(1803)
Born in 1765, died in 1832; Recorder in
THE TIME 1 is now come for
me to address you in behalf of the unfortunate gentleman who is the defendant
on this record. The charge which I have to defend is surrounded with the most
invidious topics of discussion; but they are not of my seeking. The case and
the topics which are inseparable from it are brought here by the prosecutor.
Here I find them, and here it is my duty to deal with them, as the interests of
Mr. Peltier seem to me to require. He, by his choice and confidence, has cast
on me a very arduous duty, which I could not decline, and which I can still
less betray. He has a right to expect from me a faithful, a zealous, and a
fearless defense; and this his just expectation, according to the measure of my
humble abilities, shall be fulfilled. I have said a fearless defense. Perhaps
that word was unnecessary in the place where I now stand. Intrepidity in the
discharge of professional duty is so common a quality at the English bar, that
it has, thank God, long ceased to be a matter of boast or praise. If it had
been otherwise, gentlemen, if the bar could have been silenced or overawed by
power, I may presume to say that an English jury would not this day have been
met to administer justice. Perhaps I need scarce say that my defense shall be
fearless, in a place where fear never entered any heart but that of a criminal.
But you will pardon me for having said so much when you consider who the real
parties before you are.
Gentlemen, the real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the
civilized world ever saw. The defendant is a defenseless, proscribed exile. He
is a French royalist, who fled from his country in the autumn of 1792, at the
period of that memorable and awful emigration, when all the proprietors and
magistrates of the greatest civilized country in Europe were driven from their
homes by the daggers of assassins; when our shores were covered, as with the
wreck of a great tempest, with old men, and women, and children, and ministers
of religion, who fled from the ferocity of their countrymen as before an army
of invading barbarians.
You will not think unfavorably of a man who stands before you as the voluntary
victim of his loyalty and honor. If a revolution (which God avert) were to
drive us into exile, and to cast us on a foreign shore, we should expect, at
least, to be pardoned by generous men, for stubborn loyalty and unseasonable
fidelity to the laws and government of our fathers.
This unfortunate gentleman had devoted a great part of his life to literature.
It was the amusement and ornament of his better days. Since his own ruin and
the desolation of his country, he has been compelled to employ it as a means of
support. For the last ten years he has been engaged in a variety of
publications of considerable importance; but since the peace he has desisted
from serious political discussion, and confined himself to the obscure journal
which is now before you; the least calculated, surely, of any publication that
ever issued from the Press, to rouse the alarms of the most jealous government;
which will not be read in England, because it is not written in our language;
which cannot be read in France, because its entry into that country is
prohibited by a power whose mandates are not very supinely enforced, nor often
evaded with impunity; which can have no other object than that of amusing the
companions of the author’s principles and misfortunes, by pleasantries
and sarcasms on their victorious enemies. There is, indeed, gentlemen, one
remarkable circumstance in this unfortunate publication; it is the only, or
almost the only, journal which still dares to espouse the cause of that royal
illustrious family which but fourteen years ago was flattered by every Press
and guarded by every tribunal in Europe. Even the court in which we are met
affords an example of the vicissitudes of their fortune. My learned friend has
reminded you that the last prosecution tried in this place, at the instance of
a French government, was for a libel on that magnanimous princess, who has
since been butchered in sight of her palace.
There is another point of view in which this case seems to me to merit your
most serious attention. I consider it as the first of a long series of
conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only free Press
remaining in
Unfortunately for the repose of mankind, great States are compelled by regard
to their own safety, to consider the military spirit and martial habits of
their people as one of the main objects of their policy. Frequent hostilities
seem almost the necessary condition of their greatness; and, without being
great, they can not long remain safe. Smaller States exempted from this cruel
necessity - a hard condition of greatness, a bitter satire on human nature -
devoted themselves to the arts of peace, to the cultivation of literature, and
the improvement of reason. They became places of refuge for free and fearless
discussion; they were the impartial spectators and judges of the various
contests of ambition which from time to time disturbed the quiet of the world.
