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carceration of Mrs. Carlile, than at that of the Major, although I am fully alive to the situation of my young family; still, Mrs. C., I know, would care but little about it after she had passed the first week; and she is likely to live and see the day when the bare recollection of her confineraent, in such a cause, will be a consolation to her, and the pride and theme, both of her husband, and children. The Major's days can be but few, and any harsh treatment must shorten them. It can be scarcely hoped that the Major can survive a long imprisonment, such as our political Judges are eager to bestow. And as the verdict of a Jury, on such a question, is certain to be final, unless some great political change takes place, for all despots are only to be acted upon by force and fear, the attempt to obtain a new trial, or to destroy the verdict, can be no further useful than to keep up the discussion on the subject. The Major will, at least, have the consolation that he has begun and ended his career well; and I still hope that he will live to grace a triumph in the cause of reform."

In the fore-mentioned trial, a packing of the Jury was not considered sufficient; and because there happened to be a Mr. Peech who was left on the Jury after they were reduced, and whose sentiments were ultimately discovered not to be so decidedly hostile to those of Major Cartwright as the prosecutors could wish, they neglected to summon him, or, at least, they summoned him on the third of August, to attend on the twenty-ninth of July! Baron Richards was deaf to every attempt to put off the trial on this ground; and said as much as that it was immaterial to him of what the Jury were composed, so as there appeared the semblance of twelve men in the Jury Box! The trial occupied four-and-twenty hours, and was a display of ability throughout. Mr. Denman said, that if it were criminal to oppose the abuses of the government, which had now arrived to the appearance of a universal gloom spread over the country, threatening like a direful thunder-storm, to explode and destroy all that was fair and yaluable, he, for one, could wish to be ranked as the first of criminals. The adroitness of Mr. Wooler in putting a strong passage from the Ilchester address to the Queen, to try the strength of the memory of one of the perjured witnesses, who professed to have retained what had passed at the meeting, in his memory, and to make it a verbatim copy of an incorrect report that had been published in Birmingham, was admirable. The fellow could recollect all that was said at the meeting, although

he stood in a crowd of 40,000 persons, and could repeat it fifteen months after, still he could not retain the substance of a short paragraph delivered in a silent court of law, where every word was distinctly addressed to him to try his memory?

There have been days, and there have been judges, when such a man would have been sent out of Court to confinement for such glaring perjury; but now, on all trials where the Crown prosecutes, our judges are become the abettors and supporters of perjury, and every other real crime and abuse to obtain a verdict. There is an evident conspiracy between the judges, law-officers, and other officers of the court, to protect the abuses under which they thrive, and with which they know they must fall; so that an accusation is become a certain conviction; and as I have before said, the farce of trial can only be beneficial so far as it is public, and its proceedings reported, printed, and circulated through the country.

Messrs. Russell and Ragg have been prosecuted for selling a number of the Republican, and Mr. Osborne for a number of the Black Book. The case of those three men is peculiarly hard; they have but just quitted a prison, where they have been confined for doing in Birmingham what has been done and continues to be done in London with impunity: but they are to have a repeated imprisonment for the same thing, and this too whilst the publishers of those works remain unattacked in London. Yes, Osborne and Ragg have been confined within the walls of a London prison for selling a number of the Black Book in Birmingham, whilst the original publisher remains unnoticed in London, although he has sold, and that publicly, 10,000 copies of each number, or of the work as a whole. Can this be justice; or can this be an equal distribution of it? Is it not rather caprice? Is it not a mere job for that ill-looking fellow, Spurrier, the lawyer of Birmingham, who can venture to risk a prosecution in the county of Warwick, which his coadjutor, Pritchard of London, or the Attorney-General, durst not risk in London? Yes, this is the cause, and the only cause of it. But all these fellows must expect a reward for their services by and by. They have done much, and to much they will be entitled.

The subject of the trial of Mr. Brandis, was an Address to the Reformers of Birmingham, on the effect of the new laws which were passed in the winter to prop the corruptions of the government. It was a well-written document, and merited a laurel wreath rather than a prison. But what avails it? the

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rant of man with a wig and gown unnerves a Warwickshire farmer, and he is your humble servant in any thing that the bench wig and the bar wig call upon him to do. He is like a hog swimming against the stream, he sees danger but cuts his throat in his endeavour to get out of it, by mistaken where his safety depended. That blustering, ranting fellow, Barrister Clarke, finds himself in a right element in the court at Warwick, and frightens the poor Warwickshire clodhopper, by telling him that if he does not give a verdict of guilty, these reformers will by and by come to his fire-side with daggers in their hands, and assassinate him and all his family. He tells them that such things have lately happened in France, and such will be the case in this country, unless they, the tax-ridden blockheads, do as he wishes them. These poor dupes are frightened out of their wits, and fancy the picture drawn by such a man must be a real one, and almost feel the point of the dagger in the jury-box. This is how the thing is done, and it is very probable that Mr. Clarke will go on like the child who cried wolf so often, that at last no one listened to him and the wolf came in reality and carried him off.

