Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/46

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34 John and Leigh Hunt,


discussions respecting the fees of the marshal of the Bench may have taught the public, as they have taught his lordship, that no character is invulnerable: but compared with the Ardens and the Castlereagh's, Lord Ellenborough is a wise and disinterested personage; and when the projector of the Walcheren expedition shall have been punished for its failure, or the brother of Mr. Perceval shall resign his sinecure, the political foibles of Lord Ellenborough may become the prominent objects of public indignation.

The speech of his lordship on the trial of Messrs. John and Leigh Hunt, presents us with an eminent instance of those peculiarities that we have remarked in his lordship's judicial character. It is in truth the speech of an advocate, deeply interested in the cause that he Lias undertaken to support, enforcing his opinions with all the energy of which he is susceptible, and dismissing from his view the most distant allusion to the reasonings by which his favorite positions might be opposed or refuted. In his judicial capacity he assumes the language of a prosecutor, and while he descants with exuberant warmth on the iniquity of the defendants, the pleas of their advocate are only noticed in terms of pointed and passionate reprehension.

There is one tribunal, however, to which even judges themselves are amenable, and over which the dictatorial port and. the majestic wig display no terrors: to the tribunal of public opinion must every individual submit, so long as the liberty of the press shall escape the encroachments of law ; and when the comments of the English people, on the conduct and character of their magistrates is forbidden, ample vengeance for the interdiction will be taken by posterity.

It is before this tribunal, of which the authority has been acknowledged by men, before whom even Lord Ellenborough might vainly contend for the palm of wisdom or of virtue, that we wish the merits of his lordship's speech to be candidly examined. Impressed

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