They thus became peculiarly qualified to be the organs of that public opinion
which converted
One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in
It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every other
In these extraordinary circumstances, I repeat that I must consider this as the
first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and
the only free Press remaining in
You already know that the general plan of Mr. Peltier’s publication was
to give a picture of the cabals and intrigues, of the hopes and projects, of
French factions. It is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part of this plan to
republish all the serious and ludicrous pieces which these factions circulate
against each other. The ode ascribed to Chenier 2or
Ginguené 3 I do really believe to have been written at
If the general lawfulness of such republications be denied, then I must ask Mr.
Attorney-General to account for the long impunity which English newspapers have
enjoyed. I must request him to tell you why they have been suffered to
republish all the atrocious official and unofficial libels which have been published
against his majesty for the last ten years, by the Brissots, the Marats, the
Dantons, the Robespierres, the Barères, the Talliens, the Reubells, the
Merlins, the Barrases, and all that long line of bloody tyrants who oppressed
their own country and insulted everyother which they had not the power to rob.
What must be the answer? That the English publishers were either innocent, if
their motive was to gratify curiosity, or praiseworthy, if their intention was
to rouse indignation against the calumniators of their country. If any other
answer be made, I must remind my friend of a most sacred part of his duty - the
duty of protecting the honest fame of those who are absent in the service of
their country. Within these few days we have seen, in every newspaper in
The French Revolution began with great and fatal errors. These errors produced
atrocious crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was succeeded by bloody anarchy,
which very shortly gave birth to military despotism.
All this was in the order of nature. When every principle of authority and
civil discipline, when every principle which enables some men to command, and
disposes others to obey, was extirpated from the mind by atrocious theories,
and still more atrocious examples; when every old institution was trampled down
with contumely, and every new institution covered in its cradle with blood;
when the principle of property itself, the sheet-anchor of society, was
annihilated; when in the persons of the new possessors, whom the poverty of
language obliges us to call proprietors, it was contaminated in its source by
robbery and murder, and it became separated from that education and those
manners, from that general presumption of superior knowledge and more scrupulous
probity which form its only liberal titles to respect; when the people were
taught to despise everything old, and compelled to detest everything new, there
remained only one principle strong enough to hold society together - a
principle utterly incompatible, indeed, with liberty and unfriendly to
civilization itself, a tyrannical and barbarous principle, but in that
miserable condition of human affairs, a refuge from still more intolerable
evils. I mean the principle of military power which gains strength from that
confusion and bloodshed in which all the other elements of society are
dissolved, and which, in these terrible extremities, is the cement that
preserves it from total destruction.
Under such circumstances, Bonaparte usurped the supreme power in
It is, I know, not the spirit of the quiet and submissive majority of the
French people. They have always rather suffered than acted in the Revolution.
Completely exhausted by the calamities through which they have passed, they
yield to any power which gives them repose. There is, indeed, a degree of
oppression which rouses men to resistance; but there is another and a greater,
which wholly subdues and unmans them. It is remarkable that Robespierre himself
was safe till he attacked his own accomplices. The spirit of men of virtue was
broken, and there was no vigor of character left to destroy him, but in those
daring ruffians who were the sharers of his tyranny.
As for the wretched populace who were made the blind and senseless instrument
of so many crimes, whose frenzy can now be reviewed by a good mind with scarce
any moral sentiment but that of compassion; that miserable multitude of beings,
scarcely human, have already fallen into a brutish forgetfulness of the very
atrocities which they themselves perpetrated. They have already forgotten all
the acts of their drunken fury. If you ask one of them, Who destroyed that
magnificent monument of religion and art? or who perpetrated that massacre?
