PART VIII. Treason is to be reprobated. The Nation injured and degraded. Perversion of Law. 148. According to the several foregoing definitions of Treasondefinitions which at once communicate conviction to the understanding and a patriot glow to the heart, it is not possible to conceive or to imagine a more hateful USURPATION, a criminality of a deeper die and wider range, than that of the BOROUGH FACTION! When about the year 1793, it was proposed in the Society of the Friends of the People, to publish a list of such of the BOROUGH FACTIONS as had given the Constitution the deepest stabs, "What," exclaimed one gentleman, "would you chalk their doors?" Why not? Is not public scorn a mild enough punishment for the "HIGHEST TREASON?" Are culprits, how high soever, who design and pursue the subversion of the Constitution, to be treated with more forbearance than an absconding clerk, or an ordinary deserter, whose name and personal description is put in the Hue and Cry, and placarded all over the kingdom? If no eloquence, not even the eloquence of his country's calamities, can reclaim the Borough-monger, if not the pathetic tears and moans of the thousands he sees sunk by his Crimes in the deepest misery, can touch his torpid mind; if the conscience within him be so callous, as to refuse its office unless quickened by the lash of shame, shall not that lash be laid on? Shall not the Borough Faction receive a brand, which nought but the return to the path of honour and duty can remove? 149. Were, indeed, the people to do towards the great, as the great have done towards the people, were they to seize on their whole house and turn them into the street, even such a retaliation could not in reference to the two parties, be thought too great. Then merely, and that only in the way of admonition, and in a figurative sense of the words, to "chalk their doors," seems not only an excess of moderation, but to be very much within even the bounds of decorum. 150. Why, in God's name, this squeamish tenderness, why not placard the names of the BOROUGH FACTION? Is a nation that through their "TREASON" hath been despoiled of its sovereignty and its liberties -that through their "TREASON" is plundered of its property, in the 104 105 106 107 sees a way of taxation without representation;-that through their "TREA- 151. If enactments be made "against the law of reason or against justice, they be not statutes nor customs, but corruptions;" they shall be considered as "things void;" they "shall be holden for "nought," and "esteemed of no force in the law of England." Could a statute take away the "rights and liberties and free customs" of the nation, what more need be done for establishing complete Despotism, than to pass an act for abolishing elections, and vesting the seats in the House of Commons in the present occupants and their heirs for ever? To" frame mischief by A LAW," seems to be the apex of" iniquity."* 152. If by any means whatever a mere faction have ousted a nation from its elective rights, have usurped its authority, have destroyed its freedom, have pillaged its property, and brought it to the verge of utter ruin, is it fitting, is it in nature, is it possible that such a faction should be treated with respect? The oxen of the field and the sheep of the fold, which are a property to those who rule over them, have no voice to say, Why are we bought and sold? why are we yoked and laden with heavy burdens? why are we fleeced and led to the slaughter?* But is man, having sacred rights, and reason, and speech, and an immortal nature, to be put on a level with the beasts that perish? 153. Before we lose sight of the true nature and quality of treason, it becomes us to advert to its history. When Lord Chief Justice 104 Selden's Histor. and Polit. Disco. by Bacon, I. 35. 59. 61. 105 See Sect. 23. 122. 106 Ps. 94. v. 20. 107 Declaration of Rights, 1782. How is Eyre supposed "a man of plain sense" to ask, if it were not a specific 154. All this personal power and usurped importance, as well as whatever immediately appertained or administered unto it, these kings accordingly contrived to have fenced around with statutes disgusting by the brutality of their punishments (so contrary to Saxon mildness!), while the birthright freedom and sacred sovereignty of the NATION, underived and supreme as we have shewn it to be, was left wholly undefended against TRAITORS of every rank and description; from the royal violator to the lordly invader; from the combining county grandee to the corrupt corporator; from the election agent (vile pander of pollution!) to the venal wretch, who in selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, converts the suffrage he holds in trust, as a shield to public liberty, into a dagger for its destruction. To guard against these violations, invasions, combinations, corruptions, pollutions, and assassinations of the NATION'S SOVEREIGNTY, ought to be the first objects of statutes against HIGH TREASON. 155. The aforesaid statute of 25 Edw. III. c. 2. had originally two objects; namely, first, to settle, on complaint of the Barons, the proper division of spoil, on occasion of the feudal forfeitures so common in those turbulent times, between the King and the said Barons, on feudal principles; and, secondly, to strengthen on so favourable an opportunity that monstrous Norman dogma, which reverses justice, nature, and reason-That instead of the authority of Kings being derived from, and held of, the people, for their benefit; all national right, liberty, and property are derived from, and held of, the King, for serving him in his wars, for upholding him in his power, and for preserving "the peace of our said Lord the King, his crown and dignity.' Mr.Luders, accordingly, in respect of the fiscal part of the statute, calls it a mere "revenue law," in which he supports himself, not only by its enactments, but by the authority of Hall and others, and a reference to similar laws.