Mr. Cooper.—With great submission I re-urge it as a matter of history, and as such I would use it whether the fact is ten years old or ten thousand, I submit makes no difference.
Mr. Justice Best.—Mr. Cooper, I have told you my opinion; if you don’t choose to submit to it, the best way will be to go on, perhaps.
Mr. Cooper.—With the utmost deference to your Lordship—
Mr. Justice Best.—The Court of King’s Bench has decided this very point, within the last two terms, against what you are contending for. If your own opinion be the better one, proceed.
Mr. Cooper.—Gentlemen, I was going to say, when the Speaker of the House of Commons exclaimed (I will not repeat particularly upon what occasion) that our ancestors would have started with indignation at practices which were “as notorious as the sun at noon-day,” can you have any doubt in your mind that the writer of this pamphlet alluded to that exclamation? Why look at the passage, see, he uses the same words. “Corruption is as notorious as the sun at noon-day” is his very expression. He is citing the Speaker’s own words, and cannot but be supposed to be speaking of the very same facts. It was proposed, on that occasion, to impeach a nobleman, whom I will not name and need not, for those practices. This however was resisted by almost all, and even by some who were friendly to Parliamentary reform, and politically adverse to the noblemen, to whom I allude,
not, indeed, upon any pretext of his innocence of the practices, charged against him; but on the sole ground that those practices were so general and notorious that they would condemn themselves in sentencing him; and among so many guilty, it would be unjust to single him alone for punishment. Yes; although they were practices, at which our ancestors would have started with indignation, they were the practices of numbers, and the practices were as notorious as the sun at noon-day; and, therefore, the proposition of impeachment was rejected, and rightly; for as it has been said by the first speaker of all antiquity, we cannot call men to a strict account for their actions, while we are infirm in our own conduct. If this is the state of one branch of our Legislature, and if it is avowed, and by those who would conceal it, if concealment were possible (but it would be as easy to conceal the sun). Good God! shall a man be prosecuted and pronounced guilty, and consigned to punishment for affirming that our laws are corrupt; that there is corruption in the system, and that corruption is an avowed part of that system? when in so affirming he only echoes the exclamation of the Speaker himself, that “practices, at which our ancestors would have started with indignation, were as notorious as the sun at noon-day?” Why, if as the Speaker declared, such practices exist, and affect the most important branch of the Legislature, I myself say, that there is corruption in the very vitals of the Constitution itself. In such a state of things, to talk of the Constitution, is mockery and insult; and I say there is no Constitution. What, then, has the writer of this pamphlet said more than has been avowed by the highest authority, and everybody knows? And now, can you lay your hands on your hearts, and by your verdict of
Guilty send the defendant to linger in a jail for having published what the author has, under such circumstances, written?
Having thus concluded my observations on the passages selected from this paper for prosecution, I will, for I have a right to read it all if I please, direct your attention to another part of it. Let us examine whether other passages will not convince us, that (though he should be mistaken in some of his opinions) the whole was written with a single and honest intention. I myself never read a paper, which, on the whole, appeared to be written with more candour. There is an openness that does not even spare the writer himself. Indeed, with regard to his opinions, peculiar and mistaken as he may be, he seems himself, sincerely to believe in them. He is now suffering for those opinions, and suffering with a firmness, which to those who think him wrong, is stubbornness; and, thus, he affords another proof of the extreme impolicy of attempting to impose silence by prosecutions, and extort from the mind the abjuration of opinions by external and physical force. It never succeeds; but, on the contrary, works the very opposite effect to that which is its object. As the author from whom I have just now cited says, with extreme force and equal beauty, “a kind of maternal feeling is excited in the mind that makes us love the cause for which we suffer.” It is not for the mere point of expression that it has been said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It is not theological doctrine alone, that thrives and nourishes under persecution. The principle of the aphorism applies equally to all opinions upon all subjects. There is widely spread through our nature an inclination to suspect that there is a secret value in that from which others attempt to drive us by force;
and from this, joined to other powerful motives, the persecution of men for their tenets, whatever they may be, only draws their attachment closer, and rivets their affections to them. Every effort to make them abandon the obnoxious doctrine renders them more steadfast to it. The loppings, which are designed to destroy, serve but as prunings, from which it shoots with increased vigour, and strikes its root still deeper. Has it not always been seen, that persecution has bred in men that stubborn resolution, which present death has not been able to shake; and, what is more, an eagerness to disseminate amongst others those principles for which they have themselves been prosecuted and pursued. I therefore, from my very soul, deprecate every species of persecution on account of religious and political opinions, not only from its illiberality, but bad policy; and I am full of hope, that you will by your verdict to day show, that you have an equal aversion to it.
To recur, gentlemen, to the pamphlet; I submit to you that there is a general air of sincerity in the language of the writer throughout the composition, which obliges us to believe, that, however mistaken you may think him in his opinions, he is honest in his intentions. He says in another part of the address “Every government must derive its support from the body of the people; and it follows, as a matter of course, that the people must have a power to withhold their supplies.” Which is very true: for, where there is a shadow of political liberty, a revenue can only be raised by taxes to which the people have consented: it being allowed that where there is taxation without representation tyranny begins. Now, if the writer really believes that there are corrupt practices in the Government, who can blame him, for proposing (by