they stupidly answer, the Jacobins! tho he who gives the answer was probably
one of these Jacobins himself; so that a traveler, ignorant of French history,
might suppose the Jacobins to be the name of some Tartar horde who, after laying
waste
In a word, gentlemen, the great body of the people of
Some of them, indeed, the basest of the race, the sophists, the rhetors, the
poet-laureates of murder, who were cruel only from cowardice and calculating
selfishness, are perfectly willing to transfer their venal pens to any
government that does not disdain their infamous support. These men, Republican
from servility, who published rhetorical panegyrics on massacre, and who
reduced plunder to a system of ethics, are as ready to preach slavery as
anarchy. But the more daring, I had almost said, the more respectable ruffians,
can not so easily bend their heads under the yoke. These fierce spirits have
not lost “The unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate.” They leave the luxuries of
servitude to the mean and dastardly hypocrites, to the Belials and Mammons of
the infernal faction. They pursue their old end of tyranny under their old
pretext of liberty. The recollection of their unbounded power renders every
inferior condition irksome and vapid; and their former atrocities form, if I
may so speak, a sort of moral destiny which irresistibly impels them to the
perpetration of new crimes. They have no place left for penitence on earth.
They labor under the most awful proscription of opinion that ever was
pronounced against human beings. They have cut down every bridge by which they
could retreat into the society of men.
Awakened from their dreams of democracy, the noise subsided that deafened their
ears to the voice of humanity; the film fallen from their eyes which hid from
them the blackness of their own deeds, haunted by the memory of their
inexpiable guilt, condemned daily to look on the faces of those whom their
hands made widows and orphans, they are goaded and scourged by these real
furies, and hurried into the tumult of new crimes, which will drown the cries
of remorse, or, if they be too depraved for remorse, will silence the curses of
mankind. Tyrannical power is their only refuge from the just vengeance of their
fellow creatures. Murder is their only means of usurping power. They have no
taste, no occupation, no pursuit but power and blood. If their hands are tied,
they must at least have the luxury of murderous projects. They have drunk too
deeply of human blood ever to relinquish their cannibal appetite.
Such a faction exists in
I have used the word republican because it is the name by which this atrocious
faction describes itself. The assumption of that name is one of their crimes.
They are no more republicans than royalists. They are the common enemies of all
human society. God forbid that by the use of that word I should be supposed to
reflect on the members of those respectable republican communities which did
exist in
Believing, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great struggle, that this is
only the first battle between reason and power, that you have now in your
hands, committed to your trust, the only remains of free discussion in Europe,
now confined to this kingdom; addressing you, therefore, as the guardians of
the most important interests of mankind, convinced that the unfettered exercise
of reason depends more on your present verdict than on any other that was ever
delivered by a jury, I can not conclude without bringing before you the
sentiments and examples of our ancestors in some of those awful and perilous
situations by which divine Providence has in former ages tried the virtue of
the English nation. We are fallen upon times in which it behooves us to
strengthen our spirits by the contemplation of great examples of constancy. Let
us seek for them in the annals of our forefathers.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth may be
considered as the opening of the modern history of
Her only effectual ally was the spirit of her people, and her policy flowed from
that magnanimous nature which in the hour of peril teaches better lessons than
those of cold reason. Her great heart inspired her with a higher and a nobler
wisdom, which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid passions of her people
even for the protection of their low and sordid interests, because she knew, or
rather, she felt, that these are effeminate, creeping, cowardly, short-sighted
passions, which shrink from conflict even in defense of their own mean objects.
Ina righteous cause, she roused those generous affections of her people which
alone teach boldness, constancy, and foresight, and which are therefore the
only safe guardians of the lowest as well as the highest interests of a nation.
