition Lords). Then if noble 
 Lords will not let me proceed quietly, I must begin 
 again, and this time I will go further back. The 
 speech represents the noble Earl to have said, " His 
 Majesty's Government is entitled to the thanks of the 
 country. Earl Grey, with his distinguished talents, 
 unites a political honesty not to be surpassed, and 
 leaves behind him, at an immeasurable distance, those 
 who have abandoned their principles and deceived 
 their friends. The noble Lord is entitled to the 
 eternal gratitude of his country, for the manner in 
 which he has brought forward this question. I main- 
 tain, that he deserves the support of the country at 
 large." And, my Lords, the way in which I was 
 practised on to believe that all this praise was not 
 referable to the Timber duties, but to Reform, I shall 
 now explain. It is in the next passage of the same 
 speech : " They have not got Reform yet ; but when 
 the measure does come, as I am persuaded it will 
 come, into the law of the land, it will consolidate, 
 establish, and strengthen our glorious constitution ; 
 and not only operate for the general welfare and hap- 
 piness of the country, but will also render an act of 
 justice to the great and influential body of the people. 
 The measure has not yet been introduced to that House 
 of which I am a member." (Lord Winchelsea and his 
 friends here cheered loudly.) Aye, but it had been 
 debated in the House of Commons for near a month, 
 it had been published in all books, pamphlets, and 
 newspapers, it had been discussed in all companies
 
 570 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 and societies, and I will undertake to assert, that 
 there was not one single man in the whole county 
 of Kent, who did not know that Lord John Russell's 
 Bill was a Bill for Parliamentary Reform. The 
 speech thus concludes : " When the Bill is brought 
 forward in that House of which I am a member, I 
 shall be at my post, ready to give it my most hearty 
 and cordial" opposition? no, "support." But why 
 do I allude to this speech at all? Merely to show, 
 that if those who oppose the Bill say to us, " Who are 
 you that propound it?" and make our previous con- 
 duct a ground for rejecting it, through distrust of its 
 authors, we have a right to reply to them with another 
 question, and to ask, " Who are you that resist it, and 
 what were your previous opinions regarding it ?" 
 
 Another noble Lord* has argued this question with 
 great ability and show of learning ; and if we are to 
 take him as our guide, we must also look at the pa- 
 nacea which he provides for us in case of rejection. 
 That noble Lord, looking around him on all sides 
 surveying what had occurred in the last forty or fifty 
 years, glancing above him and below him, around 
 him and behind him, watching every circumstance of 
 the past, anticipating every circumstance of the 
 future, scanning every sign of the times, taking 
 into his account all the considerations upon which a 
 lawgiver ought to reckon, regarding also the wishes, 
 the vehement desires, not to say absolute demands, of 
 the whole country for some immediate Reform, con- 
 centrates all his wisdom in this proposition, the 
 result, the practical result of all his deliberations, and 
 all his lookings about, and all his scannings of circum- 
 stances the whole produce of his thoughts, by the 
 value of which you are to try the safety of his counsels 
 
 * Lord Mansfield.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 571 
 
 namely, that you should suspend all your operations 
 on tliis Bill for two years, and, I suppose, two days, to 
 give the people what? breathing time. The noble 
 Lord takes a leaf out of the book of the noble Duke 
 near him, a leaf, which I believe the noble Duke 
 himself would now wish cancelled. The noble 
 Duke shortly before he proposed the great measure 
 of Catholic Emancipation, had said, " Before I can 
 support that measure, I should wish that the whole 
 question might sink into oblivion." But the proposi- 
 tion of the noble Earl, though based on the same 
 idea, goes still further. " Bury," says he, " this mea- 
 sure of Reform in oblivion for two years and two days, 
 and then see, good people, what 1 will do for you." 
 And then what will the noble Lord do for the good 
 people ? Why, Nothing neither more nor less than 
 Nothing. We, innocents that we were, fancied that 
 the noble Lord must, after all his promises, really 
 mean to do something ; and thought he had said some- 
 what of bribery, of doing a little about bribery, 
 which was his expression ; but when we mentioned 
 our supposition, that he really meant to go as far as to 
 support a Bill for the more effectual prevention of 
 bribery at elections, the noble Lord told us he woidd 
 do no such thing. 
 
 The EARL of MANSFIELD. I gave no opinion on 
 the point. 
 
 The LORD CHANCELLOR. Exactly so. The noble 
 Lord reserves his opinion as to whether he would put 
 down bribery for two years and two days ; and when 
 they are expired, he, perad venture, may inform us 
 whether he will give us leave to bring in a Bill to 
 prevent bribery ; not all kinds of bribery that would 
 be radical work but as far as the giving away of 
 ribands goes, leaving beer untouched, and agreeably 
 to the venerable practice of the olden time.
 
 572 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 Another noble Lord, a friend of mine, whose 
 honesty and frankness stamp all he says with still 
 greater value than it derives from mere talent,* would 
 have you believe that all the Petitions, under which 
 your table now groans, are indeed for Reform, but not 
 for this Bill, which he actually says the people dislike. 
 Now is not this a droll way for the people to act, if 
 we are to take my noble friend's statement as true? 
 First of all, it is an odd time they have taken to peti- 
 tion for Reform, if they do not like this Bill. I should 
 say that if they petition for Reform, whilst this parti- 
 cular measure is passing through the House, it is a 
 proof that the Bill contains the Reform they want. 
 Surely, when I see the good men of this country the 
 intelligent and industrious classes of the community 
 now coming forward, not by thousands but by hun- 
 dreds of thousands, I can infer nothing from their 
 conduct, but that this is the Bill, and the only Bill, 
 for which they petition ? But if they really want 
 some Reform other than the Bill proposes, is it not 
 still more unaccountable that they should one and all 
 petition, not for that other Reform, but for this very 
 measure? The proposition of my noble friend is, 
 that they love Reform in general, but hate this parti- 
 cular plan ; and the proof of it is this, that their peti- 
 tions all pray earnestly for this particular plan, and 
 say not a word of general Reform. Highly as I prize 
 the integrity of my noble friend, much as I admire 
 his good sense on other occasions, I must say, that 
 on this occasion I descry not his better judgment, and 
 I estimate how far he is a safe guide either as a wit- 
 ness to facts, or as a judge of measures, by his success 
 in the present instance ; in either capacity, I cannot 
 hesitate in recommending your Lordships not to fol- 
 
 * Loid Wharncliffe.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY HEFOHM. j?3 
 
 low him. As a witness to facts, never was failure 
 more complete. The Bill, said lie, lias no friends any- 
 where; and he mentioned Bond-street as one of his 
 walks, where he could not enter a shop without find- 
 ing its enemies abound. No sooner had Bond-street 
 escaped his lips than up comes a petition to your 
 Lordships from nearly all its shopkeepers, affirming 
 that their sentiments have been misrepresented, for 
 they are all champions of the Bill. My noble friend 
 then says, " Oh, I did not mean the shopkeepers of 
 Bond-street in particular ; I might have said any other 
 street, as St. James's equally." No sooner does 
 that unfortunate declaration get abroad, than the 
 shopkeepers of St. James's-strcet are up in arms, and 
 forth comes a petition similar to that from Bond- 
 street. My noble friend is descried moving through 
 Regent-street, and away scamper all the inhabitants, 
 fancying that he is in quest of Anti-Reformers sign 
 a requisition to the churchwardens and the house- 
 holders, one and all, declare themselves friendly to 
 the Bill. Whither shall he go what street shall lie 
 enter, in what alley shall he take refuge since the 
 inhabitants of every street, and lane, and alley, feel it 
 necessary, in self-defence, to become signers and peti- 
 tioners, as soon as he makes his appearance among 
 them ? If harassed by Reformers on land, my noble 
 friend goes down to the water, the thousand Re- 
 formers greet him, whose petition* I this day pre- 
 sented to your Lordships. If he were to get into a 
 hackney-coach, the very coachmen and their attend- 
 ants would feel it their duty to assemble and petition. 
 Wherever there is a street, an alley, a passage, nay, 
 a river, a wherry, or a hackney coach, these, because 
 inhabited, become forbidden and tabooed to my noble 
 
 * Lambeth.
 
 574 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 friend. I may meet him not on " the accustomed 
 hill," for Hay-hill, though short, has some houses on 
 its slope, but on the south side of Berkeley-square, 
 wandering "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," 
 for there he finds a street without a single inhabitant, 
 and therefore without a single friend of the Bill. If, 
 in despair, he shall flee from the town to seek the 
 solitude of the country, still will he be pursued by 
 cries of "Petition, petition! The Bill, the Bill!" 
 His flight will be through villages placarded with 
 "The Bill" his repose at inns holden by landlords 
 who will present him with the Bill he will be served 
 by Reformers in the guise of waiters pay tribute at 
 gates where petitions lie for signing and plunge into 
 his own domains to be overwhelmed with the Shef- 
 field petition, signed by 10,400 friends of the Bill. 
 
 " Me miserable ! which way shall I fly 
 Infinite wrath and infinite despair ? 
 Which way I fly, Reform myself Reform ! " 
 
 for this is the most serious part of the whole, my 
 noble friend is himself, after all, a Reformer. I 
 mention this to show that he is not more a safe guide 
 on matters of opinion than on matters of fact. He 
 is a Reformer he is not even a bit-by-bit Reformer 
 not even a gradual Reformer but that which at 
 any other time than the present would be called a 
 wholesale, and even a Radical Reformer. He deems 
 that no shadowy unsubstantial Reform, that nothing 
 but an effectual remedy of acknowledged abuses, will 
 satisfy the people of England and Scotland ; and this 
 is a fact to which I entreat the earnest and unremitting 
 attention of every man who wishes to know what 
 guides are safe to follow on this subject. Many now 
 follow men who say that Reform is necessary, and yet 
 object to this Bill as being too large ; that is, too 
 efficient. This may be very incorrect ; but it is worse ;
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 575 
 
 it is mixed up with a gross delusion, which can never 
 deceive the country ; for I will now say, once for all, 
 that every one argument which has been urged by 
 those leaders is as good against moderate Reform as 
 it is against this Bill. Not a single reason they give, 
 not a topic they handle, not an illustration they resort 
 to, not a figure of speech they use, not even a flower 
 they fling about, that does not prove or illustrate the 
 position of " No Reform:' All their speeches, from 
 beginning to end, are railing against the smallest as 
 against the greatest change, and yet all the while they 
 call themselves Reformers ! Are they then safe guides 
 for any man who is prepared to allow any Reform, 
 however moderate, of any abuse, however glaring ? 
 
 Of another noble Earl,* whose arguments, well 
 selected and ably put, were yet received with such 
 exaggerated admiration by his friends as plainly show- 
 ed how pressing were their demands for a tolerable 
 defender, we have heard it said, again and again, 
 that no answer whatever has been given to his speech. 
 I am sure I mean no disrespect to that noble Earl, 
 when I venture to remark the infinite superiority in 
 all things, but especially in argument, of such speeches 
 as those of the noble Marquisf and the noble 
 Viscount.t- The former, in his most masterly answer, 
 left but little of the speech for any other antagonist 
 to destroy. The latter, while he charmed us with the 
 fine eloquence that pervaded his discourse, and fixed 
 our thoughts by the wisdom and depth of reflection 
 that informed it, won all hearers by his candour and 
 sincerity. Little, indeed, have they left for me to 
 demolish ; yet if any thing remain, it may be as well 
 we should take it to pieces. But I am first considering 
 the noble Earl in the light of one professing to be a 
 
 * Lord Harrowby. + Marquis Lansdowne. J Viscount Melbourne.
 
