Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Well, are we all ready? Powder, shot, and caps enough, and every thing in order? Eh! Peter, what are you twisting your mouth about? Ah, yes, indeed, I forgot. Here's a dozen Principes to use as occasion may offer, and especially after dinner; which is to be sent up with the rest into the sugar-bush, where we will rendezvous about one o'clock, and in the afternoon help 'sugar off.' See the sunlight on the barns yonder; how warm it looks! Look off on that hill-side, where the snow lies so deep! How like a speck of gold it shimmers to the eye! and there goes Dancer on the crust, as if he enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the warm sunlight. Let us try the crust too, and if it will bear us, we shall save time by going across lots. Here we go, with our heels crunching the glittering pavement, leaving scarcely a vestige of our tread, the frost of last night has so effectually congealed it. Yonder across this valley which the hills prevent our seeing from the house, is the sugar-bush, sloping to the south. The canal we first crossed leads to the old mills down to the right yonder, where you see that grove of black-cherry trees, and the little house on the knoll. The mist that you see to the left, rises from the mill-dam, the monotonous hum of whose falling waters you have heard for some time. This is Furnace Creek, whose swift current harbors the most beautiful trout. That crow yonder on the dry hemlock is calling to his mate, and the speckled wood-pecker is tapping away at that old beech, that the nice insects within its decayed interior may come out to make him a breakfast. Hark! do you not hear the drum of that partridge? He is up there in that thicket of young beeches and hemlocks, on the other side of the road. As you hear the slow, measured drum which he gives at first, and which he hastens into a whirr like distant thunder, does not 'The old Man's Counsel' come fresh to your memory, and almost ringing in your ear? Ah! this is the glory of true poetry, that it clothes the commonest things with a new interest, and forever after they become objects of love, at least of meditation. Who that has read the same author's 'Lines to a Waterfowl,' does not gaze with other than a sportsman's pleasure upon even a wild duck, if it flies past him after sunset. But there goes a flock of pigeons, and here over our heads; one! two! three! more than a hundred in each! What a rushing sound their wings make! They fly too high for us just now: but wait till we get on the cleared hill yonder to the right of the sugar-bush, and we shall have rare sport as they emerge from the trees and skim along the edge of the 'clearing.'

Here we are in the sugar-bush. Are these not noble trees? For how many years have they stood thus interlocking their strong boughs like brethren! While Columbus was asking a supper for his boy at the convent door, three centuries and a half ago, these same trees were here, scarcely younger than now. Yonder is the hill we saw from the rude bridge below the mill-dam. Let us clamber over the log-fence and get into the clearing.

Well, Peter, this hill that we are on is just one mile from home, though it looks not half the distance. Is this not a glorious view? Hill and valley spread out like a map before us! The snow lies in patches upon the fields, and the sun is lighting up the tinned spire of the village church, which, as the stage passed it yesterday, you thought looked like a superannuated old man with a martin-cage upon his crooked back. There is the old homestead looking at us through the locusts that surround it, and there are the orchards off to the right, which in a few weeks will be white with blossoms. Now, steady, my boys! Do you see that flock of pigeons? Wait till they pass us, that our shot may take effect on their backs. Whang! hack!! bang!!! What! three barrels off and only a handful of tail-feathers! How they opened as we fired, as if to let the shot go through. Hist! don't stir! Look up softly into the dry top of this hemlock, right over our heads: four, five, six! all in a huddle. I'll fetch some of them with my last barrel. Snap! fiz! confound the cap! Hold still, they see us. I've got a fresh cap on: bang! Here comes one, tumbling through the limbs on to the snow. Is he not a handsome bird; with his glossy purple breast and slender blue neck! Load quickly, and let us be ready for the next flock.

Hear them scream and coo in the wood to the right. Hear the leaves crackle down on that slope where the snow is off under those tall beeches. The ground is fairly blue with them. Softly there over the dry brush! See them turning up the leaves for beech-nuts: they are all moving this way. Down, behind this log: they are not twenty yards off. Cock both barrels; and now fire! What a stunning sound they make, like the roaring of a tornado! Look, they have settled down again on the other side of the ravine. Well, here, Peter, what do you think of the fun now?--fourteen cock pigeons and one hen, to be divided between us. This is what _I_ call sport: none of your reed-birds and meadow-larks, such as cockney sportsmen frighten away from the fields of Jersey or Long-Island. Here they come again by scores. Now let us see how good a shot you are. Two cocks on the topmost branch of that old maple, full forty yards to the trunk. No, no! don't get any nearer, for they see you. Well done! Hear him thump on the leaves; and here comes the other, fluttering round and round like a shuttlecock. Ten to one that you shot him through the head. There! I told you so! His wings are not hurt, but a shot has cut away his bill. Here, Dancer, don't bite him so, but bring him here! Chick, chick, churr! Mister Red-squirrel, we'll 'give you a few,' as Jared used to say. On that knot in the green hemlock, he sits with his tail spread out over his head, for all the world like a young miss in a high-backed, old-fashined easy-chair. Well, we wont harm him, for the sake of the associations his comical appearance awakens.

