All the genius and eloquence of Mr. | lant, and wrote Lord George fulsome and Erskine a young lawyer whose right to congratulatory laudations, teeming with distinction was first achieved on this oc- texts, ascribing the glory of his acquittal casion ― were brought to bear upon the to divine interposition, and charging him defence of his unworthy client, whose in- "to walk before God in the land of the disputable guilt was doubtless but one living." The riots, the association asmore incentive to exertion to extricate him serted, were begun by the Papists in order from his emergency, and added another to injure the sacred cause; and it pointed laurel to the young orator's wreath of out that not one Protestant petitioner out victory. In the excitement of the mo- of the forty-four thousand was "either apment he permitted himself to overstep the prehended, tried, convicted, executed, or limits prescribed by usage to prisoners' killed," whilst in every one of these precounsel, and called God to witness the dicaments Papists were to be found. innocence of his client's actions. "He Lord George responded in the same key, who could blame such honest and artless calling God to witness that he had had no conduct is a ruffian,” he concluded. We part in the tumults. believe that only once since has any eminent counsel indulged in such an irregularity. This was in the case of the murder of Lord William Russell, when Charles Phillips called God to witness the innocence of Courvoisier.*

The lord chief justice summed up and addressed the jury.

It cannot be sufficiently impressed upon the mind of Englishmen proud of qualities of the great men of their country, that, flinging aside all feeling of personal resentment and sense of injury, Lord Mansfield, if he erred at all in his dignified and admirable charge, erred on the side of mercy.

With a lofty wisdom he explained the law, and while denying that Sir G. Savile's bill encouraged Popery, he affirmed it to be an erroneous religion and one that should be restrained. Judges are, no doubt, bound to act impartially; but this was an instance where stern severity would have seemed almost inevitable. He summed up a clear, enlightened, and moderate speech by stating that the case depended on two points: one was whether the multitude assembled and committed deeds of violence with intent to terrify the legislature into compliance with their desire that the act be repealed. If their opinion were in the negative, the prisoner should be acquitted. The other was: Did the prisoner incite the insurrection intending to enforce a repeal of the law? He stated that he purposely avoided making observations, leaving them to form their own opinion; and if they were not fully satisfied of his guilt on this point they were to acquit him. The jury retired, and returning into court after half an hour's deliberation, pronounced the verdict of not guilty.

The Protestant Association was jubi

* Mr. Erskine became lord chancellor in 1806.

Entirely unabashed by the estimation in which he was held by all reasonable and reputable persons, he continued to keep himself before the public. Every effort was made by his brother the Duke of Gordon and other relatives to induce him to retire into private life, but in vain. He was resolved to quaff the bowl of notoriety to the dregs. Immediately after his acquittal he tried to obtain audience of the king, and failing in this, he applied for the same favor to the Prince of Wales, but here also he was refused. In 1782 he visited Paris, and was there presented to Marie Antoinette. During his stay he formed a friendship with the impostor Cagliostro, in whose wiles and arts he became involved, Cagliostro being one of the causes of his ultimate incarceration in Newgate.

Soon after his return he protested against the restoration of their forfeited estates to the rebels of 1745. There seems to have been no public question upon which he hesitated to exhort, counsel, and instruct. He tormented Pitt with letters containing his crude and foolish views on taxation; he got up a demonstration against the shop-tax; he intrigued with the Dutch ambassador, and endeavored to entice British seamen to enter the Dutch service (Holland at that moment was watching her opportunity to declare in favor of American independence against England); he entered into correspondence with Mr. Pitt, enclosing him addresses that he said he had received from British sailors desiring to serve the Protestant interests in Holland. Not receiving a prompt reply to this communication he wrote again, stating he considered Mr. Pitt "very rude " for not replying sooner. He sent memorials to all the different statesmen of Europe, acquainting them with the purposes and intentions of the Protestant Association. In connection

with the Dutch affair a crowd of deluded sailors went to Buckingham House clamoring for employment; and finding no redress, a feeling of anger grew up against Lord George, and they adjourned to his house vowing vengeance against him. The rumor of their approach had gone before them, and the neighborhood was terrified. They knocked at the door, and he (to do him justice, he was no coward) opened it in person, and, addressing them in one of his long-winded speeches, laid the blame on the ministers, and assured them that he was their friend and advocate. In one moment the temper of the mob was changed, and their anger diverted in another channel. The air, which but a few minutes before had resounded with furious objurgations directed against Lord George, was now rent with the cry of "Gordon and Liberty," and many enquired whether they should not go and pull down Pitt's house. This question Lord George answered with a low bow, and doubtless he regretted the rabble did not carry their suggestion into execution.