 576 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 a safe guide for your Lordships. What then are his 
 claims to the praise of calmness and impartiality? 
 For the constant cry against the Government is, 
 " You are hasty, rash, intemperate men. You know 
 not what you do ; your adversaries are the true State 
 physicians ; look at their considerate deportment ; 
 imitate their solemn caution." This is the sort of 
 thing we hear in private as well as public. "See 
 such an one, he is a man of prudence, and a discreet 
 (the olden times called such a sad) man ; he is not 
 averse to all innovation, but dislikes precipitancy ; he 
 is calm ; just to all sides alike ; never gives a hasty 
 opinion ; a safe one to follow ; look how he votes." 
 I have done this on the present occasion ; and, under- 
 standing the noble Earl might be the sort of per- 
 sonage intended, I have watched him. Common con- 
 sistency was of course to be at all events expected in 
 this safe model some connexion between the pre- 
 mises and conclusion, the speech and the vote. I 
 listened to the speech, and also, with many others, 
 expected that an avowal of all, or nearly all, the 
 principles of the Bill would have ended in a vote for 
 the second reading, which might suffer the Committee 
 to discuss its details, the only subject of controversy 
 with the noble Earl. But no such thing; he is a 
 Reformer, and approves the principle, objecting to the 
 details, and, therefore, he votes against it in the lump, 
 details, principle and all. But soon after his own 
 speech closed he interrupted another, that of my 
 noble and learned friend,* to give us a marvellous 
 sample of calm and impartial judgment. What do 
 you think of the cool head the unruffled temper 
 the unbiassed mind of that man most candid and 
 most acute as he is, when not under the domination 
 
 * Lord Plunkett.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. .577 
 
 of alarm who con Id listen without even a gesture 
 of disapprobation to the speech of one noble Lord,* 
 professedly not extemporaneous, for lie, with becoming 
 though unnecessary modesty, disclaims the faculty of 
 speaking off-hand, but elaborately prepared, in answer 
 to a member of the other House, and in further 
 answer to a quarto volume, published by him silent 
 and unmoved, could hear another speech, made up of 
 extracts from the House of Commons' debates could 
 listen and make no sign when a noble Marquis f re- 
 ferred to the House of Commons' speeches of my 
 noble friend by his House of Commons' name, again 
 and again calling him Charles Grey, without even the 
 prefix of Mr. ; nay, could himself repeatedly comment 
 upon those very speeches of the other House what 
 will your Lordships say of the fatal effects of present 
 fear, in warping and distorting a naturally just mind, 
 when you find this same noble Earl interrupt the 
 Chancellor of Ireland, because he most regularly, most 
 orderly, referred to the public conduct of a Right 
 Honourable Baronet,:}: exhibited in a former Parlia- 
 ment, and now become a matter of history ? Surely, 
 surely, nothing more is wanted to show that all the 
 rashness all the heedlessness all the unreflecting 
 
 tj 
 
 precipitancy, is not to be found upon the right hand 
 of the woolsack; and that they who have hurried 
 across the sea, in breathless impatience, to throw out 
 the Bill, might probably, had they been at home, and 
 allowed themselves time for sober reflection, have 
 been found among the friends of a measure which 
 they now so acrimoniously oppose ! So much for the 
 qualifications of the noble Lords, to act safely as our 
 guides, according to the general view of the question 
 as one of mere authority, taken by my noble friend. $ 
 
 * Lord Mansfield, f Marquis Londonderry. J Sir R. Peel. Lord Dudley, 
 VOL. II. 2 O
 
 578 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, 
 
 But I am quite willing to rest the subject upon a 
 higher ground, and to take it upon reason, and not 
 upon authority. I will therefore follow the noble 
 Earl* somewhat more closely through his argument, 
 
 
 
 the boast of our antagonists. 
 
 He began with historical matter, and gave a very 
 fair and manly explanation of his family's connexion 
 with the Borough of Tiverton. This, he said, would 
 set him rectus in curia, as he phrased it. If by this he 
 meant that he should thence appear to have no inte- 
 rest in opposing the Bill, I cannot agree with him ; 
 but certainly his narrative, coupled with a few addi- 
 tions by way of reference, which may be made to it, 
 throws considerable light upon the system of rotten 
 boroughs. The influence by which his family have so 
 long returned the two members, is, it seems, personal, 
 and in no way connected with property. This may 
 be very true; for certainly the noble Lord has no 
 property within a hundred miles of the place ; yet, if 
 it is true, what becomes of the cry, raised by his 
 Lordship, about property? But let that pass the 
 influence then is personal aye, but it may be per- 
 sonal, and yet be official also. The family of the 
 noble Earl has for a long series of years been in high 
 office, ever since the time when its founder also laid 
 the foundations of the borough connexion, as Solicitor- 
 General. By some accident or other, they have always 
 been connected with the Government, as well as the 
 borough. I venture to suspect that the matter of 
 patronage may have had some share in cementing the 
 attachment of the men of Tiverton to the house of 
 Ryder. I take leave to suggest the bare possibility 
 of many such men having always held local and other 
 places of the voters and their families having always 
 
 Lord Harrowbv.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 5?0 
 
 got on in the world through that patronage. If it 
 should turn out that I am right, there may be no very 
 peculiar blame imputable to the noble Earl and his 
 Tiverton supporters ; but it adds one to the number- 
 less proofs that the borough system affords endless 
 temptations to barter political patronage for Parlia- 
 mentary power to use official influence for the pur- 
 pose of obtaining seats in the Commons, and, by 
 means of those seats, to retain that influence. 
 
 The noble Earl complained that the Reform Bill 
 shut the doors of Parliament against the eldest sons of 
 Peers, and thus deprived our successors of the best kind 
 of political education. My Lords, I freely admit the 
 justice of his panegyric upon this constitutional train- 
 ing, by far the most useful which a statesman can 
 receive ; but I deny that the measure proposed will 
 affect it will obstruct the passage to the House of 
 Commons ; it will rather clear and widen it to all, 
 who, like your Lordships' sons, ought there to come. 
 My noble friend,* who so admirably answered the 
 noble Earl, in a speech distinguished by the most 
 attractive eloquence, and which went home to every 
 heart from the honest warmth of feeling, so charac- 
 teristic of his nature, that breathed through it 
 has already destroyed this topic by referring to the 
 most notorious facts, by simply enumerating the open 
 counties represented by Peers' eldest sons. But 
 1 had rather take one instance for illustration, because 
 an individual case always strikes into the imagination, 
 and rivets itself deep in the memory. I have the 
 happiness of knowing a young nobleman whom to 
 know is highly to esteem a more virtuous, a more 
 accomplished I do not know nor have any of your 
 lordships, rich as you are in such blessings, any arrow 
 
 * Lord Goderieh.
 
 580 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 in all your quivers of which you have more reason to 
 be proud. He sat for a nomination borough ; formed 
 his own opinion ; decided for the Bill ; differed with 
 his family they excluded him from Parliament, 
 closing against him, at least that avenue to a states- 
 man's best education, and an heir-apparent's most 
 valued preparation for discharging the duties of the 
 Peerage. How did this worthy scion of a noble stock 
 seek to re-open the door thus closed, and resume his 
 political schooling, thus interrupted by the borough 
 patrons? Did he resort to another close borough, 
 to find an avenue like that which he had lost under 
 the present system, and long before the wicked Bill 
 had prevented young lords from duly finishing their 
 Parliamentary studies? No such thing. He threw 
 himself upon a large community canvassed a popu- 
 lous city and started as a candidate for the suffrages 
 of thousands, on the only ground which was open to 
 such solicitation he avowed himself a friend of the 
 Bill. Mulato nomine de te. The borough that re- 
 jected him was Tiverton the young nobleman was 
 the heir of the house of Ryder the patron was the 
 noble Earl, and the place to which the ejected member 
 resorted for the means of completing his political 
 education in one house, that he might one day be the 
 ornament of the other, was no small, rotten, nomina- 
 tion borough, but the great town of Liverpool. 
 
 LORD HARROWBY begged to set the noble and 
 learned Lord right. He was himself abroad at the 
 time, fifteen hundred miles off; and his family had 
 nothing to do with the transaction. His son was not 
 returned, because he did not offer himself. [Cries of 
 Hear /] 
 
 The LORD CHANCELLOR continued. I hope the 
 noble Lords will themselves follow the course their 
 cries seem to recommend, and endeavour to hear.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY HKFOUAI. 581 
 
 Excess of noise may possibly deter some speakers from 
 performing their duty; but my political education 
 (of which we are now speaking) lias been in the House 
 of Commons ; my habits were formed there ; and no 
 noise will stop me. I say so in tenderness to the 
 noble persons who are so clamorous ; and that, thus 
 warned, they may spare their own lungs those ex- 
 ertions which can have no effect except on my ears, 
 and perhaps to make me more tedious. As to the 
 noble Earl's statement, by way of setting me right, it 
 is wholly unnecessary, for I knew he was abroad 
 I had represented him as being abroad, and I had 
 never charged him with turning out his son. The 
 family, however, must have done it. (Lord Ilarrowby 
 said, No.) Then so much the better for my argument 
 against the system, for then the borough itself had 
 flung him out, and prevented him from having access 
 to the political school. I believe the statement that 
 the family had nothing to do with it, because the 
 noble Earl makes it ; but it would take a great deal 
 of statement to make me believe that neither the 
 patron nor the electors had any thing to do with the 
 exclusion, and that the Member had voluntarily given 
 up his seat, and indeed his office with his seat, beside 
 abandoning his political studies, when he could have 
 continued them as representative of his father's 
 borough. 
 
 But the next argument of the noble Earl 1 am, 
 above all, anxious to grapple with, because it brings 
 me at once to a direct issue with him, upon the great 
 principle of the measure. The grand charge iterated 
 by him, and re-echoed by his friends, is, that popula- 
 tion, not property, is assumed, by the Bill, as the 
 basis of representation. Now, this is a mere fallacy, 
 and a gross fallacy. I will not call it a wilful mis- 
 statement ; but 1 will demonstrate that two perfectly
 
 .582 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 different things are, in different parts of this short 
 proposition, carefully confounded, and described under 
 the same equivocal name. If, by basis of representa- 
 tion is meant the ground upon which it was deemed 
 right, by the framers of the Bill, that some places 
 should send Members to Parliament, and others not, 
 then I admit that there is some foundation for the 
 assertion ; but then it only applies to the new towns, 
 and also it has no bearing whatever upon the question. 
 For the objection and I think the sound objection 
 to taking mere population as a criterion in giving the 
 elective franchise, is, that such a criterion gives you 
 electors without a qualification, and is, in fact, universal 
 suffrage. And herein, my lords, consists the grievous 
 unfairness of the statement I am sifting ; it purposely 
 mixes together different matters, and clothes them 
 with an ambiguous covering, in order, by means of 
 the confusion and the disguise, to insinuate that uni- 
 versal suffrage is at the root of the Bill. Let us strip 
 off this false garb. Is there in the Bill any thing 
 resembling universal suffrage ? Is it not framed upon 
 the very opposite principles? In the counties, the 
 existing qualification by freehold is retained in its 
 fullest extent ; but the franchise is extended to the 
 other kinds of property, copyhold and leasehold. It 
 is true that tenants at will are also to enjoy it, and 
 their estate is so feeble, in contemplation of law, that 
 one can scarce call it property. But whose fault is 
 that ? Not the authors of the Bill, for they deemed 
 that terms of years alone should give a vote ; but they 
 were opposed and defeated in this by the son of my 
 noble friend* near me, and his fellow labourers against 
 the measure. Let us now look to the borough qua- 
 lification. (Some noise from conversation here took 
 
 * The Duke of Buckingham.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY HKKORM. 58a 
 
 place.} Noble lords must be aware that the Chancel- 
 lor, in addressing* your Lordships, stands in a peculiar 
 situation. He alone speaks among his adversaries. 
 Other peers are at least secure against being inter- 
 rupted by the conversation of those in their immedi- 
 ate neighbourhood. And for myself, I had far rather 
 confront any distant cheers, however hostile, than be 
 harassed by the talk of those close by. No practice 
 in the House of Commons can ever accustom a person 
 to this mode of annoyance, and I expect it, in fair- 
 ness, to cease. 
 
 To resume the subject where I was forced to break 
 off. I utterly deny that population is the test, and 
 property disregarded, in arranging the borough repre- 
 sentation. The franchise is conferred upon house- 
 holders only. Is not this a restriction ? Even if the 
 right of voting had been given to all householders, 
 still the suffrage would not have been universal ; it 
 would have depended on property, not on numbers ; 
 and it would have been a gross misrepresentation to 
 call population the basis of the Bill. But its framers 
 restricted that generality, and determined that pro- 
 perty, to a certain considerable amount, should alone 
 entitle to elect. It is true they did not take freehold 
 tenure of land, as that qualification is inconsistent 
 with town rights nor did they take a certain amount 
 of capital as the test for that, beside its manifest in- 
 convenience, would be a far more startling novelty 
 than any the measure can be charged with. But the 
 renting a 10 house is plainly a criterion both of pro- 
 perty and respectability. It is said, indeed, that we 
 have pitched this qualification too low but are we 
 not now debating on the principle of the Bill ? And 
 is not the Committee the place for discussing whether 
 that principle should be carried into effect by a quali- 
 fication of 10, or a higher? I have no objection,
 
 584 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 however, to consider this mere matter of detail here ; 
 and if I can satisfy the noble Earl, that all over 
 England, except in London and a few other great 
 towns, 10 is not too low, I may expect his vote after 
 all. Now, in small towns I speak in the hearing of 
 noble Lords who are well acquainted with the inhabi- 
 tants of them, persons living in 10 houses are in 
 easy circumstances. This is undeniably the general 
 case. In fact, the adoption of that sum was not a 
 matter of choice. We had originally preferred 20, 
 but when we came to inquire, it appeared that very 
 large places had a most inconsiderable number of such 
 houses. One town, for instance, with 17,000 or 18,000 
 inhabitants, had not twenty who rented houses rated 
 at 20 a-year. Were we to destroy one set of close 
 boroughs, the Old Sarums and Gattons, which had at 
 least possession to plead for their title, in order to 
 create another new set of boroughs just as close, 
 though better peopled ? In the large town I have 
 alluded to, there were not three hundred persons rated 
 at 10. Occupiers of such houses, in some country 
 tow r ns, fill the station of inferior shopkeepers in 
 some, of the better kind of tradesmen here they are 
 foremen of workshops there, artisans earning good 
 wages sometimes, but seldom, labourers in full work : 
 generally speaking, they are a class above want, having 
 comfortable houses over their heads, and families and 
 homes to which they are attached. An opinion has 
 been broached, that the qualification might be varied 
 in different places, raised in the larger towns, and 
 lowered in the smaller. To this I myself, at one time, 
 leant very strongly ; I deemed it a great improvement 
 of the measure. If I have since yielded to the objec- 
 tions which were urged, and the authorities brought 
 to bear against me, this I can very confidently affirm, 
 that if any one shall propound it in the Committee, he
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 585 
 
 will find in mo, 1 will not say a supporter, but certainly 
 an ample security, that the doctrine, which I deem 
 important, shall undergo a full, and candid and scruti- 
 nizing discussion. I speak for myself only I will not 
 even for myself say, that were the Committee so to 
 modify the Bill, I would accept it thus changed. 
 Candour prevents me from holding out any such pros- 
 pect ; but I do not feel called upon to give any deci- 
 sive opinion now upon this branch of the details, not 
 deeply affecting the principle ; only, I repeat empha- 
 tically, that I shall favour its abundant consideration 
 in the proper place the Committee. 
 
