Sir,—I shall esteem it a great favor if you will allow the accompanying documents to appear in the "Times." Its universal circulation affords me an opportunity of annihilating a calumny recently revived, which has for nine years harassed my friends far more than myself.
I am, &c.,
Charles Phillips.
39 Gordon Square.
Inner Temple, Nov. 14, 1849.
My dear Phillips,—It was with pain that I heard yesterday of an accusation having been revived against you in the "Examiner" newspaper, respecting alleged dishonorable and most unconscientious conduct on your part, when defending Courvoisier against the charge of having murdered Lord William Russell. Considering that you fill a responsible judicial office, and have to leave behind you a name unsullied by any blot or stain, I think you ought to lose no time in offering, as I believe you can truly do, a public and peremptory contradiction to the allegations in question. The mere circumstances of your having been twice promoted to judicial office by two lord chancellors, Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham, since the circulation of the reports to which I am alluding, and after those reports had been called to the attention of at least one of those noble and learned lords, is sufficient evidence of the groundlessness of such reports.
Some time ago I was dining with Lord Denman, when I mentioned to him the report in question. His lordship immediately stated that he had inquired into the matter, and found the charge to be utterly unfounded; that he had spoken on the subject to Mr. Baron Parke, who had sat on the Bench beside Chief Justice Tindal, who tried Courvoisier, and that Baron Parke told him he had, for reasons of his own, most carefully watched every word that you uttered, and assured Lord Denman that your address was perfectly unexceptionable, and that you made no such statements as were subsequently attributed to you.
Lord Denman told me that I was at liberty to mention this fact to any one; and expressed in noble and generous terms his concern at the existence of such serious and unfounded imputations upon your character and honor.
Both Lord Denman and Baron Parke are men of as nice a sense of honor and as high a degree of consciousness as it is possible to conceive; and I think the testimony of two such distinguished judges ought to be publicly known, to extinguish every kind of suspicion on the subject.
I write this letter to you spontaneously, and, hoping that you will forgive the earnestness with which I entreat you to act upon my suggestion, believe me ever yours sincerely,