Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/445

 Pitt took no sort of notice of Erskine's Billingsgate ' (, Life of Pitt, i. 256). It appears that Erskine being indisposed an adjournment was taken in the middle of his speech, and in the meantime he dined, perhaps too well, with the Prince of Wales, and was by him prompted to make this attack (, Memoirs of George III, iii. 28).

In the meantime he had been winning enduring fame in those causes on which his legal and oratorical reputation rests, causes connected with the law of libel and treason. Sir William Jones had published a tract on government called 'A Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Farmer.' Shipley, dean of St. Asaph, reprinted and recommended it. The crown declining to prosecute the dean for this, the matter was taken up by the Hon. Mr. FitzMaurice, and Erskine was retained for the defence. The case came on at the Wrexham autumn assizes 1783, was removed into the king's bench in the spring, and finally tried at the summer assizes at Shrewsbury in 1784. Mr. Justice Buller directed that the jury was merely to find the publication and the truth of the innuendoes as laid; whether the words constituted a libel or not was for the court. Erskine subsequently, in Michaelmas term, argued against this in a very fine speech upon a motion for a rule for a new trial. The rule was refused, but the question was finally set at rest by the passing of Fox's Libel Act (32 Geo. Ill, c. 60) in 1792, which enacted that the question of libel or no libel in each particular case is for the jury. In 1789 Stockdale published a pamphlet by one Logan against the impeachment of Hastings, Fox brought this publication before the House of Commons as a libel on the managers of the impeachment, and carried a motion for an address to the crown praying that the attorney-general might prosecute Stockdale. Sir Alexander Macdonald filed an information accordingly, which was tried in the king's bench before Lord Kenyon and a special jury on 9 Dec. 1789. Erskine's speech for the defence produced an unexampled effect on the audience, and Stockdale was acquitted.

At the election of 1790 Erskine was returned for Portsmouth, a seat which he held till he became a peer. On 22 Dec. separating himself from the rest of his party, he supported the contention that the dissolution had put an end to the impeachment of Hastings, but he broke down in his speech. He spoke in general but little. In April 1792, on Grey's motion for parliamentary reform, he defended the Society of Friends of the People; and when the whig party was divided upon the attitude to be assumed towards the French revolution, Erskine, who had visited Paris in September 1790 to witness its progress and had returned full of admiration for its principles (, Memoirs, 25 Sept. 1790), followed Fox in regarding it as a movement towards liberty, and censured both the policy of enacting new penal laws against the Jacobins and the Traitorous Correspondence Bill. This imperilled his favour with the Prince of Wales; his next step lost it. In 1792 Paine, whose 'Rights of Man,' pt. ii., contained offensive attacks on the royal family, was prosecuted. Erskine accepted the brief for the defence, in spite of many attacks from the government newspapers, much dissuasion by his friends, including Lord Loughborough, and an express message from the Prince of Wales. On 18 Dec. 1792 the jury, without waiting for reply or summing-up, found Paine guilty. Erskine was dismissed from his office of attorney-general to the Prince of Wales. As, however, Sir A. Pigot, the prince's solicitor-general, was dismissed also, though unconnected with Paine's case, it is probable that the real ground of offence was that both were members of the Society of Friends of the People for Advocating Parliamentary Reform. Erskine was one of the original members of the Society of Friends of the Liberty of the Press, and presided at its first and second meetings, 22 Dec. 1792 and 19 Jan. 1793. The government now began a series of prosecutions. The first was that of John Frost in March 1793. In spite of Erskine's efforts he was convicted. For Perry and Grey, proprietors of the 'Morning Chronicle,' indicted 9 Dec. 1793 for inserting in the paper the address of a society for political information held at Derby, which complained of the state of the parliamentary representation, he procured an acquittal. In the case of Walker, too, tried on 2 April 1794 for a conspiracy to raise a rebellion, he destroyed the crown witnesses in cross-examination, and the verdict was not guilty. The government next attacked the advocates of reform with prosecutions, in which the theory of constructive treason was put forward. Erskine was successful in defeating them. After secret committees of both houses had reported, an act was passed suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in view of the forthcoming trials. True bills were found against twelve persons, the only overt act alleged being a conspiracy to summon a convention. The trials began on 28 Oct. 1 794 at the Old Bailey, before Lord-chief-justice Eyre and other judges, under a special commission of oyer and terminer. Hardy's case was taken first. Scott, the attorney-general, took nine hours to open his case; the jury was locked up for the night, and day after day from