 My Lords, I have admitted that there is some truth 
 in the assertion of population being made the criterion 
 of title in towns to send representatives, though it has 
 no application to the present controversy. Some 
 criterion we were forced to take ; for nobody holds 
 that each place should choose members severally. A 
 line must be drawn somewhere, and how could we find 
 a better guide than the population ? That is the gene- 
 ral test of wealth, extent, importance ; and therefore 
 substantially, though not in name, it is really the test 
 of property. Thus, after all, by taking population as 
 the criterion of what towns shall send members, we get 
 at property by almost the only possible road, and pro- 
 perty becomes substantially the basis of the title to 
 send representatives ; as it confessedly is, in name as 
 well as in substance, the only title to concur in the 
 election of them. The whole foundation of the 
 measure, therefore, and on which all its parts rest, is 
 property alone, and not at all population. 
 
 But then, says the noble Earl, the population of a 
 town containing 4000 souls, may, for any provision to 
 the contrary in the Bill, be all paupers ! Good God ! 
 Did ever man tax his ingenuity so hard to find an 
 absurdly extreme case ? What ! a town of 1000
 
 586 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 paupers ! 4000 inhabitants, and all quartered on the 
 rates ! Then who is to pay the rates ? But if extreme 
 cases are to be put on the one side, why may not I put 
 one on the other ? What say you to close boroughs 
 coming, by barter or sale, into the hands of Jew job- 
 bers, gambling loan-contractors, and scheming attor- 
 neys, for the materials of extreme cases ? What secu- 
 rity do these afford against the machinations of aliens 
 aye, and of alien enemies ? What against a Nabob 
 of Arcot's parliamentary and financial speculations? 
 What against that truly British potentate naming 
 eighteen or twenty of his tools members of the British 
 House of Commons ? But is this an extreme case, 
 one that stands on the outermost verge of possibility, 
 and beyond all reach of probable calculation ? Why, 
 it once happened ; the Nabob Wallajah Cawn Ba- 
 hauder had actually his eighteen or twenty members 
 bought with a price, and sent to look after his pecu- 
 niary interests, as honest and independent Members 
 of Parliament. Talk now of the principle of property 
 the natural influence of great families the sacred 
 rights of the aristocracy the endearing ties of neigh- 
 bourhood the paramount claims of the landed inte- 
 rest ! Talk of British duties to discharge British 
 trusts to hold British rights to exercise ! Behold 
 the sovereign of the Carnatic, who regards nor land 
 nor rank, nor connexion, nor open county, nor popu- 
 lous city ; but his eye fastens on the time-honoured 
 relics of departed greatness and extinct population 
 the walls of Sarum and Gatton ; he arms his right 
 hand with their venerable parchments, and, pointing 
 with his left to a heap of star pagodas too massive to 
 be carried along, lays siege to the citadel of the con- 
 stitution, the Commons House of Parliament, and its 
 gates fly open to receive his well disciplined band. 
 Am I right in the assertion, that a foreign prince
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 58? 
 
 obtaining votes in Parliament, under the present 
 system, is no extreme case ? Am I wrong in treat- 
 ing with scorn the noble Earl's violent supposition 
 of a town with 4000 souls, and all receiving parish 
 relief? 
 
 But who are they that object to the Bill its disre- 
 gard of property ? Is a care for property that which 
 peculiarly distinguishes the system tlmj uphold ? 
 Surely the conduct of those who contend that pro- 
 perty alone ought to be considered in fixing the rights 
 of election, and yet will not give up one freeman of a 
 corporation to be disfranchised, presents to our view a 
 miracle of inconsistency. The right of voting, in 
 freemen, is wholly unconnected with any property of 
 any kind whatever ; the being a freeman, is no test of 
 being worth one shilling. Freemen may be, and very 
 often are, common day-labourers, spending every week 
 their whole weekly gains menial servants, having 
 the right by birth men living in alms-houses parish 
 paupers. All who have been at contested elections 
 for corporate towns know that the question constantly 
 raised is upon the right to vote of freemen receiving 
 parish relief. The voters in boroughs, under the pre- 
 sent system, are such freemen, non-resident as well as 
 resident (a great abuse, because the source of a most 
 grievous expense to candidates), inhabitants paying 
 scot and lot, which is only an imperfect form of the 
 qualification intended by the Bill to be made univer- 
 sal, under wholesome restrictions and burgage 
 tenants. I have disposed of the two first classes ; 
 there remains the last. Burgages, then, are said to be 
 property, and, no doubt, they resemble it a good deal 
 more than the rights of freemen do. In one sense, 
 property they certainly are. But whose ? The Lord's 
 who happens to have them on his estate. Are they 
 the property of the voter, who, to qualify him for the
 
 588 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 purposes of election, receives his title by a mock con- 
 veyance at two o'clock in the afternoon, that he may 
 vote at three for the nominee of the real owner, and at 
 four, returns it to the Solicitor of that owner, to be ready 
 for the like use at the next election ? This is your 
 present right of voting by burgage, and this you call 
 a qualification by virtue of property. It is a gross 
 abuse of terms. But it is worse : it is a gross abuse 
 of the Constitution a scandal and an outrage no 
 longer to be endured. That a Peer, or a speculating 
 Attorney, or a jobbing Jew, or a gambler from the 
 Stock Exchange, by vesting in his own person the old 
 walls of Sarum, a few pigsties at Bletchingly, or a 
 summer-house at Gatton, and making fictitious and 
 collusive and momentary transfers of them to an agent 
 or two, for the purpose of enabling them to vote as if 
 they had the property, of which they all the while 
 know they have not the very shadow, is in itself a 
 monstrous abuse, in the form of a gross and barefaced 
 cheat; and becomes the most disgusting hypocrisy, 
 when it is seriously treated as a franchise by virtue of 
 property. I will tell those Peers, Attorneys, Jobbers, 
 Loan-contractors, and the Nabob's agents, if such 
 there still be among us, that the time is come when 
 these things can no longer be borne and an end 
 must at length be put to the abuse which suffers the 
 most precious rights of Government to be made the 
 subject of common barter the high office of making 
 laws to be conveyed by traffic, pass by assignment 
 under a commission of bankrupt, or the powers of an 
 insolvent act, or be made over for a gaming debt. 
 If any one can be found to say that the abuses which 
 enable a man to put his livery servants in the House 
 of Commons as lawgivers, are essential parts of the 
 British Constitution, he must have read its history 
 with better eyes than mine ; and if such person be
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 580 
 
 right, I certainly am wrong but if I am, then also arc 
 all those other persons far more in the wrong, who have 
 so lavishly, in all times and countries, sung the praises 
 of that Constitution. I well remember, when I argued 
 at that Bar the great case of my Noble friend claim- 
 ing a barony by tenure* it was again and again pressed 
 upon me by the noble and learned Earl,f as a conse- 
 quence of the argument absurd enough to refute it 
 entirely, that a seat in this House might become vested, 
 as he said, in a tailor, as the assignee of an insolvent's 
 estate and effects. I could only meet this by humbly 
 suggesting, that the anomaly, the grossness of Avhich 
 I was forced to admit, already existed in every day's 
 practice ; and I reminded your Lordships of the 
 manner in which seats in the other House of the 
 Legislature are bought and sold. A tailor may by 
 purchase, or by assignment under a bankruptcy, ob- 
 tain the right of sending .Members to Parliament, 
 and he may nominate himself and the case has 
 actually happened. A waiter at a gambling house 
 did sit for years in that House, holding his borough 
 property, for aught I can tell, in security of a gam- 
 bling debt By means of that property, and right 
 of voting, he advanced himself to the honours 
 of the baronetcy. Fine writing has been defined to 
 be right words in right places ; so may fine acting be 
 said to consist of right votes in right places, that is, 
 on pinching questions ; and in the discharge of my 
 professional duty on the occasion of which I am 
 speaking, I humbly ventured to approach a more 
 awful subject, and to suggest the possibility of the 
 worthy baronet rising still higher in the state ; and, by 
 persisting in his course of fine acting and judicious 
 voting, obtaining, at length, a seat among your lord- 
 
 Lord Scgravc. -f- Earl of Eldon,
 
 590 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 ships which he would then have owed to a gambling 
 debt. Certain it is, that the honours of the Peerage 
 have been bestowed before now upon right voters in 
 right places. While I am on this subject, I cannot 
 but advert to the remarks of my noble and learned 
 friend* who was elevated from the bench to this House, 
 and who greatly censured the Ministers for creating 
 some peers who happened to agree with them in 
 politics. The coronation was, as all men know, forced 
 upon us ; nothing could be more against our will ; but 
 the Opposition absolutely insisted on having one, to 
 show their loyalty ; a creation of Peers was the neces- 
 sary consequence, and the self-same number were 
 made as at the last coronation, ten years ago. But we 
 did not make our adversaries peers we did not bring- 
 in a dozen men to oppose us that is my noble friend's 
 complaint ; and we did not choose our peers for such 
 merits as alone, according to his view, have always 
 caused men to be ennobled. Merit, no doubt, has 
 opened to many the doors of this House. To have 
 bled for their country to have administered the 
 highest offices of the State to have dispensed justice 
 on the Bench to have improved mankind by arts in- 
 vented, or enlightened them by science extended 
 to have adorned the world by letters, or won the more 
 imperishable renown of virtue these, no doubt, are the 
 highest and the purest claims to public honours ; and 
 from some of these sources are derived the titles of 
 some among us to others, the purest of all, none can 
 trace their nobility and upon not any one of them 
 can one single Peer in a score rest the foundation of 
 his seat in this place. Service without a scar in the poli- 
 tical campaign constant presence in the field of battle 
 at St. Stephen's chapel absence from all other fights, 
 
 * Lord Wynford.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 591 
 
 from " Blenheim down to Waterloo" but above all, 
 steady discipline right votes in right places these 
 are the precious, but happily not rare qualities, which 
 have generally raised men to the Peerage. For these 
 qualities, the gratitude of Mr. Pitt showered down 
 his Baronies by the score, and I do not suppose he 
 ever once so much as dreamt of ennobling a man who 
 had ever been known to give one vote against him. 
 
 My Lords, I have been speaking of the manner in 
 which owners of boroughs traffic, and exercise the 
 right of sending Members to Parliament. I have 
 dwelt on no extreme cases ; I have adverted to what 
 passes every day before our eyes. See now the, fruits 
 of the system, also by every day's experience. The 
 Crown is stript of its just weight in the Government 
 of the country, by the masters of rotten boroughs ; 
 they may combine ; they do combine, and their 
 union enables them to dictate their own terms. The 
 people are stript of their most precious rights, by the 
 masters of rotten boroughs for they have usurped 
 the elective franchise, and thus gained an influence in 
 Parliament which enables them to prevent its restora- 
 tion. The best interests of the country are sacrificed 
 by the masters of rotten boroughs for their nominees 
 must vote according to the interest not of the nation 
 at large, whom they affect to represent, but of a few 
 individuals, whom alone they represent in reality. But 
 so perverted have men's minds become, by the gross 
 abuse to which they have been long habituated, that 
 the grand topic of the noble Earl,* and other debaters 
 the master-key which instantly unlocked all the 
 sluices of indignation in this quarter of the House 
 against the measure which never failed, how often 
 soever used, to let loose the wildest cheers, has been 
 
 Lord Ilarrowbv.
 
