Clergy. Yet these men profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, to walk in his footsteps, to teach his precepts, to inculcate his spirit, to promote harmony, charity, and Christian love! Out upon such hypocrisy!"

That you may understand the meaning of this passage, it is necessary for me to set before you, the picture my learned friend was pleased to draw of the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, and I shall recall it to your minds almost in his own words. According to him they stand in a peculiarly unfortunate situation; they are, in truth, the most injured of men. They all, it seems, entertained the same generous sentiments with the rest of their countrymen, though they did not express them in the old, free, English manner, by openly condemning the proceedings against the late Queen; and after the course of unexampled injustice against which she victoriously struggled had been followed by the needless infliction of inhuman torture, to undermine a frame whose spirit no open hostility could daunt, and extinguish the life so long embittered by the same foul arts-after that great Princess had ceased to harass her enemies (if I may be allowed thus to speak,)—after her glorious but unhappy life had closed, and that princely head was at last laid low by death, which, living, all oppression had only the more illustriously exalted-the venerable the Clergy of Durham, I am now told for the first time, though less forward in giving vent to their feelings than the rest of their fellow-citizens though not so vehement in their indignation at the matchless and unmanly persecution of the Queen, though not so unbridled in their joy at her immortal triumph, nor so loud in their lamentations over her mournful and untimely end-did, nevertheless, in reality, all the while, deeply sympathise with her sufferings, in the bottom of their reverend hearts. When all the resources

of the most ingenious cruelty hurried her to a fate without parallel, if not so clamorous, they did not feel the least of all the members of the communitytheir grief was in truth too deep for utterance-sorrow clung round their bosoms, weighed upon their tongues, stifled every sound-and, when all the rest of mankind, of all sects and of all nations, freely gave vent to the feelings of our common nature, their silence, the contrast which they displayed to the rest of their species, proceeded from the greater depth of their affliction; they said the less because they felt the more!-Oh! talk of hypocrisy after this! Most consummate of all hypocrites! After instructing your chosen, official advocate to stand forward with such a defence such an exposition of your motives-to dare utter the word hypocrisy, and complain of those who charged you with it! This is indeed to insult common sense, and outrage the feelings of the whole human race. If you were hypocrites before, you were downright, frank, honest hypocrites to what you have now made yourselves-and, surely, for all you have ever done, or ever been charged with, your worst enemies must be satiated with the humiliation of this day, its just atonement, and ample retribution.

If Mr Williams had known the hundredth part of this at the time of her Majesty's demise; if he had descried the least twinkling of the light which has now broke upon us, as to the real motives of their actions, I am sure this cause would never have been tried; because to have made any one of his strictures upon their conduct would have been not only an act of the blackest injustice; it would have been perfectly senseless. But can he be blamed for his ignorance, when such pains were taken to keep him in the dark? Can it be wondered at that he was led astray, when he had only so false a

guide to their motives as their conduct, unexplained, afforded? When they were so anxious to mislead, by facts and deeds, is his mistake to be so severely criticised? Had he known the real truth, he must have fraternised with them; embraced them cordially; looked up with admiration to their superior sensibility; admitted that he who feels most, by an eternal law of our nature, is least disposed to express his feelings; and lamented that his own zeal was less glowing than theirs: but ignorant and misguided as he was, it is no great marvel that he did not rightly know the real history of their conduct, until about three quarters of an hour ago, when the truth burst in upon us, that all the while they were generously attached to the cause of weakness and misfortune.

Gentlemen, if the country, as well as Mr Williams, has been all along so deceived, it must be admitted that it is not from the probabilities of the case. Judging beforehand, no doubt, any one must have expected the Durham Clergy, of all men, to feel exactly as they are now, for the first time, ascertained to have felt. They are Christians; outwardly, at least, they profess the gospel of charity and peace; they beheld oppression in its foulest shape; malignity and all uncharitableness putting on their most hideous forms; measures pursued to gratify prejudices in a particular quarter, in defiance of the wishes of the people, and the declared opinions of the soundest judges of each party; and all with the certain tendency to plunge the nation in civil discord. If for a moment they had been led away, by a dislike of cruelty and of civil war, to express displeasure at such perilous doings, no man would have charged them with political meddling; and when they beheld truth and innocence triumph over power, they might, as Christian Ministers, call ing to mind the original of their own

