EXPLOITS OF RICHMOND;

EXPOSURE OF THE SPY SYSTEM,

LETTERS OF ANDREW HARDIE, &c.

"As it is absolutely necessary for rulers to make use of other people's eyes and ears, they should take particular care to do it in such a manner, that it may not bear too hard on the person whose life and conversation are inquired into. A man who capable of so infamous a calling as that of a spy, is not very much to be relied upon; he can have no great ties of honour, or checks of conscience, to restrain him in those covert evidences, where the person accused has no opportunity of vindicating himself. He will be more industrious to carry that which is grateful, than that which is true. There will be no occasion for him, if he does not hear and see things worth discovery; so that he naturally inflames every word and circumstance, aggravates what is faulty, perverts what is good, and misrepresents what is indifferent. Nor is it to be doubted, but that such ignominious wretches let their private passions into these their clandestine informations, and often wreak their particular spite or malice against the person whom they are set to watch."

ADDISON.

TRIAL OF ANDREW HARDIE.

[Continued from No. 10.]

MR. JEFFREY continued to address the Jury as follows:-

Gentlemen, if that hand-bill had been brought home to the prisoner at the bar, as a person concerned in its concoction-if any evidence had been laid before you that he had been a party, or a member of a committee for organizing a provisional government-if any expression or speech had fallen from him, deliberately uttered, advisedly and repeatedly uttered-for I think it would require that-approving the tenor of that publication, with evidence that he understood the tenor of it when he did so approve of it,-why, Gentlemen, I must confess that I should tremble for his fate; and in spite of my reliance on the mercy with which your justice would be tempered, I should scarcely dare to lift my eyes to ask what your justice might have been called upon to pronounce. But, Gentlemen, is that the case here?—Is there any evidence, in the first place, such as, I confess, I expected, and as I think I was prepared to rebut-Is there any evidence that this individual had, for any course of preceding time, been engaged as an active reformer, or a meddler in politics at all?-Has it been proved that he was the hearer or maker of speeches at any radical meeting, or a zealot for annual parliaments and suffrage by ballot ?-Has the prosecutor thought fit to go back so far as to satisfy you that, upon whatever No. XI.] [Price 2d.

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motives he acted during these four days, these motives were even deliberately considered, or formed any part of his settled opinion, or the rule of his habitual conduct ?-Does the prosecutor select his first victim on account of the aggravated and peculiar and prominent features of his offence, and yet he is unable to shew that he belonged to that class of persons with whom, undoubtedly, the greatest and most unexpiable guilt must rest, by whose machinations, by whose stimulating poisons, the mass of the ignorant, unsuspecting population has been infected? Here there is no foundation laid for the belief of a treasonable purpose; for that, like all other fixed purposes for which persons are to be responsible with their lives, ought to be shown not to be abandoned after a few days, but that the mischief was ripe in the country for years before; but there is no attempt to trace this unfortunate person back one step beyond the brief period during which his conduct has been put in evidence before you to-day.

But, I say, while you are bound to free the prisoner, from the utter want of evidence on the point of all participation in these plots and conspiracies, and these committees, and meetings, and associations, from which this pernicious and detestable hand-bill originally emanated, I admit, if you could fasten on him the adoption of that hand-bill as his creed, with evidence of his understanding it, however much it might be regretted that punishment could not find its way to the most guilty, it would be impossible to say sufficient had not been proved against this party. But how do we stand as to this? Their Lordships have found that it is so proved in the circumstances of the case, as that it may and ought to be read to you; and of course you must take it as a part of the evidence laid before you; yet their Lordships neither have, nor can be imagined to have found, anything more. They have not found that that hand-bill is a paper, for the contents of which my client is responsible; they have not found that there is any evidence by which his approbation of it is sealed; indeed, it does not belong to the Court so to find-it belongs to you, and you only, to find that; and their Lordships never intended to prejudice that question. Now, Gentlemen, what is the evidence?-I am unwilling to resume any part of the discussion which you heard lately laid before the Court, or to ask you to form a different opinion upon any of the points upon which the opinion of their Lordships has been delivered to you; and, therefore, I shall not enter into the question of how far there is sufficient evidence to satisfy you that the two hand-bills, with which it is said that the prisoner at the bar has been connected, were actually of the tenor of the documents upon the table, which have been sent to you as evidence; but I do submit to you, in one word, that neither of them are sufficiently proved for you to proceed upon. That is an established fact, in proceeding to consider the import of the evidence laid before you, though I am bound to bow to the decision which has been formed, that they have been so far proved as to entitle you to form the conclusion which shall appear to you to be deducible from them; I say, there is no legal evidence that the hand-bill now produced by Mr. Hardie was of the same identical tenor with the hand-bill of which