 592 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 that our Reform will open the right of voting to 
 vast numbers, and interfere with the monopoly of the 
 few ; while we invade, as it is pleasantly called, the 
 property of the Peers and other borough-holders. 
 Why, say they, it absolutely amounts to rcpreseuta^ 
 tion ! And wherefore should it not, I say ? and what 
 else ought it to be ? Are we not upon the question of 
 representation and none other? Are we not dealing 
 with the subject of a representative body for the 
 people ? The question is, how we may best make the 
 people's House of Parliament represent the people ; 
 and, in answer to the plan proposed, we hear nothing 
 but the exclamations " Why, this scheme of yours is 
 rank representation ! It is downright election ! It is 
 neither more nor less than giving the people a voice 
 in the choice of their own representatives ! It is 
 absolutely that most strange .unheard-of unima- 
 gined and most abominable intolerable incre- 
 dibly-inconsistent and utterly pernicious novelty, that 
 the members chosen should have electors, and that 
 the constituents should have something to do with 
 returning the members !" 
 
 But we are asked, at what time of our history any 
 such system as we propose to establish was ever 
 known in England, and this appeal, always confidently 
 made, was never more pointedly addressed than by 
 my noble and learned friend* to me. Now, I need 
 not remind your Lordships, that the present distri- 
 bution of the right to send Members, is anything 
 rather than very ancient ; still less has it been un- 
 changed. Henry VIII. created twenty boroughs 
 Edward VI. made twelve good Queen Elizabeth 
 created one hundred and twenty, revived forty-eight ; 
 and in all there were created and revived two hundred 
 
 * Lord Wvnford.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 593 
 
 down to the Restoration. I need only read the 
 words of Mr. Prynnc upon the remote antiquity of 
 our Borough System. He enumerates sixty-four 
 boroughs fourteen in Cornwall alone as all new; 
 and, he adds, " for the most part, the Universities 
 excepted, very mean, poor, inconsiderable boroughs, 
 set up by the late returns, practices of sheriffs, or 
 ambitious gentlemen desiring to serve them, courting, 
 bribing, feasting them for their voices, not by pre- 
 scription or charter (some few excepted), since the 
 reign of Edward IV., before whose reign they never 
 elected or returned members to any English Parlia- 
 ment, as now they do." 
 
 Such then is the old and venerable distribution of 
 representation time out of mind, had and enjoyed in 
 Cornwall and in England at large. Falmouth and 
 Bossiney, Lostwithiel and Grampound, may, it seems, 
 be enfranchised, and welcome, by the mere power of 
 the Crown. But let it be proposed to give Birming- 
 ham and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, Members 
 by an act of the Legislature, and the air resounds 
 with cries of revolution ! 
 
 But I am challenged to prove that the present 
 system, as regards the elective franchise, is not the 
 ancient Parliamentary Constitution of the country 
 upon pain, says my noble and learned friend, of 
 judgment going against me if I remain silent. My 
 Lords, I will not keep silence, neither will I answer 
 in my own person, but I will refer you to a higher 
 authority, the highest known in the law, and in its 
 best days, when the greatest lawyers were the greatest 
 patriots. Here is the memorable report of the com- 
 mittee of the Commons, in ] 623-4, of which committee 
 Mr. Sergeant Glanville was the chairman, of which 
 report he was the author. Among its members were 
 the most celebrated names in the law Coke, and 
 VOL. n. 2 P
 
 594 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 Selden, and Finch, and Noy, afterwards Attorney- 
 General, and of known monarchical principles. The 
 first Resolution is this : 
 
 " There being no certain custom, nor prescription, 
 who should be electors, and who not, we must have 
 recourse to common right, which, to this purpose, was 
 held to be, that more than the freeholders only ought 
 to have voices in the election ; namely, all men inha- 
 bitants, householders, resiants within the borough." 
 
 What then becomes of the doctrine that our Bill is 
 a mere innovation that by the old law of England, 
 inhabitants householders had no right to vote that 
 owners of burgage tenements, and freemen of corpo- 
 rations, have in all times exclusively had the fran- 
 chise? Burgage tenants, it is true, of old had the 
 right, but in the way I have already described not 
 as now, the nominal and fictitious holders for an hour 
 merely for election purposes, but the owners of each 
 the real and actual proprietors of the tenement. 
 Freemen never had it at all, till they usurped upon 
 the inhabitants and thrust them out. But every 
 householder voted in the towns without regard to 
 value, as before the 8th of Henry VI. every freeholder 
 voted without regard to value in the counties not 
 merely 10 householders, as we propose to restrict 
 the right, but the holder of a house worth a shilling, 
 as much as he whose house was worth a thousand 
 pounds. But I have been appealed to ; and I will 
 take upon me to affirm, that if the Crown were to 
 issue a writ to the Sheriff, commanding him to send 
 his precept to Birmingham or Manchester, requiring 
 those towns to send burgesses to Parliament, the votes 
 of all inhabitant householders must needs be taken, 
 according to the exigency of the writ and precept 
 the right of voting at common law, and independent 
 of any usurpation upon it, belonging to every resident
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 595 
 
 householder. Arc, then, the King's Ministers innova- 
 tors revolutionists wild projectors idle dreamers 
 of dreams and feigners of fancies, when they restore 
 the ancient common law right, but not in its ancient 
 common law extent, for they limit, fix, and contract 
 it? They add a qualification of 10 to restrain it, as 
 our forefathers, in the fifteenth century, restrained the 
 county franchise by the freehold qualification. 
 
 But then we hear much against the qualification 
 adopted that is, the particular sum fixed upon and 
 the noble Earl* thinks it will only give us a set of 
 constituents busied in gaining their daily bread, and 
 having no time to study, and instruct themselves on 
 state affairs. My noble friend toof , who lives near 
 Birmingham, and may therefore be supposed to know 
 his own neighbours better than we can, sneers at the 
 statesmen of Birmingham and at the philosophers of 
 Manchester. He will live I tell him he will live to 
 learn a lesson of practical wisdom from the statesmen 
 of Birmingham, and a lesson of forbearance from the 
 philosophers of Manchester. My noble friend was 
 ill-advised, when he thought of displaying his talent 
 for sarcasm upon 120,000 people in the one place, 
 and 180,000 in the other. He did little, by such 
 exhibitions, towards gaining a stock of credit for the 
 order he belongs to little towards conciliating for 
 the aristocracy which he adorns, by pointing his little 
 epigrams against such mighty masses of the people. 
 Instead of meeting their exemplary moderation, their 
 respectful demeanour, their affectionate attachment, 
 their humble confidence, evinced in every one of the 
 petitions, wherewithal they have in myriads approach- 
 ed the House, with a return of kindness of courtesy 
 even of common civility ; he has thought it be- 
 
 * Lord Hurrowby. + Lord Dudley.
 
 596 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 coming and discreet to draw himself up in the pride 
 of hexameter and pentameter verse, skill in classic 
 authors, the knack of turning fine sentences, and 
 to look down with derision upon the knowledge of 
 his unrepresented fellow-countrymen in the weightier 
 matters of practical legislation. For myself, I too 
 know where they are defective ; I have no desire ever 
 to hear them read a Latin line, or hit off in the mother 
 tongue any epigram, whether in prose or in numerous 
 verse. In these qualities they and I freely yield the 
 palm to others. I, as their representative, yield it. 
 I once stood as such elsewhere, because they had none 
 of their own ; and though a noble Earl* thinks they 
 suffer nothing by the want, I can tell him they did 
 severely suffer in the greatest mercantile question of 
 the day, the Orders in Council, when they were fain 
 to have a professional advocate for their representa- 
 tive, and were only thus allowed to make known their 
 complaints to Parliament. Again representing them 
 here, for them I bow to my noble friend's immeasur- 
 able superiority in all things, classical or critical. In 
 book lore in purity of diction in correct prosody 
 even in elegance of personal demeanour, I and they, in 
 his presence, hide, as well we may, our diminished heads. 
 But to say that I will take my noble friend's judgment 
 on any grave practical subject, on any thing touch- 
 ing the great interests of our commercial country, 
 or any of those manly questions which engage the 
 statesman, the philosopher in practice ; to say that 
 I could ever dream of putting the noble Earl's 
 opinions, aye, or his knowledge, in any comparison 
 with the bold, rational, judicious, reflecting, natural, 
 and, because natural, the trustworthy opinions of those 
 honest men, who always give their strong natural 
 
 * Lord Harrowbv.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 597 
 
 sense fair play, having- no affectations to warp their 
 judgment to dream of any such comparison as this, 
 would be, on my part, a flattery far too gross for any 
 courtesy or a blindness which no habits of friendship 
 could excuse ! 
 
 When I hear so much said of the manufacturers 
 and artisans being an inferior race in the political 
 world, I, who well know the reverse to be the fact, 
 had rather not reason with their contemners, nor give 
 my own partial testimony in their favour ; but I will 
 read a letter which I happen to have received within 
 the three last days, and since the Derby meeting. 
 " Some very good speeches were delivered," says the 
 writer, " and you will perhaps be surprised when I 
 tell you that much the best was delivered by a com- 
 mon mechanic. He exposed, with great force of 
 reasoning, the benefits which the lower classes would 
 derive from the Reform Bill, and the interest they 
 had in being well governed. Not a single observation 
 escaped him, during a long speech, in the slightest 
 degree disrespectful to the House of Lords, and he 
 showed as much good taste and good feeling as he 
 could have done had he been a Memberof St. Stephen's. 
 He is of course a man of talent ; but there are many 
 others also to be found, not far behind him. The feel- 
 ing in general is, that their capacity to judge of poli- 
 tical measures is only despised by those who do not 
 know them." These men were far from imputing to 
 any of your Lordships, at that time, a contempt for 
 their capacities. They had not heard the speech of 
 the noble Earl, and they did not suspect any man 
 in this House of an inclination to despise them. They 
 did, however, ascribe some such contemptuous feelings 
 - horresco referens to a far more amiable portion of 
 the aristocracy. " They think," pursues the writer, 
 " they are only treated with contempt by a few
 
 598 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 women (I suppress the epithets employed), who, be- 
 cause they set the tone of fashion in London, think 
 they can do so here too." 
 
 The noble Earl behind* addressed one observation 
 to your Lordships, which I must in fairness confess I 
 do not think is so easily answered as those I have 
 been dealing with. To the Crown, he says, belongs 
 the undoubted right, by the Constitution, of appoint- 
 ing its Ministers and the other public servants ; and 
 it ought to have a free choice, among the whole com- 
 munity, of the men fittest to perform the varied offices 
 of the executive government. But, he adds, it may 
 so happen, that the choice having fallen on the most 
 worthy, his constituents, when he vacates his seat, 
 may not re-elect him, or he may not be in Parliament 
 at the time of his promotion ; in either case he is 
 excluded till a general election ; and even at a general 
 election, a discharge of unpopular, but necessary duties, 
 may exclude him from a seat through an unjust and 
 passing, and, possibly, a local disfavour with the 
 electors. I have frankly acknowledged that I feel 
 the difficulty of meeting this inconvenience with an 
 apt and safe remedy, without a great innovation upon 
 the elective principle. In the Committee, others may 
 be able to discover some safe means of supplying the 
 defect. The matter deserves fuller consideration, and 
 I shall be most ready to receive any suggestion upon 
 it. But one thing I have no difficulty in stating, 
 Even should the evil be found remedyless, and that I 
 have only the choice between taking the Reform with 
 this inconvenience, or perpetuating that most corrupt 
 portion of our system, condemned from the time of 
 Swift down to this day, and which even the most 
 moderate and bit-by-bit Reformers have now aban- 
 
 * Lord Harrowhv.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 500 
 
 doned to its fate my mind is made up, and 1 cheer- 
 fully prefer the Reform. 
 
 The noble Earl* has told my noble friend at the 
 head of the Government,! that he might have occu- 
 pied a most enviable position, had he only abstained 
 from meddling with Parliamentary Reform, lie might 
 have secured the support, and met the wishes, of all 
 parties. " He stood," says the noble Earl, " between 
 the living and the dead."| All the benefit of this 
 influence, and this following, it seems, my noble friend 
 has forfeited by the measure of Reform. My Lords, 
 I implicitly believe the noble Lord's assertion, as far 
 as regards himself. I know him to be sincere in these 
 expressions, not only because he tells me so, which is 
 enough, but because facts are within my knowledge, 
 thoroughly confirming the statement. His support, 
 and that of one or two respectable persons around 
 him, we should certainly have had. Believe me, my 
 Lords, we fully appreciated the value of the sacrifice 
 we made ; it was not without a bitter pang that we 
 made up our minds to forego this advantage. But I 
 cannot so far flatter those Noble persons, as to say that 
 their support would have made the Government suffi- 
 ciently strong in the last Parliament. Honest, and 
 useful, and creditable as it would have been, it never 
 could have enabled us to go on for a night without 
 the support of the people. I do not mean the popu- 
 lace the mob : I never have bowed to them, though 
 I never have testified any unbecoming contempt of 
 them. Where is the man who has yielded less to 
 their demands than he who now addresses you ? Have 
 
 * Lord Harrowby. -j- Lord Grey. 
 