Dancer is barking down in the ravine. There he comes! as if he were crazy; he is on the track of a hare! Do you see that pair of slender ears pricked up behind the roots of that fallen tree? Let me try my skill at a long shot. I've hit them, that's poz! No, I haven't either; for the nimble-footed thing is scudding away round the hill as safe as if I had not wasted my loading on her.

This sunken cask down here where the water wells up through the white sand, used to be the father of the cool spring water for the uses of the Homestead, and was conveyed the whole distance in 'pump-logs.' You can see the end of one, with an iron band sunk into it, sticking out of the earth. This spring, however, has been long exchanged for one on higher ground, and the wooden logs for lead pipe, half as expensive, and not half so healthy. Just pop over that chip-munk, whose head is peeping out of the ground at the foot of the maple sapling. Too cruel! Well done! you are growing compassionate all at once. Look out for your head! I declare, you escaped narrowly! That dead limb would have dispersed all your theology, had it struck your head. Well, Dancer, what are you staring at? Do you think the old tree dropped one of its limbs on purpose? Ah, ha! I see! Peter, do you see that tuft of dark moss in the crotch of that largest maple: well, I am going to shoot at it for sport, so here goes! I _thought_ it was a black squirrel; how he leaps from the top boughs. Hurrah! here we go over logs and through bushes; the squirrel still ahead of us, springing from tree top to tree top. How he rattles down the dry splinters as he scratches up that dead hemlock. Now we've got him! Go round on the other side of the tree and he will dodge back this way, and I shall get a crack at him. But he don't though! He must have a hole up there. Sure enough, there is one! Let me get this old bough broken in two, and I will start him. Now be ready, and shoot him as he comes out. The old tree is hollow all the way up; it sounds as I strike like an old bass-drum. There! he's out! blaze away! Not that time did you hit him. That's better! see him hang by one leg! here he comes! 'dead as a door nail!' Thump! how he struck the ground. What a tail he has!

* * * * *

And now we are at the 'boiling place.' Two strong beech crotches are driven into the ground, about twelve feet apart, and a strong pole is laid over them, some five feet from the ground. The huge back-log was the butt of that tremendous beech you see lying just at the top of the knoll. The cauldron you see is filled with the fresh sap two or three times a day, and before filling each time, the boiling liquid is dipped out into the largest kettle alongside of it, and that in turn is emptied into a smaller one, that no time may be lost in boiling it away. Taste the syrup in this smaller kettle; it is almost molasses. Try on that 'neck-yoke' and come, let us help carry sap before dinner. The spiles you see sticking from augur-holes in every maple are made of young sumacs, which are sawed off the right length, and then the pith is punched out with a wire. The clean white-pine buckets, without bails, into which the sap drips from the spiles, are made expressly for this use, and so is that enormous hogshead where the sap is poured before it is strained for the cauldron. For the present let us to dinner. Well, Herr Peter, although our dinner was laid on a beech log, and our table-cloth nothing but a piece of coarse linen, and our knives and forks such as Adam and Eve used before us! was it not excellent! Wie schmackt es! _How smacked it!_ as it passed through our devouring jaws; and how sweet was the pure spring water from the bright tin dipper! Now for a quiet smoke on the plank settle in the bough-house, while Joe and Hiram are getting ready to 'sugar off.' Here, if there comes up a storm, they sit and watch the kettles; and sometimes when the weather is clear they sit up all night. So at last you _do_ love a cigar better than a meerschaum? I confess it is the same with me! How old DEIDRICH would frown, if he heard such an admission from those who boast as we do the pure _Deutchen-blut_, the true Dutch blood!

What! two o'clock so soon! They have hung the ten-pail kettle that contains the thick syrup upon a pole between two slender crotches, and have already kindled a fire. How it bubbles and 'blubbers' up, like thick hasty-pudding, with a dignified slowness that is inimitable. Now it rises to the top of the kettle and will boil over! O, you needn't turn up your nose at the slice of clean fat pork that Joe has just thrown in, for that has saved our sugar. See, it gradually subsides till it rests a third way down. You have heard that oil will still the surface of the sea; and the oily part of the pork answers the same purpose with the boiling syrup. Now it begins to granulate, swing it off. Here, drop some of it into this bucket of cold water, and then poke it out with that pine stick, while I run up on the side-hill yonder and get a pail of snow, which will cool it faster. Ha, ha, ha! you do look handsome; suppose Meeta could see you with your jaws stuck fast together with the candy, and your face looking like the head of Medusa. While you are getting over the lock-jaw, I will trail some on this snow to take home to little Sue, who begged me to bring her back some maple candy. Now let us ride down home on the ox-sled, with the huge tin pails full of the hot syrup, which wont get half cold before it is safe in the farm-house pantry, in a half dozen well-buttered milk-pans to harden for future use.