In 1786 he was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury for refusing to give evidence in the Ecclesiastical Court concerning the will of a clergyman at whose death he had been present; his deposition being necessary. The punishment did not affect him very seriously, and he made the pertinent (and impertinent) observation that to "expel him from a society to which he did not belong was an absurdity worthy of an archbishop."

ing forward every sort of factitious opposition and quibble to postpone the issue. Time after time the court adjourned, and it was not till June 6 that the trial commenced.

There was no moral doubt whatever that this tirade of treason, blasphemy, and folly was his own production, though purporting to emanate from the prisoners. Imputations on the sovereign, and wearisome and blasphemous extracts from the Old Testament, were among its salient features. Mr. Erskine, his successful champion at his first trial, was now, together with the attorney-general, arrayed against him.

On

He was found guilty of both charges. His speech on the last was so violent and indecorous that he was stopped in its delivery, and the attorney-general declared indignantly that he was unworthy of the name of Briton; yet for some unexplained reason he was permitted to withdraw at the end of the trial, before sentence was pronounced, and without bail. Taking advantage of the opportunity thus, surely intentionally, afforded to him, he escaped to Holland. Shortly after his arrival in Amsterdam the burgomasters peremptorily commanded him to leave the city within the space of twenty-four hours. Leaving Holland he returned to England, and landed at Harwich in July. From thence he proceeded to Birmingham, where he lived in hiding until December. Here he consorted entirely with Jews, adopting their dress and manners. the 7th December he was apprehended and taken to London, and immediately brought up to the Court of King's Bench to receive his sentence. In delivering judgment, Judge Ashurst told him that the document called the "Prisoners' Petition" was fictitious and of his own fabrication, written by him manifestly to excite insurrection and sedition and discontent amongst the prisoners; and that as to the crime of which he had also been found guilty that of aspersing the charIn April, 1787, informations were ex-acter of the queen of France-it would hibited against him in the Court of King's be doing him too much honor to read Bench, one at the suit of the attorney- these libels, so full of scurrilous language general, for a libel entitled the "Prison- and low abuse. He regretted that one ers' Petition," purporting to come from descended from such illustrious ancestors the prisoners in Newgate, reflecting on should thus have dishonored his family. the administration of justice there and in For the offence of publishing the Petithe country; and the other at the suit of tion he was sentenced to be imprisoned the French ambassador, for a libellous in Newgate for three years. For the libel and injurious publication against the he was fined £500, and further imprisoned queen of France. He refused to employ for two years after the expiration of the counsel for his defence on the score of first judgment. He was also to give secupoverty, arguing with the court and bring-rity for fourteen years' good behavior

His attachment to Protestantism, the peg which he had hitherto used whereupon to hang his notoriety, appears about this time (1786) to have begun to yield to the superior attractions of Judaism. Not Protestantism alone, but Christianity lost favor in his eyes; and in due course he embraced that faith. The Jews welcomed him "as a second Moses." He conformed to all the ceremonies of the ancient fathers, and expected all who professed the same religion to do likewise.

ference, and inquired — not without some show of reason- whether now that they themselves slept in safety from the cruel dungeons of the Bastille they could without emotion suffer him to be incarcerated with murderers and thieves, and make no effort on his behalf. He concluded his invocation by the extraordinary argument that he was brother to a man of the birth and importance of the Duke of Gordon.

himself in £10,000, and sureties in £2,000 | more he passionately claimed their intereach. Attired in Jewish garb, and decked with a long and flowing beard, Lord George bowed in ostentatious humility to the finding of the court. The extraordinary clemency with which he was treated was continued up to the last, for the royal pardon was soon after offered him, provisionally, if he recanted his opinions, and promised to lead a quiet life for the future. He replied that to sue for pardon was a confession of guilt, and that his public conduct should never disgrace the principles he had espoused, and that the ten der mercies of the wicked were cruelties." Thus in Newgate he remained-manifestly by his own choice. He bore his confinement with equanimity, and was treated with the greatest consideration by the authorities—of course in accordance with their instructions. He enjoyed good health, had regular diet, rose at eight, and went to bed at eleven; read the papers, wrote letters, and received visitors at twelve; played the violin, and had six or seven guests to dinner every day. He enjoyed concerts of music, and had dancing parties. He fasted according to the rites of the Jewish Church, was kind and considerate to his fellow-prisoners, doing ail in his power to alleviate their distress. From bence he forwarded a memorial to the "friends of liberty," inveighing against all power but that of democracy.