Church, have indulged without offence in some little appearance of gladness ; a calm, placid satisfaction, on so happy an event, would not have been unbecoming their sacred station. All probability certainly favoured the supposition that the Clergy of Durham would not take part against the injured, because the oppressor was powerful; and that the prospect of emolument would not make them witness with dry eyes and hardened hearts the close of a life which they had contributed to embitter and destroy. But I am compelled to say that their whole conduct has falsified those expectations. They sided openly, strenuously, forwardly, officiously with power, in the oppression of a woman, whose wrongs this day they for the first time pretend to bewail in their attempt to cozen you out of a verdict, behind which they may skulk from the inquiring eyes of the people. Silent, and subdued in their tone as they were, on the demise of the unhappy Queen, they could make every bell in all their chimes peal when gain was to be expected by flattering present greatness. Then they could send up addresses, flock to public meetings, and fill the press with their libels, and make the pulpit ring with their sycophancy, filling up to the brim the measure of their adulation to the reigning Monarch, Head of the Church, and Dispenser of its Patronage.

In this contrast originated the defendant's feelings, and hence the strictures which form the subject of these proceedings. I say the publication refers exclusively to the Clergy of this city and its suburbs, and especially to such parts of that Clergy as were concerned in the act of disrespect towards her late Majesty, which forms the subject of the alleged libel; but I deny that it has any reference whatever to the rest of the clergy, or evinces any designs hostile either to the stability of

the Church, or the general character and conduct of its ministers. For myself, I am far from approving the contemptuous terms in which he has expressed himself of those who dissent from the establishment; and I think he has not spoken of them in the tone of decent respect that should be observed to so many worthy persons, who, though they differ from the Church, differ from it on the most conscientious grounds. This is the only part of the publication of which I cannot entirely approve, but it is not for this he is prosecuted. Then, what is the meaning of the obnoxious remarks? Are they directed against the establishment? Are they meant to shake or degrade it? I say that no man who reads them can entertain a moment's doubt in his mind, that they were excited by the conduct of certain individuals, and the use which he makes of that particular conduct, the inference which he draws from it, is not invective against the establishment, but a regret that it should by such conduct be lowered. This is no lawyerlike gloss upon the passage-no special pleading construction, or far-fetched refinement of explanation,-I give the plain and obvious sense which every man of ordinary understanding must affix to it. If you say that such an one disgraces his profession, or that he is a scandal to the cloth he wears, do you mean by such lamentations to undermine the establishment? In saying that the purity of the cloth is defiled by individual misconduct, it is clear that you cast no imputation on the cloth generally; for an impure person could not contaminate a defiled cloth. Just so has the defendant expressed himself; and in this light I will put his case to you. If he had thought that the whole establishment was bad; that all its ministers were time-servers, who, like the spaniel, would crouch and lick the hand that fed it, but

snarl and bite at one which had nothing to bestow-fawning upon rich and liberal patrons, and slandering all that were too proud or too poor to bribe them; if he had painted the Church as founded upon imposture, reared in time-serving, cemented by sordid interest, and crowned with spite, and insolence and pride,-to have said that the Durham Clergy disgraced such a hierarchy would have been not only gross inconsistency, but stark nonsense.

He must rather have

said that they were worthy members of a base and grovelling establishment; that the Church was as bad as its ministers; and that it was hard to say whether they more defiled it or were defiled by it. But he has said nothing which can bring into jeopardy or discredit an institution which every one wishes to keep pure, and which has nothing to apprehend so much as the follies and crimes of its supporters.