Once more in bed after a hearty supper; and once more out of it, too, for the stage horn is blown. We must hurry or we are left; for it stops only fifteen or twenty minutes to change the mail.

* * * * *

Yes, Peter, this Brookline _is_ a little cleaner than Broadway.

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.

BY FLACCUS.

'Tantæ ne animis coelestibus iræ?' VIRGIL.

When the full-throated people of the air,
Harmonious preachers of the sweets of love,
That midway range, as half at home with heaven,
Are quiring, with a heartiness of joy
That the high tide of song o'erbrims the grove,
And far adown the meadow runs to waste;
How would the soul, there floating, loathe to mark
Sudden contention; sharp, discordant screams,
From throats whose single duty is a song!

Not with less sure revolting--ah! far more!
Curdles the blood when Christian brothers strive,
And prostitute to wordy war the lips
Commissioned to dispense 'good will to man;'
And soothe the world with spoken kindness, soft,
And full of melody as song of birds.
O, sad betrayal of the highest trust!
Heralds of peace--to blow the trump of strife:
Envoys of charity--to sow the tares
Of hatred in a soil prepared for love.

Is this a time for soldiers of the cross
To point their weapons, each at other's breast,
When the great Enemy, the common Foe,
Though baffled, unsubdued, lays ever wait
For some unguarded pass, to cheat the walls
Not all his dread artillery could breach?
How is each lunge, and ward, of tart reproof,
And bitter repartee--painful to friends--
By th' Adversary hailed with general yell
Of triumph, or derision! O, my friends!
Believe me, lines of loving charity
Dishearten enemies, encourage friends,
And woo enlistment to your ranks, more sure
Than the best weapon of the readiest wit,
Whose point is venomed with the gall of scorn.

How wiser then, forbearing bitterness
At points of polity, or shades of faith
That different show to different-seeing eyes,
To shun perplexing doctrines which th' Allwise
Has willed obscure, and imitate HIS life;
HIS, the meek Founder of our faith, who sowed
HIS earthly way with blessings as with seed:
Bearing, forbearing, ever rendering good;
The Counsellor, the Comforter, the Friend:
How ope soe'er HIS word to various sense,
HIS _life_ is plain; and all that life was love:
Be this our guide, we cannot widely stray.

_March, 1844._

THE ENGLISH STATE TRIALS.

DURING THE POPISH PLOT.

The recent Irish State Trials seem to have been conducted on the part of the government with something of the same violence and partiality that dishonor the ancient records of Great Britain's criminal jurisprudence. The exclusion of Roman Catholics from the jury was an arbitrary and unwarrantable act; unjust in itself, disrespectful to the larger portion of the Irish people, and calculated to destroy the moral effect of the verdict, by producing the impression on the public mind that the prisoners did not have a fair trial. We would not be understood as complaining of the verdict. We do not see how, with a strict adherence to the law and to the evidence, the jury could well have decided otherwise. It is the eagerness to convict the prisoners manifested on the part of the law-officers of the crown that is the object of just reprehension.

Trials for offences against the State have happily been almost unknown in this country, and we therefore find it difficult to conceive of the dangers to which a prisoner is exposed, when the whole power of the government is arrayed against him. But to one familiar with the iniquitous manner in which they were conducted in Great Britain during the seventeenth, and the earlier part of the eighteenth century, the proceedings against O'Connell and his associates seem almost models of judicial fairness and impartiality. To one not thus familiar, it is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the extent to which legal tribunals prostituted their functions to purposes of oppression and revenge. The judges holding their offices by the slight tenure of royal favor, and generally owing their elevation to the zeal they had shown to defend the royal prerogatives, were, with a few honorable exceptions, willing instruments in the hands of power. The interpreters of the law, who, like the prophets of old, were bound to curse, or to bless, in obedience to higher impulses than their own wills, became the mere mouth-pieces of the government; the injustice of the decisions imperfectly concealed by the sanctity of the office. Justice, and the favor of the court were identical. The law and the royal pleasure were inseparably associated in the mind of the judge.

