unnatural! A man may have that appetite which is common to the brutes, and too indelicate to be described; but he can never retain an affection which is returned with detestation. Lady Eliza.

This

beth, I understand, was at one time, going in a phaeton:-" There she goes," said Mr. Howard; "God damn her! I wish she may break her neck! "I should take care how I got another." may seem unfeeling behavior; but in Mr. How ard's situation, gentlemen, it was the most natural thing in the world; for they cordially hated one another. At last, however, the period arrived when this scene of discord became insupportable, and nothing could exceed the generosity and manly feelings of the noble person (the Duke of Norfolk) whose name I have been obliged to use in the course of this cause, in his interference to effect that separation which is falsely imputed to Mr. Bingham:-he felt so much commiseration for this unhappy lady, that he wrote to her in the most affecting style; I believe I have got a letter from his Grace to Lady Elizabeth, dated Sunderland, July the 27th, that is, three days after their separation; but before he knew it had actually taken place: it was written in consequence of one received from Mr. Howard upon the subject: among other things, he says, "I sincerely feel for you." Now, if the duke had not known at that time that Mr. Bingham had her earliest and legitimate affections, she could not have been an ob ject of that pity which she received: she was, in

U

deed, an object of the sincerest pity, and the sum and substance of this mighty seduction will turn out to be no more than this; that she was affectionately received by Mr. Bingham after the final period of voluntary separation: at four o'clock this miserable couple had parted by consent, and the chaise was not ordered till she might be considered as a single woman by the abandonment of her husband. Had the separation been legal and formal, I should have applied to his Lordship, upon the most unquestionable authorities, to nonsuit the plaintiff; for this action being founded upon the loss of the wife's society, it must necessarily fall to the ground, if it appears that the society, though not the marriage union, was interrupted by a previous act of his own: in that hour of separation I am persuaded he never considered Mr. Bingham as an object of resentment or reproach: he was the author of his own misfortunes, and I can conceive him to have exclaimed in the language of the poet as they parted,

-[Elizabeth] never loy'd me:

"Let no man, after me, a woman wed

"Whose heart he knows he has not; though she brings "A mine of gold, a kingdom for her dowry:

"For let her seem, like the night's shadowy queen,

"Cold and contemplative, he cannot trust her: "She may, she will, bring shame and sorrow on him; "The worst of sorrows, and the worst of shames!" You have, therefore, before you, gentlemen, two young men of fashion, both of noble families, and in the flower of youth; the proceedings, though

not collusive, cannot possibly be vindictive; they are indispensably preliminary to the dissolution of an inauspicious marriage, which never should have existed: Mr. Howard may then profit by an useful, though an unpleasant experience, and be happier with a woman whose mind he may find disengaged; whilst the parents of the rising generation, taking warning from the lesson which the business of the day so forcibly teaches, may avert from their families, and the public, that bitterness of disunion, which, while human nature continues to be itself, will ever be produced to the end of time, from similar conjunctures.

Gentlemen, I have endeavored so to conduct this cause as to offend no man: I have guarded against every expression which could inflict unnecessary pain; and, in doing so, I know that I have not only served my client's interests, but truly represented his honorable and manly disposition. As the case before you cannot be considered by any reasonable man as an occasion for damages, I might here properly conclude; yet, that I may emit nothing which might apply to any possible view of the subject, I will conclude with reminding you, that my client is a member of a numerous family; that, though Lord Lucan's fortune is con siderable, his rank calls for a corresponding equipage and expense: he has other children-one already married to an illustrious nobleman, and another yet to be married to some man who must be happy indeed if he shall know her value: Mr:

Bingham, therefore, is a man of no fortune; but the heir only of, I trust, a very distant expectation. Under all these circumstances, it is but fair to believe, that Mr. Howard comes here for the reasons I have assigned, and not to take money out of the pocket of Mr. Bingham to put into his own. You will, therefore, consider, gen-tlemen, whether it would be creditable for you to offer what it would be disgraceful for Mr. Howard to receive.

THE KING v. CUTHELL.

PREFACE.

THE following speech of Lord Erskine, in the court of King's Bench, at Westminster, on the 21st of February, 1799, for Mr. Cuthell, the bookseller, in Holborn, becomes peculiarly interesting at the present moment, from the verdict of a special jury very lately at Guildhall, London, in the case of Mr. White, the proprietor of the Independent Whig, as the doctrine upon which that verdict appears to have proceeded, was strongly insisted upon by Lord Erskine in Mr. Cuthell's case, and every possible argument em ployed to support it; but the doctrine was then over-ruled by Lord Kenyon, at Westminster, as it was lately by Lord Ellenborough at Guild. hall; and, indeed, Lord Erskine appears to have been so sensible of the current of authorities ́against him, which would, at all events, binding on a single judge proceeding on such a trial, whatever he might think of the propriety of former decisions on the subject, that he appears to have pressed the jury to bring in a special verdict in