Gentlemen, You have to-day a great task committed to your hands. This is not the age, the spirit of the times is not such, as to make it safe either for the country, or for the Government, or for the Church itself, to veil its mysteries in secrecy; to plant in the porch of the temple a prosecutor brandishing his flaming sword, to prevent the prying eyes of mankind from wandering over the structure. These are times when men will inquire; and the day most fatal to the Established Church, the blackest that ever dawned upon its ministers, will be that which consigns this defendant, for these remarks, to the horrors of a gaol, which its false friends, the chosen objects of such lavish favour, have far more richly deserved. My learned friend has sympathised with the priesthood, and innocently enough lamented that they possess not the power of defending themselves through the public press. Let him be consoled; they are not so very defenceless; they are not so en

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tirely destitute of the aid of the press as through him they have represented themselves to be. They have largely used that press (I wish I could say as not abusing it"), and against some persons very near me; I mean especially against the defendant, whom they have scurrilously and foully libelled through that great vehicle of public instruction, over which, for the first time, among the other novelties of the day, I now hear they have no control. Not that they wound deeply or injure much; but that is no fault of theirs ; without hurting, they give trouble and discomfort. The insect brought into life by corruption, 'and nestled in filth -I mean the dirt-fly-though its flight be lowly and its sting puny, can swarm and buz, and irritate the skin and offend the nostril, and altogether, give nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, whose nobler nature it aspires to emulate. These reverend slanderers, these pious backbiters, devoid of force to wield the sword, snatch the dagger; and destitute of wit to point or to barb it, and make it rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch. The much venerated personages whose harmless and unprotected state is now deplored, have been the wholesale dealers in calumny, as well as largest consumers of the base article, the especial promoters of that vile traffic of late the disgrace of the country-both furnishing a constant demand for the slanders by which the press is polluted, and prostituting themselves to pander for the appetites of others; and now they come to demand protection from retaliation, and shelter from just exposure; and to screen themselves, would have you prohibit all scrutiny of the abuses by which they exist, and the mal-practices by which they disgrace their calling. After abusing and well nigh dismantling for their own despicable purposes the great engine of instruction, they

would have you annihilate all that they have left of it, to secure their escape. They have the incredible assurance to expect that an English Jury will conspire with them in this wicked design. They expect in vain. If all existing institutions and all public functionaries must henceforth be sacred from question among the people; if, at length, the free press of this country, and, with it, the freedom itself, is to be destroyed, at least let not the heavy blow fall from your hands. Leave it to some profligate tyrant; leave it to a mercenary and effeminate Parliament; a hireling army, degraded by the lash, and the readier instrument for enslaving its country; leave it to a pampered House of Lords; a venal House of Commons; some vulgar minion, servant of all work to an insolent Court; some unprincipled soldier, combining the talents of a usurper with the fame of a captain; leave to such desperate hands, and such fit tools, so horrid a work. But you, an English Jury, parent of the press, yet supported by it, and doomed to perish the instant its health and strength are gone-lift not you against it an unnatural hand. Prove to us that our rights are safe in your keeping; but maintain, above all things, the stability of our institutions, by well guarding their corner-stone. Defend the Church from her worst enemies, who, to hide their own misdeeds, would veil her solid foundations in darkness; and proclaim to them, by your verdict of acquittal, that henceforward, as heretofore, all the recesses of the sanctuary must be visited by the continual light of day, and by that light all its abuses be explored.

Mr Baron Wood proceeded to charge the Jury.-After stating the nature of the prosecution, and reading the libel as set forth in the information, the learned Judge asked, What greater libel can there be on the Established Clergy than that? It is said that dis

cussion is not to be checked. What discussion is there in that? It is downright slander. I hope the defendant's prediction will never take place, but it appears to be done with the most malignant intention indeed. It is a direct incentive to the people of the country to subdue the establishment. It is my opinion that this is a libel. But it is said to you that it is no invective upon the Clergy. No invective! Is it no invective to tell them that they don't walk in the path they should follow, that they are hypocrites, and have no respect for religion? Is that no invective? It is said there should be free and unfettered discussion, but writings of this sort are free and unfettered abuse. Some quotations have been read from authors. I have no doubt you may

look

into many books and find libels, but one libel cannot justify another. If the press is at liberty to write and publish any thing it pleases against the establishments of our country, this government cannot last. It seems to me that the defendant should be convicted; for this is a libel and a very gross libel. I am required by law to give you my opinion, and I tell you that this is a very gross libel.

The Jury, after a few minutes' consultation in their box, retired to deliberate on their verdict, and after being nearly five hours inclosed, returned the following verdict: "Guilty of a libel against the Clergy residing in and near the City of Durham, and the suburbs thereof."

Pisa, February 8. 1822.