THE STATE TRIALS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.*

IT is almost with surprise that we realise how numerous and how interesting have been the State Trials comprised within our own century, what troubles and what romances chequered that century's earlier years, and. how strangely different is the England of Queen Victoria from the England of King George III. The volumes before us, dealing with the years

• from 1800 to 1823, chronicle the execution of very nearly sixty persons for high treason, and contain, moreover, accounts of the Berkeley-peerage fraud, and the trial of Queen Caroline, so that they may fairly be called sensational ; indeed, it would be hard to put together in the same space a more exciting series of true stories. Unfortunately, the author's manner is by no means so interesting as his matter ; his style is cumbrous and dull, where it is not absolutely blunder- ing ; and the excessively careless punctuation of the whole book adds greatly to the difficulty of reading it. Still, we repeat, the stories, though almost invariably painful, are too full of interest not to be worth the trouble of studying,—at any rate, for those who care to make themselves acquainted with the political history of their own country.

Mr. Lathom Browne gives us the narratives of about twenty trials, six of which arose out of conspiracies against Govern- ment ; Emmett's rebellion, the Cato-Street conspiracy, and the Manchester riot are, perhaps, the best remembered of

these, though from very different causes ; while the others, Colonel Despard's conspiracy, the Spa-Fields riot, and the Nottingham riot, are almost forgotten. If a man wished 10 preach a sermon on the text,—Queer Deus null perclere, pritts dementat, it seems to us that he could do nothing better than recite, one by one, the stories of conspira- tors. It may be trne that a successful conspiracy is called a revolution—or, in other words, that every revolution has begun with a conspiracy—and it is possible that the leaders of these revolutions were not mad ; but it is quite certain that the most notable fact common to abortive conspiracies, is the inconceivable credulity and imprudence of their plotters. Men not devoid of shrewdness, men with considerable ex- perience of the world, men of generous and cultivated minds, the moment they touth a political plot seem to be the readiest and blindest dupes imaginable. It is a most singular fact, but one fully supported by the history of Nineteenth-Century plots in England.

No leader of a hopeless cause ever, perhaps, attracted truer

personal regard and sympathy than Robert Emmett. He has something of the character of a hero of romance, and not nude- serveclly, for there was nothing ignoble, nothing but what was generous and manly, in his nature. He would have pleaded guilty on his trial, if the letters written to him by the woman he loved might only have been kept from the public eye; that failing, he would have done it to save the lives of his fol- lowers. And to have pleaded guilty would have been to acknowledge himself a rebel where he had hoped to be a liberator, and might still claim to be thought a martyr. But Emmett was little less insane than most other con- spirators. He provided arms, and a proclamation ; he forgot men and organisation. When the " rebellion " did break out, he was at the head of eighty followers, and had piled a quantity of pikes against the wall of Marshalsea Lane, to be taken thence by such of the Dublin mob as should choose to join him. Within an hour or two even the eighty had proved too insubordinate for their leader's control, and he had been obliged to fly to the Wicklow Mountains. That the disorderly rabble whom Emmett's pikes bad armed should have had Dublin at their mercy long enough to commit at least five murders, and to terrify all the peaceable inhabitants, and should then have been routed by a few soldiers and police, acting without orders, seems almost incredible, until we are informed how " Magistrates and Captains of Yeo- manry came to the Castle, and were told to prevent their men from assembling, lest they should increase the alarm, and because

few had arms or ammunition There was not a cartridge in the Castle ; the Ordnance had removed them all away." Cobbett might well say of the authorities that they were " surprised like a drunken sentinel on his post."

But if Emmett, an inexperienced youth, showed a singular ignorance of his own resources, his folly was far less remarkable than that of his countryman, Colonel Despard, executed for high

* Narnititte of State Trials in the Nineteenth Contary. 2 volt, By G. Lathom Browne. London : Sampson Low and Ito.

treason in London, in February, 1803. A soldier from his boy- hood, Despard had been the comrade and friend of Nelson, earned his colonelcy by hard service, and was appointed English Superintendent at Honduras. There he quarrelled with the English settlers and was suspended, but after two years of wait- ing, was told there was no charge against him worth inquiry, and that in time he should have a fresh appointment. It is no great wonder if this irritating injustice somewhat changed his char- acter. Matters grew much worse when, on very shadowy suspicion of abetting the Irish Rebellion of '98, he was thrown into prison. For three years he was moved from jail to jail, and at last released, rife for the crime of which he had been falsely accused. So far he carries all our sympathy with him ; but now begins the strange part of his story. Haunting the

lowest parts of London, he gathered round him a party—ludic- rously small, yet large enough to comprise at least one traitor—

of soldiers and labouring men, and expounded to them plans for killing the King, seizing the Tower, and setting up an entirely new form of Government. These meetings were apparently attended by anybody who chose, for only sixteen persons seem to have taken the oath, while thirty or forty were present at various times ; and so complete a dupe of his scheme was Despard himself, that he appears to have really believed that these thirty or forty ignorant, unarmed, and penniless men were just on the eve of effecting a complete revolution iu the whole state of the country. Of course, the spy betrayed him at the proper moment; three of his flock turned King's evidence, and he and seven others were hanged and then beheaded, in front of Horsemonger-Lane Gaol.

One of the most curious stories told in detail by Mr. Lathom Browne is that of Lord Berkeley's marriage. The forgery of a marriage certificate is certainly not an unheard-of crime, but that a man, undoubtedly and legally married in 1'796, should, in 1797, forge a certificate to prove that he had been married to

the same woman in 178:;, has an audacity about it, which makes it more like the exploit of a villain in a novel than of a prosaic English nobleman. But an inconsistency only belonging to real human nature comes out, in the fact that Lord Berkeley, having, apparently, committed the forgery, and having sup- ported it by any number of assertions made to his friends, yet found it impossible to tell a lie on his honour as a Peer, and by

that one sacrifice overthrew all the edifice he had so boldly and carefully raised.

Leaving unnoticed very much that is interesting, we must return for a moment, before our space is quite exhausted, from the substance of the book under review to its manner. Slovenly and careless writing is one of the common faults of the day, but it is one that ought not to be excused. Why should any- body write such a sentence as the following P-

" Brunt, on his trial, who, after his counsel had concluded, had . attacked the character of his apprentice on points which, if true, would have proved him a thief, but on none of which he had been asked a word on cross-examination, like the rest, said, what was in all probability the truth, that Edwards was the instigator."

Or this :-

" Siturin, the able, but too Protestant an Attorney-General for the new rdgime." '

Or, again :—

" The Committee of the Stock Exchange have also permitted me to make use of the papers in their possession relating to the Do Berenger frauds ; whose secretary, Mr. Lieven—."

We are forced to echo, " Th,ose secretary ?" And we should also much like to have an explanation of what is meant by a "brilliant battle-cry."