In her memorable address to her army, when the invasion of the kingdom was
threatened by
No! She touched another chord - she spoke of their national honor, of their
dignity as Englishmen, of “the foul
scorn that
The next great conspirator against the rights of men and of nations, against
the security and independence of all European states, against every kind and
degree of civil and religious liberty, was Louis XIV. In his time the character
of the English nation was the more remarkably displayed, because it was
counteracted by an apostate and perfidious government. During a great part of
his reign, you know that the throne of England was filled by princes who
deserted the cause of their country and of Europe, who were the accomplices and
the tools of the oppressor of the world, who were even so unmanly, so
unprincely, so base, as to have sold themselves to his ambition; who were
content that he should enslave the continent, if he enabled them to enslave
Great Britain. These princes, 6traitors to their own royal
dignity and to the feelings of the generous people whom they ruled, preferred the
condition of the first slave of Louis XIV. to the dignity of the first freemen
of
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes threw fifty thousand French Protestants
on our shores. They were received as I trust the victims of tyranny ever will
be in this land, which seems chosen by
During this ignominious period of our history, a war arose on the continent,
which can not but present itself to the mind on such an occasion as this; the
only war that was ever made on the avowed ground of attacking a free Press. I
speak of the invasion of
This war, gentlemen, had the effect of raising up from obscurity the great
Prince of Orange, afterward King William III., the deliverer of Holland, the
deliverer of England, the deliverer of Europe; the only hero who was
distinguished by such a happy union of fortune and virtue that the objects of
his ambition were always the same with the interests of humanity; perhaps the
only man who devoted the whole of his life exclusively to the service of
mankind. This most illustrious benefactor of Europe, this “hero without vanity or passion,” as he has been justly and beautifully called by a
venerable prelate [Doctor Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph], who never made a step
toward greatness without securing or advancing liberty, who had been made
Stadtholder of Holland for the salvation of his own country, was soon after
made king of England for the deliverance of ours.
In the course of the eighteenth century, a great change took place in the state
of political discussion in this country. I speak of the multiplication of
newspapers. I know that newspapers are not very popular in this place, which
is, indeed, not very surprising, because they are known here only by their
faults. Their publishers come here only to receive the chastisement due to
their offenses. With all their faults, I own I can not help feeling some
respect for whatever is a proof of the increased curiosity and increased
knowledge of mankind; and I can not help thinking that if somewhat more
indulgence and consideration were shown for the difficulties of their
situation, it might prove one of the best correctives of their faults, by
teaching them that self-respect which is the best security for liberal conduct
toward others. But however that maybe, it is very certain that the
multiplication of these channels of popular information has produced a great
change in the state of our domestic and foreign politics. At home, it has, in
truth, produced a gradual revolution in our government. By increasing the
number of those who exercise some sort of judgment on public affairs, it has
created a substantial democracy, infinitely more important than those
democratical forms which have been the subject of so much contest. So that I
may venture to say, England has not only in its forms the most democratical
government that ever existed in a great country, but in substance has the most
democratical government that ever existed in any country; if the most
substantial democracy be that state in which the greatest number of men feel an
interest and express an opinion upon political questions, and in which the
greatest number of judgments and wills concur in influencing public measures.
The first remarkable instance which I shall choose to state of the unpunished
and protected boldness of the English Press, of the freedom with which they
animadverted on the policy of powerful sovereigns, is the partition of Poland
in 1772; an act not, perhaps, so horrible in its means, nor so deplorable in
its immediate effects, as some other atrocious invasions of national
independence which have followed it, but the most abominable in its general
tendency and ultimate consequences of any political crime recorded in history,
because it was the first practical breach in the system of Europe, the first
example of atrocious robbery perpetrated on unoffending countries which have
been since so liberally followed, and which has broken down all the barriers of
habit and principle which guarded defenseless states. The perpetrators of this
atrocious crime were the most powerful sovereigns of the continent, whose
hostility it certainly was not the interest of
Some of you remember, all of you know, that a loud and unanimous cry of
reprobation and execration broke out against them from every part of this
kingdom. It was perfectly uninfluenced by any considerations of our own mere
national interest, which might perhaps be supposed to be rather favorably
affected by that partition. It was not, as in some other countries, the
indignation of rival robbers, who were excluded from their share of the prey.
It was the moral anger of disinterested spectators against atrocious crimes,
the gravest and the most dignified moral principle which the God of justice has
implanted in the human heart; that of which the dread is the only restraint on
the actions of powerful criminals, and of which the promulgation is the only
punishment than can be inflicted on them. It is a restraint which ought not to
be weakened. It is a punishment which no good man can desire to mitigate.
