With regard to Sandom, the other defendant of this class, his part in this transaction was a very prominent and important part; and he was proved to be guilty by the evidence of others, not by his own;—he cannot plead the merit of a confession. It may, however, fairly be urged for all these three defendants, Sandom, Holloway and Lyte, that they did not aggravate their case at the trial, in the manner in which the other defendants aggravated theirs.
As to the defendant De Berenger, it appears that he was the hired and paid agent of Lord Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, and Mr. Butt; and having received his wages, he was attempting clandestinely to quit the country: If he had effected that purpose, he would have escaped punishment himself, and would probably have defeated justice with regard to the others. But, my Lords, his case has been greatly aggravated, as indeed have the cases of Lord Cochrane and Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, by attempts to defeat public justice, as absurd as they were wicked; for all the swearing before the trial, all the swearing at the trial, and all the swearing of to-day, has proceeded on the presumption, that if men will have the hardihood to swear, there will be found those who will have the credulity to believe.
Your Lordship has reported to the Court to-day, the evidence that was given on the part of Mr. Cochrane Johnstone and Mr. De Berenger, the letters which were stated by Mr. Tahourdin to have been written by Mr. Cochrane Johnstone and Mr. De Berenger, on the 22d February, the day after this fraud had been perpetrated. Whether Mr. Tahourdin deposed to that which was correctly true, or not, appears to me to make no difference. If the letters were written at a period subsequent to their dates, they were fabricated for the purpose of constituting an artificial defence. If they were written at the time they bear date, then they were equally fabricated for an artificial defence; and at the very moment of the commission of the crime, the parties were providing the means of a false defence, in case they should be detected.
There was a flat contradiction between Mr. Tahourdin and the letter which Mr. Tahourdin produced; whether the evidence of the witness were true, or the statement in the letter were true, matters not; the contradiction, independent of all other circumstances, shews that the whole of this transaction was one premeditated scheme of fraud.
There was still more evidence respecting De Berenger; a number of witnesses were called to swear, that at the time when he was proved to have been at Dover, he was actually in London, or at least in London so short a time before, that he could not by possibility have been at Dover. The persons who formed this scheme totally forgot the sort of case they had to meet: they were endeavouring to meet a case of recognition of the human countenance, by witnesses who might be mistaken in that recognition; and they forgot, that to a recognition of the countenance, a recognition however which surpassed every thing that ever fell under my observation, though put to the severest test to which such testimony was ever exposed—De Berenger, seated among a number of persons, nothing distinguishing him, nothing to attract the attention of the witnesses, yet witness after witness, with but a single exception, on looking round the Court, recognized his person the moment he cast his eyes upon his countenance.—I say, my Lord, that they who contrived this false and perjured defence, forgot that, in addition to this, there was the delivery of De Berenger from hand to hand, from Dover into the house of Lord Cochrane; and into the house of Lord Cochrane it was never pretended that any other person but De Berenger entered.
Then, my Lords, we have the affidavit of Lord Cochrane, to which he has added the affidavit of to-day, respecting the dress which De Berenger wore upon that occasion. It is singular that a servant of Lord Cochrane's should have been called upon the trial, examined upon other points to the confirmation of his master's affidavit, and that my learned friends, who were of counsel for Lord Cochrane, whose ability, whose discretion, and whose zeal, no man who knows them can question, did not venture to put to that servant a question as to the colour of De Berenger's coat; and that they did not venture to call the two other servants, one of whom at least was in attendance, and if the other had been wanted, it would not have been difficult for Lord Cochrane to have detained him in England, that he too might have been examined. No man can doubt that the reason why my friends abstained from asking that question, and going into that examination, was, that after the evidence which had been given by all the witnesses for the prosecution, as to his dress, continued up to the last moment by the driver of the hackney-coach, who swore to De Berenger's entering the house in a scarlet coat; if all the servants in Lord Cochrane's house had been called to swear that the colour of De Berenger's coat was green, no man alive could have believed them.
Your Lordships have before you the whole extent of this gigantic Conspiracy and Fraud; you have seen the stock account of these persons, and you find that on the morning of this day Lord Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, and Mr. Butt, were possessed of as much in Consols and Omnium, as, reduced to Consols alone, would amount to £.1,600,000; on which sum, the fluctuation of only one-eighth per cent. would produce a loss or gain of £.2,000; and although these defendants have not profited to the extent they anticipated, first, because the telegraph did not work,—no thanks to them that it did not;—and next, because the fruit of their fraud was intercepted,—the stolen goods were stopped in transitu,—still it appears from the evidence of Mr. Baily, that they have been materially enriched by their fraud, for they were enabled to get rid of this immense amount of Consols and Omnium, without loss, which, but for the operation of this fraud, they could not have done.
At the trial, Mr. Serjeant Best pressed very eloquently upon your Lordship and the jury, the former services of Lord Cochrane: I must observe, my Lord, that those services had neither been forgotten nor unrewarded by his Sovereign or his Country:—by his Sovereign, he had been raised to a high rank in his profession, and was in the path to the highest; he had also been invested with a most honourable personal distinction, which adds lustre even to nobility itself; which, at the same time that it was a reward for the past, ought to have been an incentive for the future:—He had been raised by a grateful Country to the proud and enviable station of representative in Parliament for the city in which your Lordships are now sitting; which, at the same time that it imposed on him the duty of watching, and if necessary, of animadverting on the conduct of others, especially bound him to guard the purity of his own. For all this, what return has he made?—he has engaged in a conspiracy to perpetrate a fraud, by producing an undue effect on the public funds of the Country, of which funds he was an appointed guardian, and to perpetrate that fraud by falsehood: He attempted to palm that falsehood upon that very Board of Government, under the orders of which he was then fitting out, on an important public service; and still more, as if to dishonour the profession of which he was a member, he attempted to make a brother officer the organ of that falsehood.
This offence, my Lord, does not proceed from the infirmity of a noble mind, from the impetuosity of youthful passion, from the excess of any generous feeling;—it is cold, calculating fraud, scarcely capable of aggravation; but, if it be capable of aggravation, it has received this great aggravation, that when threatened with detection, he endeavoured to avert it by the deliberate commission of a crime which, I repeat, has all the moral turpitude of Perjury, without its legal responsibility. I have to add one observation only, which applies equally to Lord Cochrane and Mr. Butt, that they stand before your Lordship, though convicted, unrepenting.
The Prosecutors in this case have, through many difficulties, conducted this Prosecution to its termination: they have sought an honourable end by honourable means: they have sought for justice, and justice only; and to your Lordships justice they commit these Defendants.