names might give a death-blow to justice, by enabling the counsellors of evil to hold the precedent of assassination, in terrorem, over all future developement of their atrocities; and we might witness the base alternative of life and secresy preferred to the dreadful risk of information and martyrdom. The system of intimidation which has withered the arm of the loyal throughout some districts, in this frightful result giving full meaning to the foregoing remarks, will divest them of every tittle of exaggeration; and the horrible attempts at assas sination, in which even Jurymen have been included, will establish them in naked truth.

Another argument, exclusive of the preg nant mass of evidence already before Parliament, would justify a resolute appeal for further and competent security in supplementary laws. This argument is founded on the sense of danger, and the demand for protection so unequivocally expressed by our Legislators individually, in behalf of themselves and their fellowcountrymen; swelling a preponderating majority in favour of legislative interference, which the divisions on the Address may be taxed to detail. JULIUS.

.ETTER V.

TO THE SAME.

GENTLEMEN,

December 11, 1819.

IN my last letter but one to you, I promised to review your arguments in behalf of " Parliamentary Inquiry into the Events at Manchester on the 16th of August." Unlike the generality of promises, this promise was made under an idea of greater responsibility than the event declares it to have incurred. I find I gave you too much credit for consistency, by anticipating something in the shape of argument to justify the motion you have just degraded with your support; and which proved a twin abortion with the rejected amendment of the Address. I shall keep strictly to the letter of my promise, since should I attempt to follow the ignis fatuus of illimitable, unconscionable, and groundless assertion, I might speedily be embogged in the same "slough of despond" with yourselves.

In the letter just alluded to, I attempted to display to you the dangerous consequences of

instituting the inquiry you urged; in this, I undertake to examine the grounds en which you would have us concede, that the request was warranted. It may be necessary to restate, that the interference you have now twice demanded is extraordinary, and would tend to proclaim the regular Courts of Judicature incompetent, in cases where the acknowledgment: of their supremacy is of vital importance to themselves, and consequently to that Constitution of which they form the first and foremost bulwarks. To justify, therefore, a proceeding which would involve such extraordinary effects, I expected some equally extraordinary reasons. What was my surprise, then, in wading through both series of your declamations, on the same subject, to be able to sort out but two specific attempts to render a reason for a specific request. The first presents us with an assumptive picture of magisterial despotism in the following pathetic query:-"How are the poor sufferers to obtain redress against a body of Magistrates?" The second, by implicating the Government in the transactions of those Magistrates, on account of the thanks bestowed upon them, would involve the necessity that both the Government and the Magistrates should be

examined at the bar of Parliament. Surely the Government could never sit as a jury on conduct to which they made themselves a party by public thanks. If justice demanded an appeal to a certain tribunal, and certain members of that tribunal had identified themselves with those whose conduct was to be scrutinized; those members, instead of sitting as scrutators, should await their award among the scrutinized; otherwise the first grand principle of justice would be violated in packing a jury who had previously declared their sentiments as to the verdict they should give; and the monstrous anomaly be realized, of men sitting in judgment upon transactions which, if pronounced illegal, must implicate a portion of the jury in crime, and consequently involve in it the sentence that should prescribe its punishment. In urging, therefore, the latter of these two reasons for Parliamentary inquiry, you forgot the very foundation on which you built it, viz. the equal implication of Government with the Magistrates they protected by their thanks.

If, gentlemen, you would avoid the imputation of villainous intent, on what possible

pretext will you justify the sketching out for a Wooler's, or a Sherwin's filling up, such a colossal outline of deformity as the query above recited pourtrays? You draw the chains, they will supply the wearers. You insinuate that redress cannot be obtained from either our Magistracy or our Ministry; the people's worst enemies will stimulate the delusion with the infernal blood-whoop of Liberty and Equality. Thus, gentlemen, with two solitary, untenable, self-conflicting arguments, you illuminate your diatribes in behalf of an extra-judicial inquiry, which, as mere speculators in opposition, you of consequence support.

What then, it may be asked, does the mass of your declamation go to prove? Not like you, gentlemen, guiltless of telling the truth, I am impelled to protest it simply suggests the reverse of your demand. You appeal for an extraordinary interference, and support your appeal with arguments which best confirm its impropriety, by involving the best reasons for preferring an ordinary one. In the blindness of your obstinacy, you seem to have no idea of the mischief of suspending, ad libitum, the ordinary course of justice, thereby