Soon after, gentlemen, there followed an act, in comparison with which all the
deeds of rapine and blood perpetrated in the world are innocence itself— the invasion and destruction of Switzerland, that
unparalleled scene of guilt and enormity; that unprovoked aggression against an
innocent country, which has been the sanctuary of peace and liberty for three
centuries; respected as a sort of sacred territory by the fiercest ambition;
raised, like its own mountains, beyond the region of the storms which raged
around on every side; the only warlike people that never sent forth armies to
disturb their neighbors; the only government that ever accumulated treasures
without imposing taxes; an innocent treasure, unstained by the tears of the
poor; the inviolate patrimony of the commonwealth, which attested the virtue of
a long series of magistrates, but which at length caught the eye of the
spoiler, and became the fatal occasion of their ruin! Gentlemen, the
destruction of such a country, “its
cause so innocent, and its fortune so lamentable!” made a deep impression on the people of
When Robespierre, in the debates in the National Convention on the mode of
murdering their blameless sovereign, objected to the formal and tedious mode of
murder called a trial, and proposed to put him immediately to death, “on the principles of insurrection,” because, to doubt the guilt of the king would be to
doubt the innocence of the Convention, and if the king were not a traitor, the
Convention must be rebels; would my learned friend have had an English writer
state all this with “decorum and
moderation?” Would he have had an
English writer state that tho this reasoning was not perfectly agreeable to our
national laws, or perhaps to our national prejudices, yet it was not for him to
make any observations on the judicial proceedings of foreign states?
When Marat, in the same Convention, called for two hundred and seventy thousand
heads, must our English writers have said that the remedy did, indeed, seem to
their weak judgment rather severe; but that it was not for them to judge the
conduct of so illustrious an assembly as the National Convention, or the
suggestions of so enlightened a statesman as M. Marat?
Mortifying and horrible as the idea is, I must remind you, gentlemen, that even
at that time, even under the reign of Robespierre, my learned friend, if he had
then been attorney-general, might have been compelled by some most deplorable
necessity to have come into this court to ask your verdict against the libelers
of Barère and Collot d’ Herbois. Mr.
Peltier then employed his talents against the enemies of the human race, as he
has uniformly and bravely done. I do not believe that any peace, any political
considerations, any fear of punishment would have silenced him. He has shown
too much honor, and constancy, and intrepidity, to be shaken by such
circumstances as these.
My learned friend might then have been compelled to have filed a criminal
information against Mr. Peltier, for “wickedly
and maliciously intending to vilify and degrade Maximilian Robespierre,
President of the Committee of Public Safety of the French Republic!” He might have been reduced to the sad necessity of
appearing before you to belie his own better feelings, to prosecute Mr. Peltier
for publishing those sentiments which my friend himself had a thousand times
felt, and a thousand times expressed. He might have been obliged even to call
for punishment upon Mr. Peltier for language which he and all mankind would for
ever despise Mr. Peltier if he were not to employ. Then, indeed, gentlemen, we
should have seen the last humiliation fall on
Gentlemen, I now leave this unfortunate gentleman in your hands. His character
and his situation might interest your humanity; but, on his behalf, I only ask
justice from you. I only ask a favorable construction of what can not be said
to be more than ambiguous language, and this you will soon be told, from the
highest authority, is a part of justice.
Note 1. Delivered before the Court of
King’s Bench in February, 1803, at the
trial of Jean Peltier, accused of libeling Napoleon Bonaparte. Peltier, in a
paper called “L’ Ambigu,” had
suggested that Bonaparte, then first consul, be assassinated. He was found guilty,
but the sentence was never pronounced, inasmuch as war with
Note 2. André Marie de Chenier, the French poet, who was guillotined on July
25, 1794.
Note 3. Pierre Louis Ginguené, historian and critic.
Note 4. Afterward one of Napoleon’s
marshals.
Note 5. Minister of finance under Henry IV., 1597-1610.
Note 6. Charles II. and James II.
from "The World's Great
Orations" ed. by William Jennings Bryan, 1906, published in full by
bartelsby.com