a copy was seen by him; it is not proved to be of the same tenor as that the prisoner was found hearing read to him: you are the judges of that. I may admit, as a rule of law, that though it is sufficiently proved to send it to a Jury, it is not sufficiently proved to entitle a person to say, from recollection, that it is an exact copy of that paper, which alone can affect the prisoner. The only paper which can at all touch the prisoner is that which he is proved to have personally heard read. Now, the contents of that paper are not in evidence before you, nor any copy compared with it, of the identity of that paper with others. I submit, in a court of criminal justice, you cannot hold identity to be established by the circumstance that it struck the witness as being the same. That is not legal evidence of identity; and you cannot take it upon you to touch the life of a fellow-creature upon grounds so precarious.

Then, again, what is the fact with regard to this hand-bill?-Why, Hardie, the prisoner at the bar, is proved, I think sufficiently proved, to have heard a part of it read-but only a part of it; and, unquestionably, there is not the least evidence that he heard the part that followed that to which the witness spoke, and necessarily confined his deposition, or that he either himself read, or heard the subsequent part read at all. But supposing it were ever so clear, that he had heard it read four times over from beginning to end, deliberately and distinctly, is it possible to maintain, that hearing a seditious paper read, or reading a seditious paper in the public streets, where all passers-by must read it, is enough to involve the party who reads it in a seditious approbation of its contents? You, and thousands of loyal subjects, may have read it under the same circumstances. His reading a part is absolutely nothing, as to connecting him with the whole of it, or fixing him with its tenor, as any exponent of his sentiments or opinions.

But then we are told that his conversation with Mr. James Hardie, who was naturally struck with horror and indignation at what he read of it, his interference with that person in his attempts to pull it down, and the passionate and unbecoming language which he is said to have used to him, are evidence to a jury, in a case of blood, that he approved of that paper, and adopted it as his own; and that you are entitled to impute to him the blame of the anonymous hand-bill, stuck up in the streets for all who ran to read. This, I confess, is a stretch I should hardly expect from any one; and without appealing to that great law of reason, humanity and justice, which we know to rule and predominate in the criminal courts,-that the milder interpretation is to be adopted; and it is only where you are compelled to adopt that which imports guilt, that you are entitled to adopt it. In other words, the prisoner is to remain in presumption of innocence, until you have clear and overbearing evidence of guilt; and anything else, though it may justify suspicion, is not, on any account, to be assumed as evidence by a jury, situated as you are, charged with the life of a fellow-creature, where all sense, eyes, and minds must be shut to suspicions. I say, I need not appeal to these considerations here, because, considering the description of person, the rank of life, and the temper, you may sup