* 108 See Sect. 140. 109 Tracts 10. 108 109 110 156. To trace from this impure source the "written law” against treason down to our own times, through all its capricious varieties, all its amazing heap of wild and new-fangled treasons, would be as tedious as disgusting. Suffice it to say, that from the 25th of Edward III. down to this day, a period of more than four hundred and sixty years, we do not find in any statute against treason, one syllable for securing the proper sovereignty of the NATION, or the legitimate Constitution of King, Lords, and REAL Representatives of the Nation: nor a single provision arising out of an enlarged and just conception of the crime of betraying the state, by violating its fundamental laws and liberties. 157. The statute of 23rd May, 1794, is intituled "An Act to 66 empower His Majesty to secure and detain such Persons as His "Majesty shall suspect are conspiring against his Person and Govern"ment;' and it begins thus, "Whereas a traitorous and detestable "conspiracy has been formed for subverting the existing Laws and "Constitution, and for introducing the system of anarchy and confu"sion which has so fatally prevailed in France.”—Under the dreadful weight of this positive parliamentary assertion that such a conspiracy had been formed by the parties pointed at (for who would doubt the truth of what Parliament positively and solemnly asserted?); and under all the extravagant prejudices of that period, which has been called the English Reign of Terror-the persons alluded to were in the November following, put upon their trials for HIGH TREASON, and ACQUITTED! for it clearly appeared that the having attempted that PARLIAMENTARY REFORM which was so hateful to their accusers was, in the language of our immortal Poet, “The very head " and front of their offending." 158. Nor is it unworthy of remark, that the secret Committee of 1794, of twenty-one members of the House of Commons, who, after having examined the contents of a sealed green bag, furnished the matter of accusation, was composed as follows: namely, Ministers and Placemen, including a General, and ten of whom 12 1 1 3 3 1 21* Sent by the Boroughs of Bridgenorth, Preston, and Yarmouth, 159. We come next to the statute of the 18th December, 1795, "For the Safety and Preservation of His Majesty's Person and Go 110 Blackst. Com. IV. 87.431. 111 Constitu. Defence of Eng. 131. Morning Chron. 16 May, 1794. vernment, As a younger brother of the former and a child of the same parent, for we had still the same parliament, this statute de mands our most serious attention. That was a prologue to the state trials of 1794; this, an afterpiece for healing as well as might be the sore of disappointment. 160. What had been for many years passing in the NATION with a hope of putting an end to the treasons which had been so long carried on against its sovereignty, and for restoring its inherent rights and real constitution, by reforming its House of Commons, had rendered a change of language in statutes against treason quite necessary to those who framed the laws. In the former of these statutes we, therefore, find a declaration in favour of something beyond what merely related to the King's" person and government;" but the wary penmen took care to guard against interpretations which did not suit them, by the new and qualifying epithet we have already quoted. In support of public liberty and our genuine constitution we had been accustomed to hear of the "fundamental Laws," meaning such only as belonged to the foundations of national rights; but as an appeal to such laws would by no means answer the purposes of those who were preparing to prosecute Parliamentary Reformers for High Treason, we in 1794, for the first time read in a statute of the "existing Laws," including of course all statutes whatever, good, bad, or indifferent, and among the rest those by which non-representation and " parliaments of too "long continuance" were upheld. 161. The result of the state trials having checked the hopes of the Borough-mongers, touching a triumphant establishment of their sovereignty for ever, for they had failed in their attempt to hang Parliamentary Reformers, indicted of Treason against their Majesties; language still more guarded than prior to those trials was now convenient, and a show of concern for what related to the Nation, as well as to "His "Majesty's royal person and dignity," was become matter of sound policy. This observation will account for an attention (to prevent any thing" tending to the overthrow of the laws, government, and "happy constitution of these realms;" but still the spirit which is uppermost is the same which has distinguished all our "written law," from the feudal age of Edward the Third to this day; for speaking of the " good and wholesome provisions which have at different times "been made by the wisdom of Parliament for the averting such dangers," it adds, " and more especially for the security and preser"vation of the sovereigns of these realms." 162. Now, that we may not be misled by mere words and show, it is requisite we should discover the real drift of the act, that we may understand what protection was afforded by it to the nation's inherent rights and genuine constitution. When the language of a statute is equivocal or doubtful, the customary mode of interpretation is to ascertain, by something internal or collateral, the real sense in which the legislators used their words; and this rule we shall observe. To the word "Laws," these legislators had themselves, as we have seen, and on an occasion immediately connected with the present, prefixed |