We would not be understood as meaning that the English judges were unjust, or partial in the trials between private citizens. In these cases it was not often that there was any obstacle interposed to the administration of even-handed justice. It was when the government came in as a party; when political offenders were to be tried, that they too often proved false to their trust. The temptations of office; the love of ease, wealth, and distinction; the fear of ministerial enmity, of royal disgrace, were too powerful for poor Honesty. The hour in which their aid was most needed by the friendless prisoner, was that in which it was withdrawn; for surely if men ever need an upright, able, and impartial administration of the law, it is when they contend single-handed against the influences of flattery, bribery, and intimidation, which those in authority are ever able to employ. The odds are fearful in such a contest. The prejudices of juries, the subservience of lawyers, the servility of judges, gave scarce a hope that justice would not be wrested to serve the purposes of the crown; that considerations of state policy would not prove stronger than any abstract belief of the prisoner's innocence or guilt. That we have not misrepresented the degraded condition of the English tribunals during the period we have mentioned, a referencé to the state trials _passim_, will abundantly prove. Nor is it at all strange that such should have been the case. During the dynasty of the Tudors, and the reign of the first of the Stuarts, the duty alike of the courts, and of parliament was simply to register the royal edicts. If the formalities of law were observed, it was rather through the good-nature of the sovereign, than from any consciousness of his inability to break through their restraints. But after the rebellion, and especially after the revolution, when the limits of prerogative became marked out with some degree of precision, and monarchs could no longer effect their purposes by open violence, then more subtle means were resorted to, but scarcely less dangerous, to destroy those who were so unfortunate as to become the objects of royal or ministerial enmity. The king, if he could not make the law, could still appoint the judges of the law; and the right of interpretation was hardly less powerful than the power of legislation. Even when, after a lapse of time, the judges became in a great measure independent of the crown, still it was not until many years later, when the voice of an outraged people became more terrible to them than the frowns of kings or ministers, that those accused of political offence could hope for justice at their hands.

The reign of Charles the Second, in every respect the most disgraceful in English history, is that period to which we wish now particularly to ask the reader's attention. During the latter part of it, the chief justice's seat was filled first by Scroggs, and afterwards by Jeffries; the former came to the bench a little before the disclosures that took place respecting the Popish Plot, and presided at the trials that took place in consequence of that event. It is to these trials that we shall now confine ourselves; only premising certain facts necessary to the perfect understanding of the extracts which we are about to make.

It is unnecessary to go minutely into the details of the Popish Plot. A general outline will answer our present purpose. The first who pretended any knowledge of it, or made any disclosure respecting it, was Titus Oates. He, when examined before the council in October, 1678, stated that at a consult held by the Jesuits on the 24th of April preceding, at the White Horse Tavern in London, resolutions had been adopted to kill the king, overthrow the established church, and restore popery. Upon this many arrests were made, and among others was Coleman, who had been secretary to the late Duchess of York. His papers were seized, and there was found a correspondence he had carried on several years before with the confessor of Louis XIV., having reference mainly to the restoration of the Catholic religion in England. These letters, although in no way confirmatory of the alleged Plot, except so far as they indicated an anxious desire on the part of the members of that church to regain their lost ascendency in Great Britain, and their intention to use every effort for that purpose, things already well known, yet produced great excitement, and were regarded by many as conclusive proof of the truth of Oates' statements. Another event, which happened about the same time, raised the excitement to its highest pitch. Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, a London magistrate, before whom Oates had made his depositions, was found murdered, and under such circumstances as precluded the idea of suicide. Suspicion now deepened into certainty. No one longer dared to doubt the reality of the plot. To doubt, was to confess one's self an accomplice. Nothing was talked of but the Plot. The wildest rumors were caught up and repeated, and soon grew into well-authenticated facts. The name Papist, or Roman Catholic, became synonymous with assassin. Many, not content with carrying arms, clothed themselves in armor. At the funeral of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, says North, in his Examen, 'the crowd was prodigious, both at the procession, and in and about the church, and so heated, that any thing called Papist, were it a cat or a dog, had probably gone to pieces in a moment. The Catholics all kept close in their houses and lodgings, thinking it a good compensation to be safe there, so far were they from acting violently at that time. But there was all that which upheld among the common people an artificial fright, so that every one almost fancied a popish knife just at his throat; and at the sermon, beside the preacher, two thumping divines stood upright in the pulpit, to guard him from being killed while he was preaching, by the Papists.'

Oates immediately became a man of great consequence. He was called the saviour of the nation, had lodgings given him at Whitehall, and a pension from parliament of £1200 a year. But the more cool and circumspect could not forget the notorious infamy of his character, or implicitly rely on the word of a man who openly confessed that he had gone among the Jesuits, and declared himself a convert to their faith merely to betray them. But with the populace his credit was unbounded. The more incredible his fictions, the better they suited the vulgar appetite. In this sort of narrative, as Hume truly remarks, a fool was more likely to succeed than a wise man. Accompanied by his guards, for being supposed to be a special object of popish enmity, guards had been assigned him, he walked about in great dignity, attired as a priest, and 'whoever he pointed at was taken up and committed; so that many people got out of his way as from a blast, and glad they could prove their two last years' conversation. The very breath of him was pestilential, and if it brought not imprisonment or death over such on whom it fell, it surely poisoned reputation, and left good Protestants arrant papists, and something worse than that, in danger of being put in the plot as traitors.'[1]

[1] North's 'Examen.'