Dorchester Gaol, Aug. 9th, 1820.

R. CARLILE.

TIMES AS THEY ARE.

If the discontent and disaffection of the British army be really what the Courier and other ministerial journals strive to convince us, it must soon lead to something serious. We have always considered that those journals have studiously accelerated a revolution in this country by striving to aggravate the causes which must lead to it, and now they become more glaringly so. Every day produces some article tending to shew that the King is become timid and distrustful, that he is indecisive both in his manners and motions. Instead of his usual custom of keeping his troops on the ground for six or eight hours after the appointed time of reviewing them, he now comes before any one is ready for him, and leaves the ground just as the disappointed spectators are entering it, and he who all his life-time has laid in bed till noon, now rises and works before breakfast! Strange alteration this! It appears that our rulers are afraid to let any number of people see the soldiers formed into a regiment, and to prevent it, reviews take place at seven, eight, and nine o'clock in the morning; and some of those are only known after they have transpired. The Courier, finding the Radicals an incurable set of fellows, has now declared war against the ballad-singers; and we may expect that on the first meeting of Parliament, the business of the Queen will be set aside to pass some new acts to restrain ballad singing. It appears, that the ballad-singers have been sufficiently treasonable to approach so near to different barracks, that the soldiers have heard their melodious notes and thus have been affected with sedition; and it is said, that the barracks in future are to be watched and guarded like a Turkish seraglio, that its inmates might only be seen by the grand Turk.

The Queen carries all before her, and never before, on any one question, was the sense of the nation so decisively expressed. Addresses are pouring in from all quarters, both from males and females; and even the priests are beginning to take the alarm and to pray for her Majesty. It now seems placed beyond doubt that her Majesty will proceed daily to the House of Lords, and that too openly, and in state. The annals of history can display nothing like the present, feeling, and such is its effect, that it penetrates the walls of a prison, and almost makes the prisoner forget where he is. Public

feeling is now in full blaze, which the craft, wickedness, and subtlety of Castlereagh will not be able to extinguish.

The females have forcibly felt the insult, so despicable, in keeping back the plate the Queen was wont to use, and have come to the resolution to present her Majesty with a new service, purchased with small subscriptions of females only. This is doing things as they ought to be done, and making the unmanly conduct of the King and his ministers sting no one but themselves. For what is it for a certain number of females to put down a few shillings each to procure a service of plate. It would be well, if the law did not make it criminal, that the plate should be manufactured from the silver presented, or this might be done by subscribing old silver spoons, ladles and other articles, as the people were wont to do, to support a cause in a civil war. The receipt of such a service of plate must fully compensate the Queen for the loss of her own, although, she might feel a peculiar attachment to the old service, as it was presented to her by her friend and protector. It becomes the duty of the people to place the Queen in that situation that she might expose and treat with contempt every attempt to insult her. Every shilling thrown down as a mark of respect to the Queen becomes a rankling thorn in the bosom of her persecutors. And we sincerely hope that the nation will plant thorns enough in their bosoms to prick them to death, at least, to annihilate all their power, and leave them to linger in a merited agony. They have had no feeling for others, and the cries of the persecuted, and often murdered, sufferer, have been music to their ears. The day of retribution draws near, and grievous are the injuries to be redressed.

The work of regeneration appears to be going on very well both in Naples and Spain. The proceedings of the Cortes are important though marked with some fooleries, such as raising statutes to Ferdinand, applying the epithet of Great to him, and which cannot fail to bring disrepute on theirs. It behoves us to observe that these things have only been submitted to the Cortes in the shape of propositions, and laid before a committee, and have not received the sanction of the Cortes as a body. But such will ever be the consequence of keeping up that ridiculous thing called a King. It is like a child, and must be amused with toyish and childish things, and has a strong tendency to keep a nation in a mixed state of infancy and dotage. What is manly is too rough and rude for its delicate or decayed nerves.

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