[1799.] who in 1770 put a period to his existence from remorse at having been duped into a political delinquency.-In the 151st. Letter, Socrates is made to maintain against Protagoras, "That morality is not a science to be learned or taught, by applying the reason to theoretical speculations; but, that its principles are implanted in our nature, and render the illiterate and learned equally qualified to practise and to judge of it." JANUARY the 10th. 1799. Read Frend's Principles of Taxation: an excellent Satire, however unintended, on a Tax upon Capital instead of Income; which, in plain terms, is the whole of his proposal. Deducting a certain sum as necessary to subsistence, his plan is, that what the man without capital gains in the course of the year, and what the capitalist gains by his capital together with the whole value of that capital, should be subject to an equal tax. Thus supposing one man gains £130 per annum by his personal industry, and another the same income from land worth thirty years purchase, deduct 30 income from each for subsistence, and, by a tax of 10 per cent, the former will pay 10 and the latter or £400 per annum!-I beg pardon-only for the first year: his tax, together with his capital and income, will be considerably 130 x 30+100 10 lightened, under such a sweating, each succeeding year. Dr. R. informed me, that out of more than 40,000 cases which had fallen under his observation, he never met with one, in which a person with red or light flaxen hair had the small-pox to confluence. JAN. the 13th. Finished St. Luke's Gospel. This is the history on which Mr. Evanson solely relies;-and it must be confessed, that it has more the air of an ordinary historical composition, than any of the other narratives on the subject.-The angelic annuntiation to Zacharias and Mary (c. 1.), on which is founded the preternatural conception of John and Jesus, must, it is evident, entirely depend, for its direct evidence, on the credit of those two witnesses, attesting a transaction altogether private.-Why did not Christ (c. 4, v. v. 23, &c.) work a miracle in his own country, instead of provoking a natural indignation by denying so easy a manifestation of his divine mission, where, from the proverbial proneness to incredulity, it was so particularly wanted. Fifty reasons, I am aware, may be assigned from the comments and glosses of those who are resolved at any rate to find one; but what I wish, is a substantial and satisfactory an [1799] swer.-Luke relates the perplexing story of transferring a legion of devils from a man into a herd of swine. What can be made of this, under the torture of any ingenuity? Those who refine possession by the devil, into derangement of intellect, must be gravelled here. Lord C. called in the evening. He represents Fox as being in excellent spirits at St. Anne's Hill; busily and fervently occupied in attending to the minutiae of the Greek Language, and its different dialects. One should have thought, the different construction of the Greek republics, would have possessed more attractions for a mind like his. JAN. the 23d. Finished the perusal of Hardy's Tryal for High Treason.-The Attorney General's (Scott's) opening, is strangely perplexed, involved, and obscure. He speaks (with the view, I presume, of giving a colour of propriety to the Indictment then trying) of the whole legislative and executive authority, as vested in the crown; exercised in the former case with advice and consent, and in the latter with advice only:-a doctrine, which though primitively true, perhaps, sounds now most harshly to the ear.-Erskine, in opening his defence, very powerfully contends, that to constitute High Treason under the first branch of 25. Ed. 3., there must be a direct compassing of the King's death; and that to compass his deposition, though it may be offered as evidence of compassing his death, will not in itself constitute that crime; and is expressly one of the ensnaring treasons of the 21st. of Rich. 2. repealed by the 1st. of Henry 4.Gibbs, at the outset, takes the same ground; but (like Mr. Erskine) afterwards abandons it-I suppose, as not sufficiently safe: he then proceeds to argue, as if an intention to depose, was the crime charged; and finally states the question at issue to be, whether Mr. Hardy, in concurring with others in calling a convention, personally meant that that convention should act by force of arms against government?-The Solicitor General (Mitford) in reply, contends, that a distinct intention to destroy the King, is not necessary to constitute Treason; that any act which, in its consequences, leads, according to ordinary experience, to endanger the King's life, is High Treason; that an attempt to depose the King, is an act of this nature; and that the forming any assembly or convention of the People, assuming that character and of consequence the sovereignty, or even a design, acted upon, of procuring any alteration in the constitution otherwise than by the constituted legislature, or through force on them, is an attempt to depose, and amounts to the crime of High Treason.-Eyre very able and perspicuous in summing up; exhibiting to the Jury a distinct and correct outline of the complicated history submitted to their judgment, and judiciously is R [1799] insisting on its leading and characteristic features. He lays it down as unquestionable law, that a conspiracy to depose the King, is such conclusive evidence of compassing his death, as to have become a presumption of law upon the subject; and that it is not necessary to establish a compassing the King's death, prior to the conception of deposing him, to constitute High Treason. He observes, that the argument of the prisoner's counsel on this head, broke down under the case.-I am quite satisfied with the verdict. JAN. the 26th. Finished Horne Tooke's Tryal. Tooke, from the beginning, appears perfectly collected; and soon discovers a confidence in his case. He displays wonderful acuteness, as well as perverseness, in arguing points and examining witnesses; and evidently awes the Court into a forgetfulness of its own dignity: his play upon the simplicity of Sharpe, is exquisite: and when his captious asperity relents under the indulgence he receives, and seems to have little expected, the scene is quite affecting. Erskine maintains pretty nearly the same doctrine with respect to Treason, as on Hardy's Tryal; and, as on Hardy's Tryal, he speedily loses sight of it. Gibbs waves discussing, whether an intention to depose, without compassing the death of the King, is Treason, because it is a question which does not arise on this case; but if it ever should arise, he leaves it to the Court to determine, between the decisions which affirm this to be law, and the express authority of the statute itself.