On the 28th January, 1793, his term of imprisonment having expired, he once more appeared in the Court of King's Bench. Enormous crowds assembled to see him. He entered with his hat on, and being desired by the judge to remove it, he did so, and proceeded to bind his head round with a handkerchief of three colors in the form of a turban. He asked permission to address the court, which was accorded him. He then said he was ready to pay the fine of £500, and asserted he was able to find the necessary securities, mentioning two of his friends, whose means, however, proved to be insufficient. He was again remanded to Newgate, and as he was being removed he observed with an angry frown that he "felt more for the servile complaisance of the court than for his own misfortunes." But he was not destined to drag out his wearisome and profitless existence much longer. Gaol fever more or less always then present in Newgate-struck him down in December. Ön the eighth day of his illness he was informed of the death of the unhappy Marie Antoinette, when he observed that she was "not the last member of the royal family of France that would perish by the guillotine."

In 1789 the news of the capture of the Bastille, which took place on the 14th July of that year, penetrated even into the interior of Newgate, where in all probability the occupants believed a similar day of deliverance might dawn for them. Suffering as he was in part for the attack on the queen of France, Lord George pre- Shortly afterwards he became delirious, pared and despatched a petition to the repeatedly calling his brother and addressNational Assembly of France, putting ing him as if he were present, and mutterforth that he was imprisoned for his at- ing sentences by which he had in former tempt to succor the oppressed there. He days rallied round him his fanatical and therefore prayed them to apply to the vagabond followers and filled them with court of St. James for the remission of the spirit of rebellion and riot. Gaunt his sentence. The Abbé Gregoire replied and emaciated he lay upon his prison bed, on behalf of the Assembly that as Lord helpless, unconscious, and forsaken of his George was a foreigner, and was detained own; his shattered life the grievous result in an English prison, it would be highly of his lawless and seditious career. improper for the Assembly to deliberate a last effort he raised himself in his bed, à son égard, and recommended him and half chanted, half spoke the opening to apply to the English tribunal. Lord words of the republican song "Ca ira George replied by indignantly enquiring words that at that time were infecting of the National Assembly whether under half Christendom. With this expiring the new régime the powers of France were tribute to an evil cause his spirit passed curtailed, and whether the French ambas- away. sador at the English court would refuse to obey their commands if these were laid upon him to demand his release? Once

With

Lord George Gordon has, I think, been erroneously pronounced mad by posterity. To me he seems to have been only ex

From The Nineteenth Century. MR. GLADSTONE ON "THE IRISH DEMAND."

travagantly vain. Throughout all the wild | sary consequence, a ministry responsible and turbulent scenes that he first reck-in the colonial fashion, and under proper lessly provoked and then deliberately en- conditions to secure the just interest of couraged there was no occasion when he Ireland in imperial concerns." The imlost his powers of acting rationally and portance of this statement consists in the consistently with a view to the success of fact that it enables us to see and recognize his designs, nor did he lose his self-control beyond all doubt the real, deep, fundaunder circumstances that might well try mental difference between Mr. Gladstone the nerves of the strongest. His inten- and the Unionist party. The latter are tions and deeds were criminal, and all his perfectly ready to give to Ireland, as also actions are consistent with this theory. to Scotland, Wales, and parts of England distant from the metropolis, such extended municipal powers, under proper regulations and with due security, as may remove the practical grievances attendant upon centralized administration, develop and enlarge the principles of local selfgovernment, and confer the power of "managing their own affairs upon the people of every county or district in which such powers can be conferred with a due regard to the public safety and the maintenance of the law. The point of difference is in the statutory Parliament and separate ministry. "We who are attached, I believe immovably, to the policy" of maintaining England, Scotland, Íreland, and Wales as a United Kingdom believe that to the existence of this union a united Parliament is a necessity, and that, in the words of Mr. Bright, "to have two legisla tive assemblies in the United Kingdom would be an intolerable mischief." To establish a separate Parliament for Ireland would be to encourage ideas in the Irish mind which would infallibly create confusion and disorder, and work evils which must be patent to the most ordinary foresight. Every restriction imposed upon such a Parliament would be represented as "coming in a foreign garb" and imposed by a "foreign" power, and it is difficult to find a valid ground for dissenting from the concluding words of Mr. Bright's address to the electors of Birmingham, that "no sensible man can wish for two legislative assemblies within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations entirely separate from each other."

THE article upon the Irish question which has lately been contributed to this review by Mr. Gladstone will doubtless receive that attentive consideration which is due to its intrinsic merits as well as to the position and character of its author. It must be highly satisfactory to those Liberals who felt it their duty to resist the Irish legislation recently proposed by Mr. Gladstone to read his candid admission that such legislation was attempted by him before the "reflective side" of the question had been exhausted. The announce ment of the new policy undoubtedly took the country by surprise, and it may well be urged by Mr. Gladstone's opponents as well as by himself that during the whole of last year the question was approached "on what may perhaps be termed its impassioned as opposed to its reflective side." It is therefore with sincere pleasure that I find Mr. Gladstone advising us to betake ourselves to that "reflective" process which might well have been recommended before legislation of a strange and startling character was proposed, but which even after the proposal and the defeat of such legislation cannot be otherwise than of good result.