Parliament was opened three days after Godfrey's murder, and immediately voted that it was of opinion that there had been, and was 'a damnable and hellish plot;' and every day, both forenoon and afternoon, a session was held at which the whole matter was discussed. The arrests were numerous, and among others were several papist lords, and Sir George Wakeman, the physician to the queen. Even the Duke of York and the Queen herself were accused by Oates as traitors and accomplices. These stories meeting such general credence, and rewards being heaped upon the author, others, as might have been expected, soon followed his example. The most notorious of these minor perjurers was one Bedlow, who pretended to know the secret of Godfrey's murder. When first examined he knew nothing of the Plot, but told a ridiculous story about forty thousand men who were coming over to England from Spain. The next day, however, his knowledge was greatly increased, and he pretended to be as fully informed of all the particulars of the Plot as Oates himself. As we shall see by and by, whatever the bolder villain swore to, his subordinate confirmed.

Such was the state of things when the first victim of this extraordinary popular delusion were brought to trial. The earliest trial, although the accused was not charged with being concerned in the plot, was that of Stayley, a goldsmith or broker, on the 21st of November, 1678. The charge against him was that he had called the king a heretic, and threatened to kill him. The chief witness against him was one Castars. Bishop Burnet, who was well acquainted with him, says, that when he heard who the witnesses were, he thought he was bound to do what he could to stop it: 'so I sent both to the lord chancellor and the attorney general to let them know what profligate wretches these witnesses were. Jones, the attorney general, took it ill of me that I should disparage the king's evidence. Duke Lauderdale, having heard how I had moved in this matter, railed at me with open mouth. He said I had studied to save Stayley for the liking I had to any one that would murder the king.' The trial proceeded, and one of the witnesses testified to the following words as spoken by the prisoner: 'The King of England is the greatest heretic, and the greatest rogue in the world; here's the heart and here's the hand that would kill him; I myself.'

PRISONER. 'Here's the hand, and here's the heart that would kill myself; not would kill him myself.'

L. C. J. 'What Jesuit taught you this trick? It is like one of them. It is the art and interest of a Jesuit so to do.'

In this, as in all the subsequent trials, the existence of the Plot was taken for granted as an incontestable fact. Another fact was also assumed, most improperly indeed, but not without some show of reason, that it was an admitted doctrine of the Romish church, that however sinful an act might be in itself, it lost its sinfulness if the interests of the church demanded its performance. Therefore it was argued, to kill a heretic-king, to swear falsely, to deceive an enemy, is to do nothing wrong in the eyes of a Papist, if the pope or the bishops command it. Such a man it is proper for us to regard as an enemy, for his principles would lead him to employ any means for the destruction of those whom he was taught to regard as the enemies of his church.

It is unnecessary for us to stop to point out the fallacy of this mode of reasoning. Our business at present is only to show the effect it had upon the minds both of the court and the jury. Thus the Chief Justice reasoned in his charge at the trial: 'You, and we all, are sensible of the great difficulties and hazards that is now both against the king's person, and against all Protestants, and our religion too; which will hardly maintain itself, when they have destroyed the men; but let 'em know that many thousands will lose their religion with their lives, for we will not be Papists, let the Jesuits press what they will, (who are the foundations of all this mischief,) in making proselytes by telling them, Do what wickedness you will, it's no sin, but we can save you; and if you omit what we command, we can damn you. Excuse if I am a little warm, when perils are so many, their murders so secret, that we cannot discover the murder of that gentleman whom we all knew so well, when things are transacted so closely, and our king in so great danger, and our religion at stake. 'Tis better to be warm here than in Smithfield. When a Papist once hath made a man a heretic, there is no scruple to murder him. Whoever is not of their persuasion are heretics, and whoever are heretics may be murdered if the pope commands it; for which they may become saints in heaven; this is that they have practised. If there had been nothing of this in this kingdom, or other parts of the world, it would be a hard thing to impose it upon them; but they ought not to complain when so many instances are against them. Therefore discharge your consciences as you ought to do; if guilty, let him take the reward of his crime, and you shall do well to begin with this man, for perchance it may be a terror to the rest. Unless they think they can be saved by dying in the Roman faith, though with such pernicious and traitorous words and designs as these are, let such go to Heaven by themselves. I hope I shall never go to that Heaven, where men are made saints for killing kings.'