-I admire his spirit.-Eyre expressly lays it down, as before, That to mean to depose the King, is to com pass his death, because it is a presumption of fact so conclusive, that the law has adopted it and made it a presumption of law; and, That what is the meaning of any statute, and what case of fact comes within that meaning, is always a question of law. He accordingly states the question for the consideration of the Jury to be, whether the prisoner has been concerned in a plan to establish a national Convention which should usurp the powers of government; for if he has done so, he has been concerned in a plan to depose the King, and is guilty of High Treason.-It does appear to me, that this is declaring that to be Treason under 25. Ed. 3, which is not made Treason by that Statute; and that the principle upon which this construction is founded "that acts which may eventually endanger the King's life, are evidence of conspiring his death, though that event should never have been in the contemplation of the party", tends to introduce the very uncertainty which that Statute was enacted to obviate. Horne Tooke, I believe, truly describes his temper, when he says, "my mind is [1799.] much better formed to feel and to acknowledge kindness, than to solicit it". I cannot, any more than the Chief Justice, develope the political character of this extraordinary man; though I have enjoyed some favourable opportunities of probing him myself, and seeing him probed, upon the subject. At the very time he was giving the most marked encouragement to the "Rights of Man", I well remember his speaking to me of the author in these emphatical terms, "Paine's intentions I believe to be honest; but he is ignorant of almost every thing, and he hates every thing of which. he is ignorant". On the whole, the conduct of these Tryals, is an honour to English Judicature.I much doubt whether Buller would have managed them so well; and Lord Kenyon would have made sad work of them. FEBRUARY the 1st. Read Stone's Tryål for Treason. The evidence for the Crown leaves a fair opening for defence, which his own case by no means makes out. Erskine's is a wretched speech, delivered apparently without any preparation; and his egotism, thus unsupported, is insufferable. Lord Kenyon in summing up, leans shamefully against the prisoner: he evidently labours to hinge the whole case on the simple fact, of Stone's design to communicate intelligence to France; and to sink all consideration of the question, whether he meant by that communication to benefit France or this country: and when one of the Jury asks if this question is to be considered, his Lordship gives an equivocal answer, and the whole Court is strangely discomposed.. FEB. the 11th. Finished the Travels of Anacharsis. This work is ably executed, and must have cost prodigious pains; but it still leaves us, as we must ever be left, extremely ignorant of the political constitutions, religious worship, and private manners of the Greeks. With respect to the precise Theories of the Greek Philosophers, I have ever felt myself. much in the dark; nor am I a whit more enlightened by the laborious researches of the Abbé Barthelemi, who has wisely contented himself rather with extracting their par- . ticular opinions, than attempting to reduce them into a regular system. He represents Aristotle as maintaining, that the virtues are no other than the passions preserved by Prudence between the two opposite vices of excess and defect :--Aristotle himself, I think, is not quite so explicit.-Many anecdotes tend to raise very high our ideas of Grecian taste in the arts; but the much admired statue of Minerva by Phi [1799.] dias, composed of ivory and gold, with a coloured imitation of the iris of the eye, must surely tend to lower them considerably.—I wish, after all, that the result of the learned Abbé's researches had been embodied in some other form: there is something false and offensive in making fiction the basis of fact, which a just taste, I think, can never fully approve. FEB. the 12th. Read Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard the 3d. -doubts, which he has in some measure transfused into my mind; though in contending against the public opinion, he has probably been carried, by the momentum of the nisus, a little too far in his vindication of the character of Richard, as usually happens in such conflicts.-In some subsequent pieces in defence of this tract, he treats the objections of his opponents with infinite keenness, ridicule, and success: even the subtle philosophy of Hume, is no match for his playful acumen. Hume, whom he seems thoroughly to have understood, must have trembled at his boast, that he could loosen the artful contexture of his History, in a variety of places, with greater facility than he had unravelled the story of Richard the 3d. He points a keen remark at Hume-"There is a good deal of difference in the kind of belief which a man entertains, before he has treated a subject, and after". FEB. the 19th. Looked over Horace Walpole's Fugitive Pieces. His communications to the World are all, polished, easy, and elegant; but the 160th. No. is the very flower of grace: it treats a most indelicate subject, with matchless refinement and felicity. Began Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis. I do not distinctly see on what he founds natural law; and his definition of it in the 10th. section of the 1st. chapter, is complicated and obscure. In the 2d. chapter, he struggles hard to reconcile war with Christianity;-but surely kicks against the pricks. In the 8th. section of the 3d. chapter, Grotius contends against, and Gronovius, in his notes, for the supremacy of the People; but without fundamentally differing, I think. Grotius, I apprehend, is not for unlimited subjection in the People; and Gronovius qualifies his doctrine of their sovereignty, in such a way as must secure the approbation of every rational friend to liberty and order. In the succeeding chapter, however, Grotius labours earnestly (Gronovio reluctante) to narrow as much as possible the right of resistance in the subject,―so that I am afraid we must give him up, at last, as a true friend to the liberties of mankind. |