One point, at least, has been gained by the publication of the article which I have now under review. Almost every portion of the Home Rule Bill of last year has been held to be "an open question," ie., a question which might be settled by any compromise which should unite the different sections of the "Liberal party" in its support. Now, however, we have it clearly and unmistakably laid down that the policy to which Mr. Gladstone is "immovably attached" is that "of establishing a statutory Parliament in Ireland, with its neces

• LIVING AGE, No. 2231.

There is one remarkable feature in Mr. Gladstone's article to which I desire to call attention, because it throws a vivid light upon the difference between him and his opponents. I allude to the manner in which, throughout the whole of his argument, he persists in speaking of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as separate countries, and in virtually ignoring that common citizenship, in which, according to our Unionist ideas, the inhabitants of

existing for the general interests of our home nationalities, and for the wider interests which are sheltered beneath its power or assisted by its influence, is something of greater importance than any individual nationality, too valuable to ourselves and to mankind to be trifled with or imperilled by any sentimental legisla tion. That this is also the view of the people was tolerably well proved at the

In the course of the article with which

these islands are happily blended. It is this craze with regard to individual nationalities, and the apparent inability to understand or recognize their absorption in the larger and nobler aspirations of a united country, which a quarter of a century ago misled Mr. Gladstone in his estimate of the probable outcome of the struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America, and is, I venture to think, misleading him to-day. Mr. last general election. Gladstone recognized the local autonomy of the Southern States, their presumed I am dealing the writer asks and answers constitutional right to sever themselves eight questions upon the subject under from the American Union, and the deter- discussion. I am glad to find myself in mination, energy, and perseverance with complete accord with him as regards one which they attempted to enforce that right. important matter- namely, "the vast and That which he absolutely failed, on the solid strength of Great Britain." Confinother hand, to recognize and to appreciate ing myself strictly to the point with which was the intense belief of Americans in the we are dealing to-day, I admit at once the larger nationality of their Union, their possession of a giant's strength, and I inflexible determination to preserve to recognize the force of the argument which their country that power and position seems to spring naturally from such an among the nations of the world which admission - namely, that if there should would have been imperilled by the lop- be given to Ireland those legislative powping off of the Southern States, and their ers which are demanded for her, Great consequent resolution to maintain at all Britain would be able effectually to prehazards the unity of their republic. It is vent her abuse or misuse of the same. It the same story to-day. Mr. Gladstone appears to me, however, that the temptanot only recognizes (as indeed no one dis- tion to use her strength "like a giant' putes) the existence of separate nationali- hardly exists in this case, nor is it by any ties in Great Britain and Ireland, but he means necessary to appeal "to the innate, deems it wise and patriotic forever to harp ineradicable nobleness of English characupon the fact of this existence, to stereo- ter." The temptation is all the other way. type any possible differences of race and Indeed, Mr. Gladstone himself admits and feeling, and to encourage individual as founds an argument upon this fact. He against general nationality. This is a tells us that "by blocking the way with course precisely the reverse of that which Irish business we have effectually hincommends itself to Unionists. We are dered the progress of British legislation," far from desiring that either English, and denies that we have any adequate Scotch, Irish, or Welshmen should forget "compensations" for the "grave and seritheir several nationalities, or cease to be ous mischiefs " which are entailed by the proud of whatever may be great, good, present system. Surely, then, if this be and glorious in the traditions of their past. the case, the "temptation" to a country But we contend that, for each and all, it is conscious of her own strength, and enbetter and wiser to cling more and more dowed moreover with that "nobleness" of closely to the common citizenship which character which inclines the strong to be unites us under one flag and one constitu- indulgent to the weak, is, not to use her tional sovereign; we recognize the fact strength "like a giant," but to yield to (admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself as re- that which is put forth as a legitimate gards the Irish people) that time has gone" Irish demand." The only reason why far to remove and obliterate the differ- she has not so yielded, and why, in my ences of race which formerly existed be- judgment, she will not so yield, is because tween us, and we, like our American breth-she believes that concession would be ren, are determined not to suffer those mischievous both to Ireland and to herbonds of union to be relaxed which bind us together as one people. That is the real issue between us and Mr. Gladstone. To him individual nationality is a fetish to be worshipped, the British Empire the accidental outcome of a grouping of nationalities. To us the British Empire,

self. Mr. Gladstone advises that the appeal to England should be made "to her heart, her reason, and her conscience, not to her fears." It is a pity that he should not have refrained from asserting, in a previous page, that "it is undeniable" that Catholic emancipation, and other