The flimsy logic and cool-blooded cruelty of this charge are too obvious to require mention. According to the chief justice, no Papist could complain that he was hanged for treason because some members of his church had massacred the Protestants on Bartholomew's day. The recommendation 'to begin with this man, that it may be a terror to the rest,' marks well the character of the judge, and the temper of the jury that could advance or approve such a detestable doctrine.

Stayley was convicted and thus sentenced: 'You shall return to prison, from thence shall be drawn to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck, cut down alive, your quarters shall be severed, and be disposed of as the king shall think fit, and your bowels burnt, and so the Lord have mercy on your soul.'

This sentence was executed five days after.

The next victim was Coleman. The evidence against him was of a twofold nature; his own letters, and the testimony of Oates and Bedlow. As to the first, they disclose clearly enough the existence of a Plot, but a Plot in which Charles himself was the chief conspirator; a Plot not only to restore popery, but to destroy English liberty. This Plot was of an early date, and began indeed almost at the restoration of the king. The monarch of France and the Duke of York were his accomplices. Coleman's part in it seems to have been merely that of an ambitious, intriguing, bigotted partizan, pleased with being entrusted with the secrets of the great; and much disposed to magnify the importance and value of his services. His letters, that were produced on his trial, related to the years 1674 and '5. If there was any correspondence of a later date, it was never discovered. In fine, we may say of these letters that if there was enough in them to convict Coleman of high treason, the king, the duke, and several of the most prominent statesmen of that period were equally guilty.

The testimony of Oates was so strange and improbable, that it never could have obtained credence for a moment, except at a time when men had 'lost their reason.' The basis of his whole narration, was his statement relating to the consult of the Jesuits in April, which we give in his own words. 'They were ordered to meet by virtue of a brief from Rome, sent by the father general of the society. They went on to these resolves: That Pickering and Grove should go on, and continue in attempting to assassinate the king's person by shooting, or other means. Grove was to have fifteen hundred pounds. Pickering being a religious man, was to have thirty thousand masses, which at twelvepence a mass amounted to much that money. This resolve of the Jesuits was communicated to Mr. Coleman in my hearing at Wild House. My lord, this was not only so, but in several letters he did mention it, and in one letter, (I think I was gone a few miles out of London,) he sent to me by a messenger, and did desire the duke might be trepaned into this Plot to murder the king.'

But one consult of fifty Jesuits, all eager to carry their diabolical plans of assassination and murder into execution, was not enough for Dr. Oates, and he went on to relate the proceedings that took place at another, held at the Savoy in the month of August, when the Benedictine monks were present with the Jesuits. 'In this letter,' (one written by Archbishop Talbot, the titular archbishop of Dublin,) 'there were four Jesuits had contrived to despatch the Duke of Ormond. (These were his words.) To find the most expedient way for his death Fogarthy was to be sent to do it by poison, if these four good fathers did not hit of their design. My lord, Fogarthy was present. And when the consult was almost at a period, Mr. Coleman came to the Savoy to the consult, and was mighty forward to have father Fogarthy sent to Ireland to despatch the duke by poison. This letter did specify they were then ready to rise in rebellion against the king for the pope.'

ATT. GEN. 'Do you know any thing of arms?'

'There were forty thousand black bills; I am not so skilful in arms to know what they meant, (military men know what they are,) that were provided to be sent into Ireland for the use of the Catholic party.'

In addition to the forty thousand black bills, Oates stated that there had been £200,000 contributed by the Catholics, and that he heard Coleman say 'that he had found a way to transmit it for the carrying on of the rebellion in Ireland.'

Here certainly was treason enough concocted, if one could believe the witnesses, to have hung a hundred men. No less than seven men had engaged to kill the king; all of whom, through some strange infelicity, did not find an opportunity even to make the attempt. Not satisfied with this number of assassins, Coleman would have had the Duke of York brought into the Plot, and made the murderer of his brother. Could human folly frame a set of lies more gross and palpable?

Beside Coleman's general knowledge of the Plot, Oates mentioned several circumstances showing the special interest that he had taken in it; that he had written letters which the witness had carried to St. Omers, in which were these 'expressions of the king, calling him tyrant, and that the marriage between the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the Duke of York's eldest daughter, would prove the traitor's and tyrant's ruin;' that 'this letter was written in plain English words at length;' that he had sent another letter in which he promised 'that the ten thousand pounds' (sent by the Jesuits,) 'should be employed for no other intent or purpose but to cut off the King of England;' and that he had given money that 'the four Irish ruffians,' who were to kill the king at Windsor, might be speedy in their business.

In all these trials there is nothing that more strikingly shows the infamous manner in which these witnesses were allowed to testify, than the withholding of such parts of their evidence as they pretended it was improper at that time to bring forward. Thus they protected themselves; for no one durst accuse them lest he himself should be charged as a party to the conspiracy. At this trial Oates said, without a word of dissent from the Chief Justice, 'I could give other evidence but will not, because of other things which are not fit to be known yet.'

