In the month of April, Mr. Brougham visited his native country, for the purpose of being invested with the title of "Lord Rector of the University of

[[139]]Glasgow." We should not have noticed a circumstance of such trivial importance to the public, did it not afford us an opportunity of introducing a most admirable speech, which that learned gentleman had an opportunity of delivering on the occasion by reason of some allusion being made to the trial of the late Queen Caroline. To explain the impropriety of calling such persecuting proceedings a "trial," Mr. Brougham said,

"If he could bring himself, on such a day as this, to those habits of contentious discussion to which he was sometimes accustomed, he should have to analyze his friend's splendid speech, and object to the whole of his eulogy. But there was one part of that speech which had caused him considerable pain: his friend had talked of 'the trial' of the late queen. Never had he (Mr. Brougham) either in public or private, before heard so great a profanation of the attributes of those judicial proceedings, which by profession and habit he had been taught to revere, than to use the name of 'trial' when speaking of such an event. It was no trial, he said, and so did the world. The subject was gone by, and not introduced by him; but still the phrase, when dropped, must be corrected; for 'trial' it was none. Was that a trial where the accused had to plead before those who were interested in her destruction?—where those who sat on the bench of justice, aye, and pretended to be her judges, had pre-ordained her fate? Trial!" continued Mr. Brougham, "I

[[140]]repeat there was, there could be, none, where every channel of defamation was allowed to empty itself upon the accused, borne down by the strong arm of power, overwhelmed by the alliance of the powers and the princedoms of the state, and defended only by that innocence and that law which those powers and those princedoms, united with the powers of darkness, had combined to destroy. Trial it was none, where every form of justice was obliged to be broken through on the very surface before the accusers could get at the imputed grounds of their accusations. This, forsooth, a trial!—call it not so, for the sake of truth and law. While that event deformed the page of their history, let them be silent about eastern submissiveness; let them talk not of Agas, the Pachas, and the Beys,—all judges, too, at least so they call themselves,—while they were doomed to remember they had had in their own times ministers of their own crown, who, under the absolute authority of their own master, consented to violate their own pledge, to compromise and stifle their own avowed feelings, and to act as slaves, crouching before the foot-stool of power, to administer to its caprice. Let them call that a trial which was so conducted, and then he would say the queen had been tried at the time when he stood for fifty-six days witnessing the sacrilegious proceeding. Did he now, for the first time, utter this description of its character? No, no; day after day did he repeat it in the presence of all the parties, and dared them to deny the imputation; he dared them then,

[[141]]but not now, lest he should be forced to see the same faces in the same place again, professing to exercise the same functions. If it were in his power to repeat in their hearing now what he had said in their presence before, they might, indeed, call that a trial in his case which they had called it in the other; but to whom it looked not like a chamber of justice, but rather the gloominess of the den; not indeed of judgment, for he could not liken it to such, but rather to others—(here Mr. Brougham paused)—But no, he could not sustain the allusion, lest, perchance, for the very saying of it, (for he could not be prevented from thinking of it so) he should again have to submit to the test of power,—an alternative which his veneration for the constitution of his country and its honours forbade him to precipitate.

"How many long years," said Mr. Brougham, "had they not seen, when to be an Englishman on the Continent was a painful, if not a degrading, condition? He meant, during that dark and murky night of power, when the machinations of the family of the tyrants of Europe were at work, and when they could reckon upon the minister of England as silently suffering, nay, permitting their deadly march against the liberties of mankind. England then had her fair name degraded by being considered as the ABETTOR of every tyrant's plan for the subjugation of his subjects. Then was the time when no despot could open his glaring eye, flashing with vengeance for his prey, without catching the

[[142]]glistening eye of the supplicant British minister. Then was the time when no tyrant could hold out his hand, after shaking in it the chains he had forged to bind and excoriate his people, without its meeting the cordial grasp of friendship of the British minister. Then was the time when the oppressor stalked abroad with the countenance of the rulers of that land, which was called the champion and the protectress of the free. Then did horrid tyranny, more grim in its blasted actions than even in the vices of its original debasement, disfigure the fair face of Europe, while linked and leagued (O, shame upon the pen of history!) with the freest government upon earth,—to which, nevertheless, the tyrant never turned his glance, or stretched his hand in vain, during such disastrous times. That black and disgraceful night of intellect and freedom had now gone down, the sky was clear, and the view was changed into a brighter prospect. Now," continued Mr. Brougham, "we can speak out, and look abroad with clear vision. What man is there now, I ask, in half-represented England, in unrepresented Scotland,—aye, where and which of you, in either country, or even in tortured, insulted, and persecuted Ireland,—where, I say, can the man be found, who dared to look forth in the broad face of day, who dared to raise his voice before his fellow-men, and say, 'I befriend the Holy Alliance?' Not only, I repeat, is there no such man, I will not say so wicked, but so childish,—I will not say so stricken with hostility to free principles, or so

[[143]]bent upon the destruction of his own individual character,—in the whole walk of society, as to avow such sentiments. O, no; not out of Bedlam could we find him!—hardly there, save in the precipitation of a maniac's rage, could we behold a being in the shape of a man to stand up and say, 'I am the friend of the Holy Alliance.' If there be the man where freedom shines, who could look with complaisance on the accomplished despot who fills the Calmuc throne, who can behold with meekness that specious and ungrateful imbecility which promised first, and then refused, free institutions to the Germans who had bled and died in thousands to restore his throne; if there be any man who can approve the scourge of fair Italy, and the tyrant of Austria; if there be, I repeat, any such man, so reckless of himself as to admire or approve, (for that is out of the maddest rage of speculation) but even to tolerate the mere mention of the name of that cruel tyrant of his people at home,—the baffled despot, thank God! of South America,—but whose sway it pleased Providence still to permit at home, and to suspend for a short season the doom of that nameless despot. If there be a man, I say, so monstrous and unnatural as to approve of these royal minions, then it was a consolation to know that he had the grace to confine his thoughts to the regions best adapted for their culture, to lock them up in the innermost recesses of the offices of state, or to confine his silent migrations to the merest purlieus of the court, or perchance to lurk 'behind the

[[144]]arras,' to live there among the vermin which were its natural tenants, and there to gloat upon the merits of Alexander, Frederick, Francis, or Ferdinand,—have I named him?—among the spiders, the vipers, the toads, and those who hated the toads, the lizards. To such an association and contact were these lovers of despots confined; not a word of approbation from any member of the government could be extorted for them. He had often seen much ability and ingenuity devised and exercised to endeavour to get out even a smooth word in favour of the Holy Alliance in parliament; but no, the attempt was fruitless,—all cheered the sentiments which were breathed against these tyrants. So that whoever loved them 'behind the arras,' had at least, if not the better principle, the better taste,—was, if not better in demeanour, at least more ashamed in practice to avow himself as their champion, and rather to prefer to hide himself from that sun of day, which would almost feel disgraced by being compelled to shine upon him in common with the better part of mankind."

The facts and well-merited castigations contained in this most eloquent address were not very creditable to the character of the voluptuous king and his servile ministers. Mr. Brougham here uttered some startling TRUTHS, and accompanied their recital with that keenness of remark for which he is so famous. We need hardly say how heartily we agree with him in the detestation he expressed