 * This is a misapplication, apparently, of the noblu allusion of one of our 
 greatest orators (Mr. Wilberforce), who said of Mr. Pitt and Revolution" He 
 sfood bdivccn the liiiny and the d(ail, and the plague teas stayed." 1
 
 600 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 I not opposed their wishes again and again ? Have I 
 not disengaged myself from them on their most 
 favourite subject, and pronounced a demonstration, as 
 I deemed it, of the absurdity and delusion of the 
 Ballot ? Even in the most troublous times of party, 
 who has gone less out of his course to pay them court, 
 or less submitted his judgment to theirs? But if 
 there is the mob, there is the people also. I speak 
 now of the middle classes of those hundreds of 
 thousands of respectable persons the most numerous, 
 and by far the most wealthy order in the community ; 
 for if all your Lordships' castles, manors, rights of 
 warren and rights of chase, with all your broad acres, 
 were brought to the hammer, and sold at fifty years' 
 purchase, the price would fly up and kick the beam 
 when counterpoised by the vast and solid riches of 
 those middle classes, who are also the genuine deposi- 
 taries of sober, rational, intelligent, and honest English 
 feeling. Unable though they be to round a period, 
 or point an epigram, they are solid, right-judging men, 
 and, above all, not given to change. If they have a 
 fault, it is that error on the right side, a suspicion of 
 state quacks a dogged love of existing institutions 
 a perfect contempt of all political nostrums. They 
 will neither be led astray by false reasoning, nor de- 
 luded by impudent flattery : but so neither will they 
 be scared by classical quotations, or browbeaten by 
 fine sentences ; and as for an epigram, they care as 
 little for it as they do for a cannon ball. Grave in- 
 telligent rational fond of thinking for themselves 
 -they consider a subject long before they make up 
 their minds on it ; and the opinions they are thus slow 
 to form they are not swift to abandon. It is an egre- 
 gious folly to fancy that the popular clamour for Re- 
 form, or whatever name you please to give it, could 
 have been silenced by a mere change of Ministers.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 601 
 
 The body of the people, such as I have distinguished 
 and described them, had weighed the matter well, and 
 they looked to the Government and to the Parliament 
 for an effectual Reform. Doubtless they are not the 
 only classes who so felt ; at their backs were the 
 humbler and numerous orders of the State ; and 
 may God of his infinite mercy avert any occasion for 
 rousing the might which in peaceful times slumbers in 
 their arms ! To the people, then, it was necessary, 
 and it was most fit, that the Government should look 
 steadily for support ; not to save this or that adminis- 
 tration ; but because, in my conscience, I do believe 
 that no man out of the precincts of Bethlem Hospital, 
 nay, no thinking man, not certainly the noble Duke, 
 a most sagacious and reflecting man, can, in these 
 times, dream of carrying on any Government in despite 
 of those middle orders of the State. Their support 
 must be sought, if the Government would endure- 
 the support of the people, as distinguished from the 
 populace, but connected with that populace, who look 
 up to them as their kind and natural protectors. The 
 middle class, indeed, forms the link which connects 
 the upper and the lower orders, and binds even your 
 Lordships with the populace, whom some of you arc 
 wont to despise. This necessary support of the coun- 
 try it was our duty to seek (and I trust we have not 
 sought it in vain), by salutary reforms, not merely in 
 the representation, but in all the branches of our 
 financial, our commercial, and our legal polity. But 
 when the noble Earl talks of the Government being 
 able to sustain itself by the support of himself and his 
 friends, does he recollect the strong excitement which 
 prevailed last winter? Could we have steered the 
 vessel of the State safely through that excitement, 
 either within doors or without, backed by no other 
 support ? I believe he was then on the Bay of Naples,
 
 602 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 and he possibly thought all England was slumbering 
 like that peaceful lake when its state was more like 
 the slumbers of the mountain upon its margin. Stand 
 between the living and the dead, indeed ! Possibly 
 we might ; for we found our supporters among the 
 latter class, and our bitter assailants among the for- 
 mer. True it is, the noble Earl would have given us 
 his honest support ; his acts would have tallied with 
 his professions. But can this be said of others ? Did 
 they, who used nearly the same language, and avowed 
 the same feelings, give anything to the Government, 
 but the most factious opposition ? Has the noble 
 Earl never heard of their conduct upon the Timber 
 duties, when, to thwart the Administration, they ac- 
 tually voted against measures devised by themselves 
 aye, and threw them out by their division ? Excep- 
 tions there were, no doubt, and never to be mentioned 
 without honour to their names, some of the most noble 
 that this House, or indeed any country of Europe can 
 boast.* They would not, for spiteful purposes, suffer 
 themselves to be dragged through the mire of such 
 vile proceedings, and conscientiously refused to join 
 in defeating the measures themselves had planned. 
 These were solitary exceptions ; the rest, little scru- 
 pulous, gave up all to wreak their vengeance on the 
 men who had committed the grave offence, by politi- 
 cians not to be forgiven, of succeeding them in their 
 offices. I do not then think that in making our elec- 
 tion to prefer the favours of the country to those of 
 the noble Earl, we acted unwisely, independent of all 
 considerations of duty and of consistency ; and I fear 
 I can claim for our conduct no praise of disinterested- 
 ness. 
 
 My Lords, I have followed the noble Earl as 
 
 Mr. T. P. Courtcuav,
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 603 
 
 closely as I could through his arguments, and I will 
 not answer those who supported him with equal 
 minuteness, because, in answering him, I have really 
 answered all the arguments against the Bill. One 
 noble Lord* seems to think he has destroyed it, when 
 he pronounces, again and again, that the Members 
 chosen under it will be delegates. What if they were 
 delegates ? What should a representative be but the 
 delegate of his constituents ? But a man may be the 
 delegate of a single person, as well as of a city or a 
 town ; he may be just as much a delegate when he 
 has one constituent as when he has 5000 with this 
 material difference, that under a single constituent, 
 who can turn him off in a moment, he is sure to fol- 
 low the orders he receives implicitly, and that the 
 service he performs will be for the benefit of one man, 
 and not of many. The giving a name to the thing, 
 and crying out Delegate ! Delegate ! proves nothing ; 
 for it only raises the question, who should be the 
 delegator of this public trust the people, or the 
 borough-holders? Another noble Lord,f professing 
 to wish well to the great unrepresented towns, com- 
 plained of the Bill on their behalf, because, he said, 
 the first thing it does is to close up the access which 
 they at present possess to Parliament, by the purchase 
 of seats for mercantile men, who may represent the 
 different trading interests in general. Did ever mortal 
 man contrive a subtlety so absurd, so nonsensical, as 
 this ? What ! Is it better for Birmingham to sub- 
 scribe, and raise 5000, for a seat at Old Sarum, than 
 to have the right of openly and honestly choosing its 
 own representative, and sending him direct to Parlia- 
 ment ? Such horror have some men of the straight, 
 open, highway of the constitution, that they would, 
 
 Lord Falmouth. + Lord Caernarvon.
 
 G04 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 rather than travel upon it, sneak into their seats by 
 the dirty, winding, by-ways of rotten boroughs. 
 
 But the noble Earl behind* professed much kind- 
 ness for the great towns he had no objection to give 
 Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield representa- 
 tives as vacancies might occur, by the occasional dis- 
 franchisement of boroughs for crimes. Was there 
 ever any thing so fantastical as this plan of Reform ? 
 In the first place, these great towns either ought to 
 have Members, or they ought not. If they ought, 
 why hang up the possession of their just rights upon 
 the event of some other place committing an offence ? 
 Am I not to have my right till another does a wrong ? 
 Suppose a man wrongfully keeps possession of my 
 close ; I apply to him, and say, " Mr. Johnson, give 
 me up my property, and save me and yourself an 
 action of ejectment." Should not I have some cause 
 to be surprised, if he answered, " Oh no, I can't let 
 you have it till Mr. Thomson embezzles 10,000, and 
 then I may get a share of it, and that will enable me 
 to buy more land, and then I'll give you up your field." 
 " But I want the field, and have a right to get it ; 
 not because Thomson has committed a crime, but be- 
 cause it is my field, and not your's, and I should be 
 as great a fool as you are a knave, were I to wait till 
 Thomson became as bad as yourself." I am really 
 ashamed to detain your Lordships with exposing such 
 wretched trifling. 
 
 A speech, my Lords, was delivered by my noble friend 
 under the opposite gallery,f which has disposed of much 
 that remains of my task. I had purposed to show the 
 mighty change which has been wrought in later times 
 upon the opinions, the habits, and the intelligence of 
 the people, by the universal diffusion of knowledge. 
 
 * Lord Harrowby. -|- Lord Radnor.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. COS 
 
 But this has been done by my noble friend with an 
 accuracy of statement, and a power of language, which 
 I should in vain attempt to follow ; and there glowed 
 through his admirable oration, a natural warmth of 
 feeling to which every heart instinctively responded. 
 I have, however, lived to hear that great speech talked 
 of in the language of contempt. A noble Lord,* in 
 the fulness of his ignorance of its vast subject, in the 
 maturity of his incapacity to comprehend its merits, 
 described it as an amusing a droll speech ; and in 
 this profound criticism a noble Earlf seemed to con- 
 cur, whom I should have thought capable of making 
 a more correct appreciation. Comparisons are pro- 
 verbially invidious ; yet I cannot help contrasting 
 that speech with another which I heard not very long 
 ago, and of which my noble friend knows something; 
 one not certainly much resembling the luminous speech 
 in question, but a kind of chaos of dark, disjointed 
 figures, in which soft professions of regard for friends 
 fought with hard censures on their conduct, frigid con- 
 ceptions with fiery execution, and the lightness of the 
 materials M 7 ith the heaviness of the workmanship 
 
 " Frigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis, 
 
 Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus." 
 
 A droll and amusing speech, indeed ! It was Avor- 
 thy of the same speaker, of whom both Mr. Windham 
 and Mr. Canning upon one occasion said, that he had 
 made the finest they ever heard. It was a lesson 
 deeply impregnated with the best wisdom of the 
 nineteenth century, but full also of the profoundest 
 maxims of the seventeenth. There was not a word 
 of that speech not one proposition in its luminous 
 context one sentence of solemn admonition or of 
 
 * Lord Fal mouth. f Earl Caernarvon. % Earl Caernarvon.
 
 606 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 touching regret fell from my Noble friend* not a 
 severe reproof of the selfishness nor an indignant 
 exclamation upon the folly of setting yourselves 
 against the necessary course of events, and refusing 
 the rights of civilization to those whom you have suf- 
 fered to become civilized not a sentiment, not a 
 topic, which the immortal eloquence and imperishable 
 wisdom of Lord Bacon did not justify, sanction, and 
 prefix. 
 
 They who are constantly taunting us with subvert- 
 ing the system of the representation, and substituting 
 a parliamentary constitution unknown in earlier times, 
 must be told that we are making no change that we 
 are not pulling down, but building up or, at the 
 utmost, adapting the representation to the altered 
 state of the community. The system which was hardly 
 fitted for the fourteenth century, cannot surely be 
 adapted to the nineteenth. The innovations of time, 
 of which our detractors take no account, are reckoned 
 upon by all sound statesmen ; and in referring to them, 
 my noble friend f has only followed in the foot- 
 steps of the most illustrious of philosophers. " Stick 
 to your ancient parliamentary system," it is said ; 
 " make no alteration ; keep it exactly such as it was 
 in the time of Harry the Third, when the two Houses 
 first sat in separate chambers, and such as it has 
 to this day continued !" This is the ignorant cry ; 
 this the very shibboleth of the party. But I have 
 joined an issue with our antagonists upon the facf ; 
 and I have given the evidence of Selden, of Glanville, 
 of Coke, of Noy, and of Prynne, proving to demonstra- 
 tion that the original right of voting has been sub- 
 jected to great and hurtful changes, that the ex- 
 clusive franchise of freemen is an usurpation upon 
 
 * Lord Radnor. -f- Lord Radnor.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 607 
 
 householders, and that our measure is a restoration 
 of the rights thus usurped upon. I have shown that 
 the ministers are only occupied in the duty of repair- 
 ing what is decayed, not in the work of destruction, 
 or of violent change. Your Lordships were recently 
 assembled at the great solemnity of the Coronation. 
 Do you call to mind the language of the Primate, and 
 in which the Monarch swore, when the sword of kingly 
 estate was delivered into his hands ? " Restore the 
 things that are gone into decay ; maintain that which 
 is restored ; purify and reform what is amiss ; confirm 
 that which is in good order !" His Sacred Majesty 
 well remembers his solemn vow, to restore the con- 
 stitution, and to reform the abuses time has introduced; 
 and I, too, feel the duty imposed on me, of keeping 
 fresh in the recollection of the prince, whom it is my 
 pride and my boast to serve, the parts of our system 
 which fall within the scope of his vow. But if he has 
 sworn to restore the decayed, so has he also sworn to 
 maintain that which is restored, and to confirm that 
 which wants no repairing ; and what sacrifice soever 
 may be required to maintain and confirm, that sacri- 
 fice I am ready to make, opposing myself, with my 
 sovereign, to the surge that may dash over me, and 
 saying to it, " Hitherto shalt thou come ; here shall 
 thy waves be staid." For while that sovereign tells 
 the enemies of all change, " I have sworn to restore !" 
 so will he tell them who look for change only, " I 
 have also sworn to maintain !" 
 