It is impossible that the Chief Justice, or the other judges, should have believed such a story as this even for a moment. We make all necessary allowance for the influence of great popular excitement. We know that judges are but men, and are not exempt more than other men from the contagion of those occasional outbursts of frenzy, which seem to destroy all individual independence, and all sense of individual responsibility; and which for a time makes a nation like a herd of maddened buffaloes, ignorant whither it is going, but unable to stop in its furious career. Yet by their position judges are, of all classes of men, the farthest removed from popular influences of this nature. Their habits of legal investigation, fit them in an eminent degree to weigh with scrupulous accuracy the characters of witnesses; to detect improbabilities and contradictions. Stories that may deceive even intelligent men unacquainted with the laws of evidence, and the bearings of testimony, stand revealed at first glance to the practised eye of the judge as a tissue of falsehoods. Here the judges could not have been deceived. Who could believe that the Jesuits, a body of men not less celebrated for their profound knowledge of the politics of every kingdom in Christendom, than for the wisdom with which they adapted their plans of proselytism to the changing circumstances of the times, should have formed a plan to restore popery in England by massacre and conquest? The thing is too preposterous to merit a moment's attention.

Still more ridiculous are the details of the Plot as disclosed by Oates. Would the Jesuits, even if they had formed such plans, confide them to a penniless, friendless vagabond; a man of notoriously bad character, who was, while at St. Omers, the butt and laughing stock of the whole college? Such secrets are not usually revealed to any but tried men, and the Jesuits were the last of all conspirators to bestow their confidence rashly. Yet here was a conspiracy whose disclosure would have brought a certain and speedy death to every one engaged in it, known we know not to how many hundreds, and many of these too found in the lowest ranks of the populace. The manner of its execution is of a piece with all the rest. First, two men were employed to kill the king. For two years they could find no opportunity to do it. Then four Irish ruffians were employed. Who they were, or what became of them, no one knew. Then the physician of the queen was hired to poison him. To this horrible plan of assassination, were consenting not only the highest dignitaries of the Romish church, but some of the noblest peers of England and of France. But we have neither time nor patience to proceed farther with such miserable fabrications. We say then that the judges never could have believed in the existence of such a Plot, and that the prisoners tried before them were immolated upon the altar of their own personal popularity. Rather than resist the current of popular feeling, and dare to award justice and uphold the supremacy of impartial law, they chose to swim with the tide, and sacrifice men whom they knew in their hearts to be innocent. It is this that adds tenfold guilt to the brutality of their conduct. We cannot forget that they were dishonest in their very cruelty; that they insulted their victims, browbeat the witnesses, trampled on judicial forms to gain the favor of an infuriated mob, whose madness they laughed at and derided.

At the commencement of the trial, Coleman thus alluded to the law of England, forbidding counsel to prisoners accused of criminal offences, and to the prejudice that then prevailed against those of his religion: 'I hope, my lord, if there be any point of law that I am not skilled in, that your lordships will be pleased not to take the advantage over me. Another thing seems most dreadful, that is, the violent prejudice that seems to be against every man in England that is confessed to be a Roman Catholic. It is possible that a Roman Catholic may be very innocent of these crimes. If one of those innocent Roman Catholics should come to this bar, he lies under such disadvantages already, and his prejudices so greatly biasseth human nature, that unless your lordships will lean extremely much on the other side, justice will hardly stand upright and lie upon a level.'

L. C. J. 'You need not make any preparations for us in this matter; you shall have a fair, just and legal trial; if condemned it will be apparent you ought to be so; and without a fair proof there shall be no condemnation. Therefore you shall find we will not do to you as you do to us, blow up at adventure, kill people because they are not of your persuasion: our religion teacheth us another doctrine, and you shall find it clearly to your advantage.'

This was fairness and impartiality in the eyes of the Chief Justice!

Coleman did not conduct his defence with so much ability as his reputation might lead us to expect. He seems to have been dismayed at the dangers that threatened him, and hopeless of a fair trial, bowed before the storm. An attempted alibi was feebly supported, although Oates was so indefinite in regard to time that to attempt to convict him of falsehood was of little avail. The chief points of his defence were the improbability of the whole story, and the fact that Oates on his examination before the council had said that he did not know him. Oates thus excused himself: 'My lord, when Mr. Coleman was upon his examination before the council board, he saith I said that I never saw him before in my life; I then said that I would not swear that I had seen him before in my life, because my sight was bad by candle-light, and candle-light alters the sight much; but when I heard him speak, I could have sworn it was he, but it was not then my business. I cannot see a great way by candle-light.'

