Libel Act, proceeded to address the jury on the merits of the work. It was his argument, that the tenor of the whole, and the intentions of the writer, were to be regarded; and that if these should be found praiseworthy, or innocent, the presence of a few detached passages, which, taken separately, might seem calculated to bring the House of Commons into contempt, were altogether insufficient to justify conviction. This speech may be selected as one of the finest examples of Mr. Erskine's oratory, whether for the skill displayed in managing the argument, the justness of the principles, the exquisite taste with which they are illustrated and enforced, or the powerful eloquence in which they are embodied; and from this, in conclusion, we would extract one passage as a specimen of his powers. It is sufficient to state in introduction, that the pamphlet in question was a defence of Mr. Hastings, and that, among other topics, it urged the nature of his instructions from his constituents. Commenting on this, the orator proceeds in a strain which few persons, not hardened by long converse in affairs of state, will read without emotion, or without a deep sense of the justice of the sentiments, the gravity of the topics introduced.

"If this be a wilfully false account of the instructions given to Mr. Hastings for his government, and of his conduct under them, the author and publisher of this defence deserve the severest punishment, for a mercenary imposition on the public. But if it be true, that he was directed to make the safety and prosperity of Bengal the first object of his attention,' and that under his administration it has been safe and prosperous; if it be true that the security and preservation of our possessions and revenues in Asia were marked out to him as the great leading principle of his government, and that those possessions and revenues amidst unexampled dangers have been secured and preserved; then a question may be unaccountably mixed with your consideration, much beyond the consequence of the present prosecution, involving perhaps the merit of the impeachment itself which gave it birth; a question which the Commons, as prosecutors of Mr. Hastings, should in common prudence have avoided; unless, regretting the unwieldy length of their prosecution against him, they wished to afford him the opportunity of this strange anomalous defence. For although I am neither his counsel, nor desire to have any thing to do with his guilt or innocence, yet in the collateral defence of my client I am driven to state matter which may be considered by many as hostile to the impeachment. For if our dependencies have been secured, and their interests promoted, I am driven in the defence of my client to remark, that it is mad and preposterous to bring to the standard of justice and

humanity, the exercise of a dominion founded upon violence and terror. It may, and must be true, that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both; he may and must have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the faithful Viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God and nature had given it; he may and must have preserved that unjust dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying, overbearing, insulting superiority, if he was the faithful administrator of your government, which, having no root in consent or affection, no foundation in similarity of interests, nor support from any one principle which cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature. When governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the east would long since have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military prowess had not united their efforts, to support an authority which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can

sanction.

"Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth, from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the Governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. Who is it,' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure; 'who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being, who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk on the ground. and raising the war-cry

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of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control, where it is vain to look for affection.

"These reflections are the only antidotes to those anathemas of superhuman eloquence which have lately shaken these walls that surround us; but which it unaccountably falls to my province, whether I will or no, a little to stem the torrent of, by reminding you that you have a mighty sway in Asia which cannot be maintained by the finer sympathies of life, or the practice of its charities and affections. What will they do for you when surrounded by two hundred thousand men with artillery, cavalry, and elephants, calling upon you for their dominions which you have robbed them of? Justice may, no doubt, in such a case forbid the levying of a fine to pay a revolting soldiery; a treaty may stand in the way of increasing a tribute to keep up the very existence of the government; and delicacy for women may forbid all entrance into a zenana for money, whatever may be the necessity for taking it. All these things must ever be occurring. But under the pressure of such constant difficulties, so dangerous to national honour, it might be better perhaps to think of effectually securing it altogether, by recalling our troops and merchants, and abandoning our Oriental empire. Until this be done, neither religion nor philosophy can be pressed very far into the aid of reformation and punishment. If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to her Viceroys to govern them, with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues; with what colour of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and complaining only of the excess as the immorality; considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of

man.

It

"Such a proceeding, Gentlemen, begets serious reflections. would be better perhaps for the masters and the servants of all such governments to join in supplication, that the great Author of violated humanity may not confound them together in one common judgment."

These speeches, on constructive treason, and on subjects relating to the liberty of the press, fill four octavo volumes. A fifth was subse

quently published, containing speeches on miscellaneous subjects; among which those in behalf of Hadfield and for Mr. Bingham are especially worthy of attention. The latter is one of the most affecting appeals to the feelings ever uttered. Hadfield is notorious for having discharged a pistol at George III. in Drury Lane Theatre. He was a soldier, who had been dreadfully wounded in the head, and other parts of the body; and no doubt could be entertained but that he was of unsound mind. Whether his insanity was of such a nature, that it could be pleaded in excuse for an attempt to murder, was a harder question to decide; and the speech in his behalf, besides many passages of much power and pathos, contains a masterly exposition of the principles by which a court of law should be guided in examining the moral responsibility of a person labouring under alienation of mind. Hadfield, we need hardly say, was acquitted.

No life of Lord Erskine has yet been written on a scale calculated to do justice to the subject. The fullest which we have seen is contained in the Lives of British Lawyers,' in Lardner's Cyclopædia: there is also a scanty memoir in the Annual Biography and Obituary, from which the facts contained in this sketch are principally derived.

THE parents of this eminent discoverer in optics, to whom we are chiefly indebted for the high perfection of our telescopes, were French Protestants resident in Normandy, whence they were driven by the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685. With many others of their class, they took up their residence in Spitalfields, where John Dollond, the subject of this memoir*, was born, June 10, 1706. It has been supposed, and among others by Lalande, that the name is not French; if we were to hazard a conjecture, we should say that it might have been an English corruption of D'Hollande. While yet very young, John Dollond lost his father; and he was obliged to gain his livelihood by the loom, though his natural disposition led him to devote all his leisure hours to mathematics and natural philosophy. Notwithstanding the cares incumbent upon the father of a family (for he married early) he contrived to find time, not only for the abovementioned pursuits, but for anatomy, classical literature, and divinity. He continued his quiet course of life until his son, Peter Dollond, was of age to join him in his trade of silk-weaving, and they carried on that business together for several years. The son, however, who was also of a scientific turn, and who had profited by his father's instructions, quitted the silk trade to commence business as an optician. He was tolerably successful, and after some years his father joined him, in 1752.

The first improvement made by the elder Dollond in the telescope,

* For the details of this life, we are mostly indebted to the Memoir of Dr. Kelly, his son-in-law, from which all the existing accounts of Dollond are taken. This book has become very scarce, and we are indebted for the opportunity of perusing it to the kindness of G. Dollond, Esq.