 " Stand by the whole of the old constitution !" is 
 the cry of our enemies. I have disposed of the issue 
 of fact, and shown that what we attack is any thing 
 but the old constitution. But suppose, for argument's 
 sake, the question had been decided against us 
 that Selden, Coke, Noy, Glanville, Prynne, were all 
 wrong that their doctrine and mine was a mere illu-
 
 608 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 sion, and rotten boroughs the ancient order of things 
 that it was a fundamental principle of the old con- 
 stitution to have members without constituents, 
 boroughs without members, and a representative Par- 
 liament without electors. Suppose this to be the 
 nature of the old, and much admired, and more be- 
 praised, government of England. All this I will as- 
 sume for the sake of the argument ; and I solicit the 
 attention of the noble Lords who maintain that argu- 
 ment, while I show them its utter absurdity. Since the 
 early times of which they speak, has there been no 
 change in the very nature of a seat in Parliament ? Is 
 there no difference between our days and those when 
 the electors eschewed the right of voting, and a seat in 
 Parliament, as well as the elective franchise, was 
 esteemed a burthen ? Will the same principles apply 
 to that age and to ours, when all the people of the 
 three kingdoms are more eager for the power of voting 
 than for any other earthly possession ; and the chance 
 of sitting in the House of Commons is become the 
 object of all men's wishes? Even as late as the 
 union of the Crowns, we have instances of informations 
 filed in the courts of law to compel Parliament men 
 to attend their duty, or punish them for the neglect 
 so ill was privilege then understood. But somewhat 
 earlier, we find boroughs petitioning to be relieved 
 from the expense of sending members, and members 
 supported by their constituents as long as they con- 
 tinued their attendance. Is it not clear that the Par- 
 liamentary law applicable to that state of things can- 
 not be applied to the present circumstances, without 
 in some respects making a violent revolution ? But 
 so it is in the progress of all those changes which time 
 is perpetually working in the condition of human 
 affairs. They are really the authors of change, who 
 resist the alterations which are .required to adjust the
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 609 
 
 system, and adapt it to new circumstances; who 
 forcibly arrest the progress of one portion amidst the 
 general advancement. Take, as an illustration, the 
 state of our jurisprudence. The old law ordained that 
 a debtor's property should be taken in execution. 
 But in early times there were no public funds, no 
 paper securities, no accounts at bankers ; land and 
 goods formed the property of all ; and those were 
 allowed to be taken in satisfaction of debts. The law, 
 therefore, which only said, let land and goods be taken, 
 excluded the recourse against stock and credits, 
 although it plainly meant that all the property should 
 be liable, and would clearly have attached stock and 
 credits, had they then been known. But when nine- 
 tenths of the property of our richest men consist of 
 stock and credits, to exempt these under pretence of 
 standing by the old law, is manifestly altering the 
 substance for the sake of adhering to the letter ; and 
 substituting for the old law, that all the debtor's pro- 
 perty should be liable, a new and totally different 
 law, that a small part only of his property should be 
 liable. Yet in no part of our system has there been 
 a greater change than in the estimated value attached 
 to the franchise, and to a seat in Parliament, from the 
 times when one class of the community anxiously 
 shunned the cost of electing, and another as cautiously 
 avoided being returned, to those when both classes are 
 alike anxious to obtain these privileges. Then, can 
 any reasonable man argue, that the same law should 
 be applied to two states of things so diametrically 
 opposite ? Thus much I thought fit to say, in order 
 to guard your Lordships against a favourite topic, one 
 sedulously urged by the adversaries of Reform, who lead 
 men astray by constantly harping upon the string of 
 change, innovation, and revolution. 
 
 But it is said, and this is a still more favourite argu- 
 
 VOL. ii. 2 a
 
 610 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 ment, the system works well. How does it work well ? 
 Has it any pretensions to the character of working 
 well ? What say you to a town of five or six thousand 
 inhabitants, not one of whom has any more to do with 
 the choice of its representatives than any of your 
 Lordships sitting round that table indeed, a great 
 deal less for I see my noble friend* is there ? It 
 works well, does it ? How works well ? It would 
 work well for the noble Duke, if he chose to carry 
 his votes to market ! Higher rank, indeed, he could 
 not purchase, than he has; but he has many con- 
 nexions, and he might gain a title for every one that 
 bears his name. But he has always acted in a manner 
 far more worthy of his own high character, and of the 
 illustrious race of patriots from whom he descends, the 
 founders of our liberties, and of the throne which our 
 sovereign's exalted House fills ; and his family have 
 deemed that name a more precious inheritance than 
 any title for which it could be exchanged. But let 
 us see how the system works for the borough itself, 
 and its thousands of honest, industrious inhabitants. 
 My Lords, I once had the fortune to represent it for 
 a few weeks ; at the time when I received the highest 
 honour of my life, the pride and exultation of which 
 can never be eradicated from my mind but by death, 
 nor in the least degree allayed by any lapse of time 
 the most splendid distinction which any subjects can 
 confer upon a fellow-citizen to be freely elected for 
 Yorkshire, upon public grounds, and being uncon- 
 nected with the county. From having been at the 
 borough the day of the election, I can give your Lord- 
 ships some idea how well the system works there. 
 You may be returned for the place, but it is at your 
 peril that you show yourself among the inhabitants. 
 
 * The Duke of Devonshire.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. till 
 
 There is a sort of polling; that is, five or six of my 
 noble friend's tenants ride over from another part of 
 the country receive their burgage qualifications 
 vote, as the enemies of the Bill call it, " in right of 
 property," that is, of the Duke's property render up 
 their title-deeds dine, and return home before night. 
 Being detained in court at York longer than I had 
 expected on the day of this elective proceeding, I 
 arrived too late for the chairing, and therefore did not 
 assist at that awful solemnity. Seeing a gentleman 
 with a black patch, somewhere about the size of a 
 sergeant's coif, I expressed my regret at his apparent 
 ailment ; he said, " It is for a blow I had the honour 
 to receive in representing you at the ceremony." Cer- 
 tainly no constituent ever owed more to his represen- 
 tative than I to mine ; but the blow was severe, and 
 might well have proved fatal. I understand this is 
 the common lot of the Members, as my noble friend,* 
 who once sat for the place, I believe, knows ; though 
 there is some variety, as he is aware, in the mode of 
 proceeding, the convenient neighbourhood of a river 
 with a rocky channel sometimes suggesting operations 
 of another kind. I am very far, of course, from ap- 
 proving such marks of public indignation ; but I am 
 equally far from wondering that it should seek a vent ; 
 for I confess, that if the thousands of persons whom 
 the well working of the present system insults with 
 the farce of the Knaresborough election (and whom 
 the Bill restores to their rights) were to bear so cruel 
 a mockery with patience, I should deem them degraded 
 indeed. 
 
 It works well, does it ? For whom ? For the con- 
 stitution ? No such thing. For borough proprietors 
 it works well, who can sell seats, or traffic in influence, 
 
 * Lord Tankerville.
 
 612 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 and pocket the gains. Upon the constitution it is the 
 foulest stain, and eats into its very core. 
 
 It works well ? For the people of England ? For 
 the people, of whom the many excluded electors are 
 parcel, and for whom alone the few actual electors 
 ought to exercise their franchise as a trust ? No such 
 thing. As long as a member of Parliament really 
 represents any body of his countrymen, be they free- 
 holders, or copyholders, or leaseholders as long as he 
 represents the householders in any considerable town 
 and is in either way deputed to w r atch over the in- 
 terests of a portion of the community, and is always 
 answerable to those who delegate him so long has 
 he a participation in the interests of the whole state, 
 whereof his constituents form a portion ; so long may 
 he justly act as representing the whole community, 
 having, with his particular electors, only a general 
 coincidence of views upon national questions, and a 
 rigorous coincidence where their special interests are 
 concerned. But if he is delegated by a single man, 
 and not by a county or a town, he does not represent 
 the people of England ; he is a jobber, sent to Par- 
 liament to do his own or his patron's work. But then 
 we are told, and with singular exultation, how many 
 great men have found their way into the House of 
 Commons by this channel. My Lords, are we, because 
 the only road to a place is unclean, not to travel it ? 
 If I cannot get into Parliament, where I may render 
 the state good service, by any other means, I will go 
 that way, defiling myself as little as I can, either by 
 the filth of the passage, or the indifferent company I 
 may travel with. I w r on't bribe ; I won't job, to get 
 in ; but if it be the only path open, I will use it for 
 the public good. But those who indulge in this argu- 
 ment about great men securing seats, do not, I remark, 
 take any account of the far greater numbers of very
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 013 
 
 little men who thus find their way into Parliament, to 
 do all manner of public mischief. A few are, no doubt, 
 independent ; but many are as docile, as disciplined 
 in the evolutions of debate, as any troops the noble 
 Duke had at Waterloo. One borough proprietor is 
 well remembered, who would display his forces, com- 
 mand them in person, carry them over from one flank 
 to the other, or draw them off altogether, and send 
 them to take the field against the larks at Dunstable, 
 that he might testify his displeasure. When con- 
 flicting bodies are pretty nearly matched, the evolu- 
 tions of such a corps decide the fate of the day. The 
 noble Duke* remembers how doubtful even the event 
 of Waterloo might have been had Grouchy come up 
 in time. Accordingly, the fortunate leader of that 
 parliamentary force raised himself to an Earldom and 
 two Lord Lieutenancies, and obtained titles and blue 
 ribbands for others of his family, who now fill most 
 respectable stations in this House. 
 
 The system, we are told, works well, because, not- 
 withstanding the manner of its election, the House of 
 Commons sometimes concurs immediately in opinion 
 with the people ; and, in the long run, is seldom 
 found to counteract it. Yet sometimes, and on several 
 of the most momentous questions, the run has, indeed, 
 been a very long one. The Slave Trade continued 
 to be the signal disgrace of the country, the unutter- 
 able opprobrium of the English name, for many years 
 after it had been denounced in Parliament, and con- 
 demned by the people all in one voice. Think you 
 this foul stain could have so long survived, in a reformed 
 Parliament, the prodigious eloquence of my venerable 
 friend, Mr. Wilberforce, and the unanimous reproba- 
 tion of the country ? The American war might have 
 
 * Wellington.
 
 GU PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 been commenced, and even for a year or two perse- 
 vered in, for, though most unnatural, it was, at first 
 not unpopular. But could it have lasted beyond 1 778, 
 had the voice of the people been heard in their own 
 House ? The French war, which in those days I used 
 to think a far more natural contest, having in my 
 youth leant to the alarmist party, might possibly have 
 continued some years. But if the Representation of 
 the country had been reformed, there can be no reason 
 to doubt that the sound views of the noble Earl* and 
 the immortal eloquence of my right honourable friend,f 
 whose great spirit, now freed from the coil of this 
 world, may be permitted to look down complacent 
 upon the near accomplishment of his patriotic desires, 
 would have been very differently listened to in a Par- 
 liament unbiassed by selfish interests; and of one thing 
 I am as certain as that I stand here that ruinous 
 warfare never could have lasted a day beyond the 
 arrival of Buonaparte's letter in 1800. 
 
 But still it is said public opinion finds its way more 
 speedily into Parliament upon great and interesting 
 emergencies. How does it so ? By a mode contrary 
 to the whole principles of representative Government, 
 by sudden, direct, and dangerous impulses. The 
 fundamental principle of our constitution, the great 
 political discovery of modern times that, indeed, 
 which enables a state to combine extent with liberty, 
 the system of representation, consists altogether in 
 the perfect delegation by the people, of their rights 
 and the care of their interests, to those who are to 
 deliberate and to act for them. It is not a delegation 
 
 O 
 
 which shall make the representative a mere organ of 
 the passing will, or momentary opinion, of his con- 
 stituents. I am aware, my Lords, that in pursuing 
 
 * Lord Grey. f Mr. Fox.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. G15 
 
 this important topic, I may lay myself open to un- 
 candid inference, touching the present state of the 
 country ; but I feel sure no such unfair advantage will 
 be taken, for my whole argument upon the national 
 enthusiasm for Reform rests upon the known fact that 
 that it is the growth of half a century, and not of a 
 few months ; and, according to the soundest views of 
 representative legislation, there ought to be a general 
 coincidence between the conduct of the delegate and 
 the sentiments of the electors. Now, when the public 
 voice, for want of a regular and legitimate organ, 
 makes itself, from time to time, heard within the walls 
 of Parliament, it is by a direct interposition of the 
 people, not in the way of a delegated trust, to make 
 the laws ~and every such occasion presents, in truth, 
 an instance where the defects of our elective system 
 introduce a recurrence to the old and barbarous 
 schemes of Government, known in the tribes and 
 centuries of Rome, or the assemblies of Attica. It is 
 a poor compensation for the faults of a system which 
 suffers a cruel grievance to exist, or a ruinous war to 
 last twenty or thirty years after the public opinion has 
 condemned it, that some occasions arise when the 
 excess of the abuse brings about a violent remedy, or 
 some revolutionary shock, threatening the destruction 
 of the whole. 
 