pose this man seditious, discontented, and mutinous, suffering his share of privations, and feeling more than his share of excitements and provocations to these things; and looking at him in that way, is it necessary to suppose the adoption of that bill to explain what took place with regard to it? What took place ?-He was with thirty other people gaping round this watch-box, and listening to the elocution of some cleverer fellow, who was delivering its contents to a circle of wondering auditors and spectators; and in the midst of this, to all men very interesting reading, a person comes up and pushes through the crowd. In an idle, discontented, probably not very moral or correct person, you know how craving the mind is for stimulants of this kind; all tales of wonder, and all tales of crimes, are gladly sought after by that idle part of the population, whose passions being blunted on one hand and excited on the other, are most easily led to that sort of delight which the exhibition of horrors supplies to their uncultivated minds. In the midst of this wonderful story a grave person comes forward and insists on interrupting the orator; and before he gets half way through reading the paper, he insists on tearing it down and carrying it away. I do not say it was becoming or right; I do not say it was not very wrong; I do not say it was not suspicious, to use the language this witness, says he, recollects the prisoner to have used: but the substance of it is, he asks, what right have you to interfere ?—and he is answered, I am a magistrate. Now, we all know, that in the towns of this country the name of magistrate is almost exclusively bestowed on the borough magistrates; and though, in the law, the justices of the peace are magistrates, that is not the common acceptation of the word, especially in the royal burghs. There is a fat gentleman in a black coat calls himself a magistrate; he is supposed to be a dean of guild, or a bailie, or something having the badge of authority; therefore I explain the rudeness, the insolence, and violence of speech, when he said, where is your warrant? As Mr. Hardie had no gold chain, the prisoner naturally thought he was usurping the character; he never saw his person before, and therefore his appeal was unsuccessful, from the fact that he did not see in that circle any person known to him. There was a mistake, in short, in the use of the word magistrate by this person, certainly entitled to that appellation, which would appear a deception to the mind of a Glasgow weaver, who would say, I know all the magistrates of Glasgow, and this is not one of them. And, after all, is it to be conceived that this man, hearing those fine phrases, the common slang of patriotism, all the usual verbiage, by which a man's head is apt to be bewildered, would follow from a blundering reader, all that was given out from this public desk in this manner, and have an exact perception of the tenor of the work? He had heard enough, however, to excite his imagination, as all bombast does with the ignorant, and he thought it fine and flashy, and was desirous to hear it out; and I ask, which of us, if we had seen such a performance, would not have wished to read the whole of it? Which of us would not have put it in our pockets, and read it word by word in the conclaves of our associates, just as Hardie and his associates were

reading it then?-There were words, the Doctor said, between Mr. Hardie the magistrate and some of the other people; and there were, it appears from Mr. Hardie, but the Dr. says he cannot recollect more than he stated, that he insisted on taking the paper down; and this unfortunate person, in all ikelihood, not having a command of temper, was angry that he should be interrupted, and said, I will be damned if you take it down. You shall take my life's blood sooner. That was, no doubt,

a violent observation; but if a man is once defied and comes to the heat of blood arising from scuffling, we all know the indecorum to which he may be hurried; and I ask, whether, under these circumstances, you can hold that that language can in common sense, to say nothing of humanity or law, be received by you as a presumptionthough you have nothing to do with presumptions, and ought to discard them with resentment from your minds-can that language afford any sort of evidence that he knew more than he was then hearing, or that he approved of, or understood, what he actually heard? I do submit there is a complete failure of the evidence on this point, and that it would be the most tremendous of all constructions of evidence, worse than any construction of treason ever attempted, to convict a person of a capital crime on such a foundation as this.

Gentlemen, I say there is not a particle of evidence with regard to his adoption or approbation of that paper, and that every thing that occurred, not only may be explained consistently with his not approving, and not understanding even that part which he heard, but in common sense, considering his condition of life, it is by far the most natural presumption; and if the favour were the other way, you would naturally and necessarily adopt it: and therefore I cannot too much caution you in the outset against allowing your minds to be poisoned by listening to any suggestions of this kind, in viewing that legal, and pure, direct, or circumstantial evidence, by which only you can find a fellow-creature guilty of the tremendous offence charged against this unhappy man to-day.

Then of the other hand-bills I have still less to say, before I dismiss them altogether. You have heard it proved that this unfortunate man was on the road, not laudably, I fear, nor innocently employed, but, I say, not proved to be treasonably employed, along with five or six other persons, when they met this serjeant, whom you saw examined to-day; and there a person, who I think it is admitted was not the prisoner, did pull out of his pocket, after some conversation, a parcel of papers, and gave the serjeant one of them; which, it is said, has been proved to be another copy of the same hand-bill. I say, in the first place, that this is not proved; that there is a fatal and unsuppliable link in the chain of evidence, by which it ought to be connected with the person who gave it to Cook; and, therefore, if that person had been the prisoner, it would not have been a crime, because it is not proved to be the same with the one now produced. Evidence, from recollection of similarity of tenor, is not receivable evidence in any crime, much less in the highest crime, where the proof is most difficult, and required to be most complete. But, Gentlemen, suppos