It comes simply to this: he talks of venerating the liberties of the Press, and yet he restrains that Press from discussing past history, present story, and future probabilities; he prohibits the past, the present, and the future; ancient records, modern truth, and prophecy, are all within the capacious range of his punishments. Is there anything else? Would this venerator of the liberty of the Press go farther? Yes, gentlemen; having forbidden all matter of history past and present, and all prediction of the future, he generously throws in abstract principles, and, as he has told you that his prisons shall contain every person who speaks of what was, or what is, or what will be, he likewise consigned to the same fate every person who treats of the theory or principles of government; and yet he dares to talk of the liberty of the Press! Can you be his dupes? Will you be his victims? Where is the conscience—where is the indignant spirit of insulted reason amongst you? Has party feeling extinguished in your breasts every glow of virtue—every spark of manhood?
If there be any warmth about you—if you are not clay-cold to all but party feeling, I would, with the air and in the tone of triumph, call you to the consideration of the remaining paragraph which has been spread on the lengthened indictment before you. I divide it into two branches, and shall do no more with the one than to repeat it. I read it for you already; I must read it again:
“Had he remained what he first came over, or what he afterwards professed to be, he would have retained his reputation for honest, open hostility, defending his political principles with firmness, perhaps with warmth, but without rancor; the supporter, and not the tool of an administration; a mistaken politician, perhaps, but an honorable man and a respectable soldier.”
Would to God I had to address another jury! Would to God I had reason and judgment to address, and I could entertain no apprehension from passion or prejudice! Here should I then take my stand, and require of that unprejudiced jury, whether this sentence does not demonstrate the complete absence of private malice or personal hostility. Does not this sentence prove a kindly disposition towards the individual, mixing and mingling with that discussion which freedom sanctions and requires, respecting his political conduct? Contrast this sentence with the prosecutor’s accusation of private malignity, and decide between Mr. Magee and his calumniators. He, at least, has this advantage, that your verdict cannot alter the nature of things; and that the public must see and feel this truth, that the present prosecution is directed against the discussion of the conduct towards the public, of men confided with public authority; that this is a direct attack upon the right to call the attention of the people to the management of the people’s affairs, and that, by your verdict of conviction, it is intended to leave no peaceful or unawed mode of redress for the wrongs and sufferings of the people.
But I will not detain you on these obvious topics. We draw to a close, and I hurry to it. This sentence is said to be particularly libellous:
“His party would have been proud of him; his friends would have praised (they need not have flattered him), and his enemies, though they might have regretted, must have respected his conduct; from the worst quarter there would have been some small tribute of praise; from none any great portion of censure; and his administration, though not popular, would have been conducted with dignity, and without offence. This line of conduct he has taken care to avoid; his original character for moderation he has forfeited; he can lay no claims to any merits for neutrality, nor does he even deserve the cheerless credit of defensive operations. He has begun to act; he has ceased to be a dispassionate chief governor, who views the wickedness and the folly of faction with composure and forbearance, and stands, the representative of majesty, aloof from the contest. He descends; he mixes with the throng; he becomes personally engaged, and having lost his temper, calls forth his private passions to support his public principles; he is no longer an indifferent viceroy, but a frightful partisan of an English ministry, whose base passions he indulges—whose unworthy resentments he gratifies, and on whose behalf he at present canvasses.”
Well, gentlemen, and did he not canvass on behalf of the ministry? Was there a titled or untitled servant of the Castle who was not despatched to the south to vote against the popular, and for the ministerial candidates? Was there a single individual within the reach of his Grace that did not vote against Prittie and Matthew, in Tipperary, and against Hutchinson, in Cork? I have brought with me some of the newspapers of the day, in which this partisanship in the Lord Lieutenant is treated by Mr. Hutchinson in language so strong and so pointed, that the words of this publication are mildness and softness itself when compared with that language. I shall not read them for you, because I should fear that you may imagine I unnecessarily identified my client with the violent but the merited reprobation poured upon the scandalous interference of our government with those elections.
I need not, I am sure, tell you that any interference by the Lord Lieutenant with the purity of the election of members to serve in Parliament, is highly unconstitutional, and highly criminal; he is doubly bound to the most strict neutrality; first, as a peer, the law prohibits his interference; secondly, as representative of the crown, his interference in elections is an usurpation of the people’s rights; it is, in substance and effect, high treason against the people, and its mischiefs are not the less by reason of there being no punishment affixed by the law to this treason.
If this offence, gentlemen, be of daily occurrence—if it be frequently committed, it is upon that account only the more destructive to our liberties, and, therefore, requires the more loud, direct, and frequent condemnation: indeed, if such practices be permitted to prevail, there is an end of every remnant of freedom; our boasted constitution becomes a mockery and an object of ridicule, and we ought to desire the manly simplicity of unmixed despotism. Will the Attorney-General—will his colleague, the Solicitor-General, deny that I have described this offence in its true colors? Will they attempt to deny the interference of the Duke of Richmond in the late elections? I would almost venture to put your verdict upon this, and to consent to a conviction, if any person shall be found so stocked with audacity, as to presume publicly to deny the interference of his Grace in the late elections, and his partisanship in favor of the ministerial candidates. Gentlemen, if that be denied, what will you, what can you think of the veracity of the man who denies it? I fearlessly refer the fact to you; on that fact I build. This interference is as notorious as the sun at noonday; and who shall venture to deny that such interference is described by a soft term when it is called partisanship? He who uses the influence of the executive to control the choice of the representatives of the people, violates the first principles of the constitution, is guilty of political sacrilege, and profanes the very sanctuary of the people’s rights and liberties; and if he should not be called a partisan, it is only because some harsher and more appropriate term ought to be applied to his delinquency.
I will recall to your minds an instance of violation of the constitution, which will illustrate the situation of my client, and the protection which, for your own sakes, you owe him. When, in 1687, King James removed several Protestant rectors in Ireland from their churches, against law and justice, and illegally and unconstitutionally placed Roman Catholic clergymen in their stead, would any of you be content that he should be simply called a partisan? No, gentlemen; my client and I—Catholic and Protestant though we be—agree perfectly in this, that partisan would have been too mild a name for him, and that he should have been branded as a violator of law, as an enemy to the constitution, and as a crafty tyrant who sought to gratify the prejudices of one part of his subjects, that he might trample upon the liberties of all. And what, I would fain learn, could you think of the Attorney-General who prosecuted, or of the judge who condemned, or of the jury who convicted a printer for publishing to the world this tyranny—this gross violation of law and justice? But how would your indignation be roused, if James had been only called a partisan, and for calling him a partisan a Popish jury had been packed, a Popish judge had been selected, and that the printer, who, you will admit, deserved applause and reward, met condemnation and punishment!