 But it works well ! Then why does the table groan 
 with the petitions against it, of all that people, for 
 whose interests there is any use in it working at all ? 
 Why did the country, at the last election, without 
 exception, wherever they had the franchise, return 
 members commissioned to complain of it, and amend 
 it? Why were its own produce, the men chosen 
 under it, found voting against it by unexampled ma- 
 jorities ? Of eighty-two English county members, 
 seventy-six have pronounced sentence upon it, and
 
 G16 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 they are joined by all the representatives of cities and 
 of great towns. 
 
 It works well ! Whence, then, the phenomenon 
 of Political Unions, of the people everywhere form- 
 ing themselves into Associations to put down a system 
 which you say well serves their interests ? Whence 
 the congregating of 150,000 men in one place, the 
 whole adult male population of two or three counties, 
 to speak the language of discontent, and refuse the 
 payment of taxes ? I am one who never have either 
 used the language of intimidation, or will ever suffer 
 it to be used towards me; but I also am one who 
 regard those indications with unspeakable anxiety. 
 With all respect for those assemblages, and for the 
 honesty of the opinions they entertain, I feel myself 
 bound to declare, as an honest man, as a Minister of 
 the Crown, as a Magistrate, nay, as standing, by virtue 
 of my office, at the head of the magistracy, that a 
 resolution not to pay the King's taxes is unlawful. 
 When I contemplate the fact, I am assured that not 
 above a few thousands of those nearest the chairman 
 could know for what it was they held up their hands. 
 At the same time there is too much reason to think 
 that the rest would have acted as they did, had they 
 heard all that passed. My hope and trust is, that 
 these men and their leaders will maturely re-consider 
 the subject. There are no bounds to the application 
 of such a power ; the difficulty of counteracting it is 
 extreme ; and as it may be exerted on whatever ques- 
 tion has the leading interest, and every question in 
 succession is felt as of exclusive importance, the use 
 of the power I am alluding to, really threatens to 
 resolve all Government, and even society itself, into 
 its elements. I know the risk I run of giving offence 
 by what I am saying. To me, accused of worshipping 
 the democracy, here is indeed a tempting occasion, if
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. C17 
 
 in that charge there were the shadow of truth. Before 
 the great idol, the Juggernaut, with his 150,000 
 priests, I might prostrate myself advantageously. But 
 I am bound to do my duty, and speak the truth ; of 
 such an assembly I cannot approve ; even its numbers 
 obstruct discussion, and tend to put the peace in 
 danger, coupled with such a combination against 
 payment of taxes, it is illegal ; it is intolerable under 
 any form of Government ; and as a sincere well-wisher 
 to the people themselves, and devoted to the cause 
 which brought them together, I feel solicitous, on 
 every account, to bring such proceedings to an end. 
 
 But, my Lords, it is for us to ponder these things 
 well ; they are material facts in our present inquiry. 
 Under a system of real representation, in a country 
 where the people possessed the only safe and legiti- 
 mate channel for making known their wishes and their 
 complaints, a Parliament of their own choosing, such 
 combinations would be useless. Indeed, they must 
 always be mere brutum fulmen, unless where they are 
 very general ; and where they are general, they both 
 indicate the universality of the grievance and the de- 
 termination to have redress. Where no safety-valve 
 is provided for popular discontent, to prevent an 
 explosion that may shiver the machine in pieces 
 where the people and by the people, I repeat, I mean 
 the middle classes, the wealth and intelligence of the 
 country, the glory of the British name where this 
 most important order of the community are without 
 a regular and systematic communication with the 
 legislature where they are denied the constitution 
 which is their birthright, and refused a voice in naming 
 those who are to make the laws they must obey 
 impose the taxes they must pay, and control, with- 
 out appeal, their persons as well as properties where 
 they feel the load of such grievances, and feel too the
 
 G18 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 power they possess, moral, intellectual, and, let me 
 add, without the imputation of a threat, physical 
 then, and only then, are their combinations formid- 
 able ; when they are armed by their wrongs, far more 
 formidable than any physical force then, and only 
 then, they become invincible. 
 
 Do you ask what, in these circumstances, we ought 
 to do ? I answer, simply our duty. If there were no 
 such combinations in existence no symptom of popu- 
 lar excitement if not a man had lifted up his voice 
 against the existing system, we should be bound to 
 seek and to seize any means of furthering the best 
 interests of the people, with kindness, with considera- 
 tion, with the firmness, certainly, but with the pru- 
 dence also, of statesmen. How much more are we 
 bound to conciliate a great nation, anxiously panting 
 for their rights to hear respectfully their prayers to 
 entertain the measure of their choice with an honest 
 inclination to do it justice ; and if, while we approve 
 its principle, we yet dislike some of its details, and 
 deem them susceptible of modification, surely we 
 ought, at any rate, not to reject their prayers for it 
 with insult. God forbid we should so treat the people's 
 desire ; but I do fear that a determination is taken 
 not to entertain it with calmness and impartiality. 
 (Cries of No! No! from the Opposition.) I am glad 
 to have been in error ; I am rejoiced to hear this dis- 
 claimer, for I infer from it that the people's prayers 
 are to be granted. You will listen, I trust, to the 
 advice of my noble and learned friend,* who, with his 
 wonted sagacity, recommended you to do as you would 
 be done by. This wise and Christian maxim will not, 
 I do hope, be forgotten. Apply it, my Lords, to the 
 case before you. Suppose, for a moment, that your 
 
 * Lord Flunkett.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 619 
 
 Lordships, in your wisdom, should think it expedient 
 to entertain some Bill regulating matters in which 
 this House alone has any concern, as the hereditary 
 privileges of the Peerage, or the right of voting by 
 proxy, or matters relative to the election of Peers 
 representing the aristocracy of Ireland and Scotland, 
 or providing against the recurrence of such an extra- 
 ordinary and indeed unaccountable event as that which 
 decided on the Huntingdon Peerage without a com- 
 mittee ; suppose, after great exertions of those most 
 interested, as the Scotch and Irish Peers, or this 
 House at large, your Lordships had passed it through 
 all its stages by immense majorities, by fifty or a hun- 
 dred to one, as the commons did the Reform. (Cries of 
 No.) I say an overwhelming majority of all who re- 
 presented any body, all the Members for counties and 
 towns ; but to avoid cavilling, suppose it passed by a 
 large majority of those concerned, and sent down to the 
 Commons, whom it only remotely affected. Well 
 it has reached that House ; and suppose the Members 
 were to refuse giving your measure any examination 
 at all in detail, and to reject it at once. What should 
 you say ? How should you feel, think you, when the 
 Commons arrogantly turned round from your request, 
 and said " Let us fling out this silly bill without 
 more ado ; true, it regulates matters belonging ex- 
 clusively to the Lords, and in which we cannot at all 
 interfere without violating the law of the land ; but 
 still, out with it for an aristocratic, oligarchical, revo- 
 lutionary bill, a bill to be abominated by all who 
 have a spark of the true democratic spirit in their 
 composition. What should you think if the mea- 
 sure were on such grounds got rid of, without the 
 usual courtesy of a pretended postponement, by a 
 vote that this Lords' Bill be rejected ? And should 
 you feel much soothed by hearing that some oppo-
 
 620 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 sition Chesterfield had taken alarm at the want of 
 politeness among his brethren, and at two o'clock 
 in the morning altered the words, retaining their 
 offensive sense I ask, would such proceedings in 
 the Commons be deemed by your Lordships a fair, 
 just, candid opposition to a measure affecting your 
 own seats and dignities only? Would you tolerate 
 their saying, " We don't mind the provisions of this 
 Lords' bill ; we won't stop to discuss them ; we won't 
 parly with such a thing ; we plainly see it hurts our 
 interest, and checks our own patronage ; for it is an 
 aristocratic bill, and an oligarchical bill, and withal a 
 revolutionary bill ?" Such treatment would, I doubt 
 not, ruffle the placid tempers of your Lordships ; you 
 would say somewhat of your order, its rights, and its 
 privileges, and buckle on the armour of a well-founded 
 and natural indignation. But your wonder would 
 doubtless increase, if you learnt that your bill had 
 been thus contemptuously rejected in its first stage by 
 a House in which only two members could be found 
 who disapproved of its fundamental principles. Yes, 
 all avow themselves friendly to the principle ; it is a 
 matter of much complaint, if you charge one with not 
 being a Reformer ; but they cannot join in a vote 
 which only asserts that principle, and recognises the 
 expediency of some Reform. Yes, the Commons all 
 allow your Peerage law to be an abomination ; your 
 privileges a nuisance : all cry out for some change as 
 necessary, as imperative ; but they, nevertheless, will 
 not even listen to the proposition for effecting a 
 change, which you, the most interested party, have 
 devised and sent down to them. Where, I demand, 
 is the difference between this uncourteous and absurd 
 treatment of your supposed bill by the Commons, and 
 that which you now talk of giving to their's ? You 
 approve of the principle of the measure sent up by
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 621 
 
 the other House, for the sole purpose of amending its 
 own constitution ; but you won't sanction that prin- 
 ciple by your vote, nor afford its friends an opportunity 
 of shaping its features, so as if possible to meet your 
 wishes. Is this fair ? Is it candid ? Is it consistent ? 
 Is it wise ? Is it, I ask you, is it at this time very 
 prudent ? Did the Commons act so by you in Sir 
 Robert Walpole's time, when the bill for restraining 
 the creation of Peers went down from hence to that 
 House ? No such thing ; though it afterwards turned 
 out that there was a majority of 112 against it, they 
 did not even divide upon the second reading. Will 
 you not extend an equal courtesy to the bill of the 
 Commons and of the people ? 
 
 I am asked what great practical benefits are to be 
 expected from this measure ? And is it no benefit to 
 have the Government strike its roots into the hearts 
 of the people ? Is it no benefit to have a calm and 
 deliberative, but a real organ of the public opinion, by 
 which its course may be known, and its influence 
 exerted upon State affairs regularly and temperately, 
 instead of acting convulsively, and as it were by starts 
 and shocks ? I will only appeal to one advantage, 
 which is as certain to result from this salutary im- 
 provement of our system, as it is certain that I am 
 addressing your Lordships. A noble Earl* inveighed 
 strongly against the licentiousness of the Press ; com- 
 plained of its insolence ; and asserted that there was 
 no tyranny more intolerable than that which its con- 
 ductors now exercised. It is most true, that the 
 Press has great influence, but equally true, that it 
 derives this influence from expressing, more or less 
 correctly, the opinion of the country. Let it run 
 counter to the prevailing course, and its power is at an 
 
 * Lord Winchilsca.
 
 622 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 end. But I will also admit that, going in the same 
 general direction with public opinion, the Press is 
 oftentimes armed with too much power in particular 
 instances ; and such power is always liable to be 
 abused. But I will tell the noble Earl upon what foun- 
 dation this overgrown power is built. The Press is 
 now the only organ of public opinion. This title it 
 assumes ; but it is not by usurpation ; it is rendered 
 legitimate by the defects of your Parliamentary con- 
 stitution ; it is erected upon the ruins of real repre- 
 sentation. The periodical Press is the rival of the 
 House of Commons ; and it is, and it will be, the suc- 
 cessful rival, as long as that House does not represent 
 the people Jsut not one day longer. If ever I felt 
 confident in any prediction, it is in this, that the re- 
 storation of Parliament to its legtimate office of repre- 
 senting truly the public opinion will overthrow the 
 tyranny of which noble Lords are so ready to com- 
 plain, who, by keeping out the lawful sovereign, in 
 truth, support the usurper. It is you who have placed 
 this unlawful authority on a rock : pass the Bill, it is 
 built on a quicksand. Let but the country have a 
 full and free representation, and to that will men look 
 for the expression of public opinion, and the Press 
 will no more be able to dictate, as now, when none 
 else can speak the sense of the people. Will its in- 
 fluence wholly cease ? God forbid ! Its just influence 
 will continue, but confined within safe and proper 
 bounds. It will continue, long may it continue, to 
 watch the conduct of public men to watch the pro- 
 ceedings even of a reformed legislature to watch 
 the people themselves a safe, an innoxious, a useful 
 instrument, to enlighten and improve mankind ! But 
 its overgrown power its assumption to speak in the 
 name of the nation its pretension to dictate and to 
 command, will cease with the abuse upon which alone
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 623 
 
 it is founded, and will be swept away, together with 
 the other creatures of the same abuse, which now 
 " fright our Isle from its propriety." 
 
