for it cannot but interest the people in the preservation of their constitution, when they know its excellence and its wisdom."

But, says Mr. Bearcroft, again and again, "are the multitude to be told all this?" I say as often on my part, yes. I say, that nothing can preserve the government of this free and happy country, in which, under the blessing of God, we live; nothing can make it endure to all future ages, but its excellence and its wisdom being known, not only to you and the higher ranks of men who may be overborn by a contentious multitude, but by disseminating among the great body of the people the true principles on which it is established; which shows them, that they are not the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water"> to men who avail themselves of their labour and their industry; but that government is a trust proceeding from themselves; an emanation from their own strength; a benefit and a blessing, which has stood the test of ages: that they are governed because they desire to be governed, and yield a voluntary obedience to the laws, because the laws protect them in the liberties they enjoy.

Upon these principles I assert, with men of all denominations and parties who have written on the subject of free governments, that this dialogue, so far from misrepresenting or endangering the constitution of England, must disseminate obedience and affection to it; and that the comparison which it makes of great political institutions with the little club in the village, is a decisive mark of the honest intention of its author.

Does a member rebel against the president of his club while he fulfils his trust?-No; because he is of his own appointment, and acting for his comfort and benefit. This safe and simple analogy lying within the reach of every understanding, is therefore adopted by the scholar as the vehicle of instruction; and wishing the peasant to be sensible of the happy government of his country, and to be acquainted with the deep stake he has in its preservation, truly tells him, that a nation

is but a great club, governed by the same consent, and hanging together by the same voluntary compact, impressing upon his mind the great theory of publick freedom, by the most familiar allusions to the little but delightful intercourses of social life, by which men derive those benefits that come home the nearest to their bosoms.

Such is the wise and innocent scope of this dialogue, which, after it has been repeatedly published without censure, and without mischief, under the eye of government in the capital, is gravely supposed to have been circulated by my reverend friend, many months afterwards, with a malignant purpose to overturn the monarchy by an armed rebellion.

Gentlemen, if the absurdity of such a conclusion, from the nature of the dialogue itself, were not self evident, I might render it more glaring by adverting to the condition of the publisher. The affectionate son of a reverend prelate, not more celebrated for his genius and learning than for his warm attachment to the constitution, and in the direct road to the highest honours and emoluments of that very church, which, when the monarchy falls, must be buried in its ruins : nay, the publisher, a dignitary of the same church himself at an early period of his life, and connected in friendship with those who have the dearest interests in the preservation of the government, and who, if it continue, may raise him to the summits of his profession.

I cannot therefore forbear from wishing that somebody, in the happy moments of fancy, would be so obliging as to try to conjecture why my reverend friend should aim at the destruction of the present establishment; since you cannot but see, that the moment he succeeded, down comes his father's mitre, which leans against the crown, and away goes his own deanery, with all the rest of his livings; and neither you nor I have heard any evidence to enable us to guess at what he is looking for in their

room.

Yet, in the face of all these absurdities, and without a colour of evidence from his character or conduct in any part of his life, he is accused of sedition; and under the false pretence of publick justice, dragged out of his own country, deprived of that trial by his neighbours which is the right of the meanest man who hears me, and arraigned before you, who are strangers to those publick virtues, which would in themselves be an answer to this malevolent accusation. But when I mark your sensibility in the anxious attention you have bestowed; when I reflect upon your characters, aud observe from the pannel (though I am personally unknown to you) that you are men of rank in your own country, I know how these circumstances of injustice will operate; and I therefore freely forgive the prosecutor for having fled from his original tribunal.

Gentlemen, I come now to a point very materiał for your consideration; on which even my learned friend and I, who are brought here for the express purpose of disagreeing in every thing, can avow no difference of opinion; on which judges of old and modern times, and lawyers of all interests and parties, have ever concurred; namely, that even if this innocent paper were admitted to be a libel, the publication would not be criminal, if you, the jury, saw reason to believe that it was not published by the dean with a wicked intention. It is true, that if a paper containing seditious and libellous matter be published, the publisher is prima facie guilty of sedition; the bad intention being a legal inference from the act of publishing: but it is equally true, that he may rebut that inference, by showing that he published it innocently.

This was declared by Lord Mansfield, in the case of the King and Woodfall; where his lordship said, that the fact of publication would in that instance have constituted guilt, if the paper was a libel; because the defendant had given no evidence to the jury to repel the legal inference of guilt, as arising from the publication; but he said at the same time, in the

words that I shall read to you, that such legal inference was to be repelled by proof.

"There may be cases where the fact of a publication even of a libel may be justified or excused as lawful or innocent; but no fact which is not criminal, even though the paper be a libel, can amount to a publication of which a defendant ought to be found guilty."

I read these words from Burrow's Reports, published under the eye of the court; and they appear to me a decisive defence of the dean of St. Asaph upon the present occasion, and give you an evident jurisdiction to acquit him, even if the law upon li. bels, were as it is laid down to you by Mr. Bearcroft. For if I show you, that the publication arose from motives that were innocent, and not seditious, he is not a criminal publisher, even if the dialogue were a libel, and according to lord Mansfield ought not to be found guilty.

The dean of St. Asaph was one of a great many respectable gentleman, who, impressed with the dangers impending over the publick credit of the nation, exhausted by a long war, and oppressed with grievous taxes, formed themselves into a committee according to the example of other counties, to petition the legislature to observe great caution in the expenditure of the publick money. This dialogue being written by Sir William Jones, a near relation of the dean by marriage, was either sent, or found its way to him in the course of publick circulation. He knew the character of the author; he had no reason to suspect him of sedition or disaffection; and saw and believed it to be, what I at this hour believe, and have represented it to you, a plain, easy manner of showing the people the great interest they had in petitioning parliament for every thing beneficial to the publick. It was accordingly the opinion of the Flintshire committee, and not particularly of the dean as an individual, that the dialogue should be translated into Welch and published, It was accordingly delivered, at the desire of the

committee, to a Mr. Jones, for the purpose of translation. This gentleman, who will be called as a witness, told the dean a few days afterwards, that there were persons, not indeed from their real sentiments, but from spleen and opposition, who represented it as likely to do mischief, from ignorance and misconception, if translated and circulated in Wales.

Now, what would have been the language of the defendant upon this information, if his purposé had been that which is charged upon him by the indictment? He would have said: "If what you tell me be well founded, hasten the publication; my object is sedition; my plan is to excite a rebellion in Wales; I am sure I shall never raise one here, by the dissemination of such a pamphlet in English: therefore let it be instantly translated, if the ignorant inhabitants of the mountains are likely to collect from it, that it is time to take up arms."

But Mr. Jones will tell you, that, on the contrary, the instant that he suggested that such an idea, absurd and unfounded as he felt it, had presented itself from any motives to the mind of any man, the dean, impressed as he was with its innocence and its safety, instantly acquiesced, and recalled, even on his own authority, the intended publication by the committee: and the dialogue never was translated into the Welch tongue at all, nor circulated amongst that multitude, which Mr. Bearcroft is so desirous of keeping in darkness; as if obedience to free government, like bigotry to priestcraft, was to be upheld by ignorance and delusion.

Here the dean's connexion with this dialogue would have ended, if Mr. Fitzmaurice, who never lost any occasion of defaming and misrepresenting him, had not thought fit, near three months after the idea of translation was abandoned, to reprobate and condemn the dean's conduct at the publick meetings of the county, in the severest terms, for his former intention of circulating the dialogue in Welch; declaring that its doctrines were seditious,