 Those portentous appearances, the growth of later 
 times, those figures that stalk abroad, of unknown 
 stature, and strange form unions and leagues, 
 and musterings of men in myriads, and conspiracies 
 against the Exchequer ; whence do they spring, and 
 how come they to haunt our shores ? What power 
 engendered those uncouth shapes, what multiplied the 
 monstrous births till they people the land ? Trust 
 me, the same power which called into frightful exist- 
 ence, and armed with resistless force, the Irish volun- 
 teers of 1782 the same power which rent in twain 
 your empire, and raised up thirteen republics the 
 same power which created the Catholic Association, 
 and gave it Ireland for a portion. What power is 
 that ? Justice denied rights withheld wrongs per- 
 petrated the force which common injuries lend to 
 millions the wickedness of using the sacred trust of 
 Government as a means of indulging private caprice 
 the idiotcy of treating Englishmen like the chil- 
 dren of the South Sea Islands the phrensy of believ- 
 ing, or making believe, that the adults of the nine- 
 teenth century can be led like children, or driven like 
 barbarians ! This it is that has conjured up the 
 strange sights at which we now stand aghast ! And 
 shall we persist in the fatal error of combating the 
 giant progeny, instead of extirpating the execrable 
 parent ? Good God ! Will men never learn wisdom, 
 even from their own experience ? Will they never 
 believe, till it be too late, that the surest way to pre- 
 vent immoderate desires being formed, aye, and unjust 
 demands enforced, is to grant in due season the mode- 
 rate requests of justice ? You stand, my Lords, on 
 the brink of a great event ; you are in the crisis of a
 
 624 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 whole nation's hopes and fears. An awful importance 
 hangs over your decision. Pause, ere you plunge ! 
 There may not be any retreat ! It behoves you to 
 shape your conduct by the mighty occasion. They 
 tell you not to be afraid of personal consequences in 
 discharging your duty. I too would ask you to banish 
 all fears ; but, above all, that most mischievous, most 
 despicable fear the fear of being thought afraid. If 
 you won't take counsel from me, take example from the 
 statesmanlike conduct of the noble Duke,* while you 
 also look back, as you may, with satisfaction upon 
 your own. He was told, and you were told, that the 
 impatience of Ireland for equality of civil rights was 
 partial, the clamour transient, likely to pass away with 
 its temporary occasion, and that yielding to it would 
 be conceding to intimidation. I recollect hearing this 
 topic urged within this hall in July J 828 ; less regu- 
 larly I heard it than I have now done, for I belonged 
 not to your number but I heard it urged in the self- 
 same terms. The burthen of the cry was It is no 
 time for concession ; the people are turbulent, and the 
 Association dangerous. That summer passed, and the 
 ferment subsided not ; autumn came, but brought not 
 the precious fruit of peace on the contrary, all Ire- 
 land was convulsed with the unprecedented conflict 
 which returned the great chief of the Catholics to sit 
 in a Protestant Parliament ; winter bound the earth in 
 chains, but it controlled not the popular fury, whose 
 surge, more deafening than the tempest, lashed the 
 frail bulwarks of law founded upon injustice. Spring 
 came ; but no etherial mildness was its harbinger, or 
 followed in its train ; the Catholics became stronger 
 by every month's delay, displayed a deadlier resolution, 
 and proclaimed their wrongs in a tone of louder tle- 
 
 * Wellington.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 625 
 
 fiance than before. And what course did you, at this 
 moment of greatest excitement, and peril, and menace, 
 deem it most fitting 1 to pursue ? Eight months before 
 you had been told how unworthy it would he to yield 
 when men clamoured and threatened. No change had 
 happened in the interval, save that the clamours were 
 become far more deafening, and the threats, beyond 
 comparison, more overbearing. What, nevertheless, 
 did your Lordships do ? Your duty ; for you despised 
 the cuckoo-note of the season, " be not intimidated." 
 You granted all that the Irish demanded, and you 
 saved your country. Was there in April a single 
 argument advanced, which had not held good in July? 
 None, absolutely none, except the new height to which 
 the dangers of longer delay had risen, and the in- 
 creased vehemence with which justice was demanded ; 
 and yet the appeal to your pride, which had prevailed 
 in July, was in vain made in April, and you wisely and 
 patriotically granted what was asked, and ran the risk 
 of being supposed to yield through fear. 
 
 But the history of the Catholic Claims conveys 
 another important lesson. Though in right and po- 
 licy and justice, the measure of relief could not be too 
 ample, half as much as was received with little grati- 
 tude when so late wrung from you, would have been 
 hailed twenty years before with delight ; and even the 
 July preceding, the measure would have been received 
 as a boon freely given, which I fear, was taken with 
 but sullen satisfaction in April, as a right long with- 
 held. Yet, blessed be God, the debt of justice, though 
 tardily, was at length paid, and the noble Duke won 
 by it civic honours which rival his warlike achieve- 
 ments in lasting brightness than which there can be 
 no higher praise. What, if he had still listened to 
 the topics of intimidation and inconsistency which 
 had scared his predecessors ? He might have proved 
 
 VOL. II. 2 R
 
 626 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 bis obstinacy, and Ireland would bave been tlie 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Apply now this lesson of recent bistory I may say 
 of our own experience, to the measure before us. We 
 stand in a truly critical position. If we reject the 
 Bill, through fear of being thought to be intimidated, 
 we may lead the life of retirement and quiet, but the 
 hearts of the millions of our fellow-citizens are gone 
 for ever ; their affections are estranged ; w r e and our 
 order and its privileges are the objects of the people's 
 hatred, as the only obstacles which stand between 
 them and the gratification of their most passionate 
 desire. The whole body of the Aristocracy must ex- 
 pect to share this fate, and be exposed to feelings such 
 as these. For I hear it constantly said, that the Bill 
 is rejected by all the Aristocracy. Favour, and a good 
 number of supporters, our adversaries allow it has 
 among the people ; the Ministers, too, are for it ; but 
 the Aristocracy, say they, is strenuously opposed to 
 it. I broadly deny this silly, thoughtless assertion. 
 What, my Lords ! the Aristocracy set themselves 
 in a mass against the people they who sprang 
 from the people are inseparably connected with 
 the people are supported by the people are the 
 natural chiefs of the people ! They set them- 
 selves against the people, for whom Peers are en- 
 nobled Bishops consecrated Kings anointed 
 the people to serve whom Parliament itself has an 
 existence, and the Monarchy and all its institutions 
 are constituted, and without whom none of them 
 could exist for an hour ! The assertion of unreflect- 
 ing men is too monstrous to be endured as a Mem- 
 ber of this House, I deny it with indignation. I 
 repel it with scorn, as a calumny upon us all. And 
 yet are there those who even within these walls speak 
 of the Bill augmenting so much the strength of the
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 27 
 
 democracy, as to endanger the other orders of the 
 State ; and so they charge its authors with pro- 
 moting anarchy and rapine. Why, my Lords, have 
 its authors nothing to fear from democratic spo- 
 liation ? The fact is, that there are Members of the 
 present Cabinet, who possess, one or two of them 
 alone, far more property than any two administrations 
 within my recollection ; and all of them have ample 
 wealth. I need hardly say, I include not myself, who 
 have little or none. But even of myself I will say, 
 that whatever I have depends on the stability of ex- 
 isting institutions ; and it is as dear to me as the 
 princely possessions of any amongst you. Permit me 
 to say, that, in becoming a member of your House, I 
 staked my all on the aristocratic institutions of the 
 State. I abandoned certain wealth, a large income, 
 and much real power in the State, for an office of 
 great trouble, heavy responsibility, and very uncertain 
 duration. I say, I gave up substantial power for the 
 shadow of it, and for distinction depending upon acci- 
 dent. I quitted the elevated station of representative 
 for Yorkshire, and a leading member of the Commons. 
 I descended from a position quite lofty enough to 
 gratify any man's ambition ; and my lot became bound 
 up in the stability of this House. Then, have I not 
 a right to throw myself on your justice, and to desire 
 that you will not put in jeopardy all I have now left ? 
 But the populace only, the rabble, the ignoble 
 vulgar, are for the Bill ! Then what is the Duke of 
 Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England ? What the Duke 
 of Devonshire ? What the Duke of Bedford ? (Cries 
 of Order from the Opposition.) I am aware it is irre- 
 gular in any noble Lord that is a friend to the 
 measure ; its adversaries are patiently suffered to call 
 Peers even by their Christian and surnames. Then I 
 shall be as regular as they were, and ask, does my
 
 628 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 friend John Russell, my friend William Cavendish, 
 my friend Harry Vane, belong to the mob, or to. the 
 Aristocracy ? Have they no possessions ? Are they 
 modern names ? Are they wanting in Norman blood, 
 or whatever else you pride yourselves on ? The idea 
 is too ludicrous to be seriously refuted ; that the Bill 
 is only a favourite with the democracy, is a delusion 
 so wild as to point a man's destiny towards St. Luke's. 
 Yet many, both here and elsewhere, by dint of -con- 
 stantly repeating the same cry, or hearing it repeated, 
 have almost made themselves believe that none of the 
 nobility are for the measure. A noble friend of mine 
 has had the curiosity to examine the list of Peers, op- 
 posing and supporting it, with respect to the dates of 
 their creation, and the result is somewhat remarkable. 
 A large majority of the Peers, created before Mr. 
 Pitt's time, are for the Bill ; the bulk of those against 
 it are of recent creation ; and if you divide the whole 
 into two classes, those ennobled before the reign of 
 George III. and those since, of the former, fifty-six 
 are friends, and only twenty-one enemies of the Re- 
 form. So much for the vain and saucy boast, that 
 the real nobility of the country are against Reform. 
 I have dwelt upon this matter more than its intrinsic 
 importance deserves, only through my desire to set 
 right the fact, and to vindicate the ancient Aristocracy 
 from a most groundless imputation. 
 
 My Lords, I do not disguise the intense solicitude 
 which I feel for the event of this debate, because I 
 know full well that the peace of the country is in- 
 volved in the issue. I cannot look without dismay at 
 the rejection of the measure. But grievous as may bo 
 the consequences of a temporary defeat temporary 
 it can only be ; for its ultimate, and even speedy suc- 
 cess, is certain. Nothing can now stop it. Do not 
 suffer yourselves to be persuaded, that even if the
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 029 
 
 present Ministers were driven from the helm, any one 
 could steer you through the troubles which surround 
 you, without Reform. But our successors would take 
 up the task in circumstances far less auspicious. 
 Under them, you would be fain to grant a Bill, com- 
 pared with which, the one we now proffer you is mo- 
 derate indeed. Hear the parable of the Sybil ; for it 
 conveys a wise and wholesome moral. She now ap- 
 pears at 'your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes 
 the precious volumes -of wisdom and peace. The 
 price she asks is reasonable ; to restore the franchise, 
 which, without any bargain, you ought voluntarily to 
 give : you refuse her terms her moderate terms, 
 she darkens the porch no longer. But soon, for you 
 cannot do without her wares, you call her back ; 
 again she comes, but with diminished treasures ; the 
 leaves of the book are in part torn away by lawless 
 hands, in part defaced with characters of blood. But 
 the prophetic maid has risen in her demands it is 
 Parliaments by the Year it is Vote by the Ballot it 
 is Suffrage by the Million ! From this you turn away 
 indignant, and for the second time she departs. Be- 
 ware of her third coming ; for the treasure you must 
 have ; and what price she may next demand, who shall 
 tell ? It may even be the mace which rests upon that 
 woolsack. What may follow your course of obstinacy, 
 if persisted in, I cannot take upon me to predict, nor 
 do I wish to conjecture. But this I know full well, 
 that, as sure as man is mortal, and to err is human, 
 justice deferred enhances the price at which you must 
 purchase safety and peace ; nor can you expect to 
 gather in another crop than they did who went before 
 you, if you persevere in their utterly abominable hus- 
 bandry, of sowing injustice and reaping rebellion. 
 
 But among the awful considerations that now bow 
 down my mind, there is one which stands pre-eminent
 
 G30 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 above the rest. You are the highest judicature in the 
 realm ; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, 
 civil and criminal, without appeal. It is a judge's first 
 duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most trifling 
 case, without hearing. Will you make this the excep- 
 tion ? Are you really prepared to determine, but not 
 to hear the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes 
 and fears hang ? You are. Then beware of your de- 
 cision ! Rouse not, I beseech you, a peace-loving, 
 but a resolute people ; alienate not from your body the 
 affections of a whole empire. As your friend, as the 
 friend of my order, as the friend of my country, as the 
 faithful servant of my Sovereign, I counsel you to 
 assist with your uttermost efforts in preserving the 
 peace, and upholding and perpetuating the Constitu- 
 tion. Therefore, I pray and I exhort you not to reject 
 this measure. By all you hold most dear, by all 
 the ties that bind every one of us to our common 
 order and our common country, I solemnly adjure 
 you, I warn you, I implore you, yea, on my 
 bended knees, I supplicate you Reject not this Bill ! 
 
 END OF VOLUME SECOND. 
 
 T. CONSTABLE, FKINTKR, THISTLE STREET.
 
 "DA -5"- 
 
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