Being asked why he had not accused Coleman at the same time when he accused Wakeman and the Jesuits, he pretended that it was 'for want of memory. Being disturbed and wearied in sitting up two nights, I could not give that good account of Mr. Coleman, which I did afterwards when I consulted my papers;' as if in giving the names of many meaner persons, he should from forgetfulness overlook one so considerable as Coleman. The testimony of Oates was confirmed by Bedlow, who did not hesitate to swear to any thing that the more inventive genius of his fellow-witness had devised.

In summing up, the Chief Justice animadverted with considerable force upon the nature of the letters that had been read as proof of a design to restore popery in England; this he most unjustifiably argued, could not be effected by peaceable means: 'Therefore,' he says, 'there must be more in it, for he that was so earnest in that religion would not have stuck at any violence to bring it in; he would not have stuck at blood. For we know their doctrines and their practises, and we know well with what zeal the priests push them forward to venture their own lives, and take away other men's that differ from them, to bring in their religion and to set up themselves.'

After speaking of the general ignorance of the Papists, and the general diffusion of knowledge among the Protestants, 'insomuch that scarce a cobbler but is able to baffle any Roman priest that ever I saw or met with,' he goes on; 'and after this I wonder that a man who hath been bred up in the Protestant religion, (as I have reason to believe that you, Mr. Coleman, have been, for if I am not misinformed your father was a minister in Suffolk,) for such a one to depart from it, is an evidence against you to prove the indictment. I must make a difference between us and those who have been always educated that way. No man of understanding, but for by-ends, would have left his religion to be a Papist. And for you, Mr. Coleman, who are a man of reason and subtilty, I must tell you, (to bring this to yourself,) upon this account, that it could not be conscience; I cannot think it to be conscience. Your pension was your conscience, and your secretary's place your bait. I do acknowledge many of the popish priests formerly were learned men, and may be so still beyond the seas; but I could never yet meet with any here, that had any other learning or ability but artificial, only to delude weak women and weaker men.

'They have indeed ways of conversion and conviction by enlightening our understandings with a faggot, and by the powerful and irresistible arguments of a dagger. But these are such wicked solecisms in their religion, that they seem to have left them neither natural sense nor natural conscience. Not natural sense, by their absurdity in so unreasonable a belief as of the wine turned into blood: not natural conscience, by their cruelty, who make the Protestant's blood as wine, and these priests thirst after it. _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum._

'Mr. Coleman, in one of his letters, speaks of rooting out our religion and our party; and he is in the right, for they can never root out the Protestant religion but they must kill the Protestants. But let him and them know, if ever they shall endeavor to bring popery in by destroying of the king, they shall find that the Papists will thereby bring destruction upon themselves, so that not a man of them would escape.

'Ne catulus quidem relinquendus.'

'Our execution shall be as quick as their gunpowder, but more effectual. And so, gentlemen, I shall leave it to you to consider what his letters prove him guilty of directly, and what by consequence what he plainly would have done, and then how he would have done it, and whether you think his _fiery zeal_ had so much _cold blood_ in it as to spare any others.

'For the other part of the evidence, which is by the testimony of the present witnesses, you have heard them: I will not detain you longer now; the day is going out.'

MR. JUSTICE JONES. 'You must find the prisoner guilty, or bring in two persons perjured.'

The verdict was what might have been anticipated from such a charge. Coleman was found guilty, and the next day sentenced. After sentence had been pronounced, he protested his innocence, but was brutally interrupted by the Chief Justice: 'I am sorry, Mr. Coleman, that I have not charity enough to believe the words of a dying man.'

In answer to Coleman's request that his wife might visit him in prison, he at first seemed disposed to deny it, and said: 'You say well, and it is a hard case to deny it; but I tell you what hardens my heart: the insolencies of your party, (the Roman Catholics I mean,) that they every day offer, which is indeed a proof of their Plot, that they are so bold and impudent, and such secret murders committed by them as would harden any man's heart to do the common favors of justice and charity that to mankind are usually done. They are so bold and insolent that I think it is not to be endured in a Protestant kingdom.'

His request however was granted. He was executed the third of December following.

We have dwelt with some particularity upon this trial, not because it is by any means the most flagrant for the contemptuous disregard shown by the judges, not only to the legal rights, but to the feelings of the prisoner, but because it came first in the order of time, and serves in a good measure to explain all the trials that follow it. Comment upon it is needless. Such a mockery of justice would disgrace the tribunals of savages. Whatever seems unfavorable to the prisoner is pressed home by the Chief Justice, most strongly against him. Whatever makes for him is kept out of sight. To have been born a Roman Catholic is a crime; to have deliberately adopted that faith, is a damnable sin; one for which there is no expiation. The absurd fictions of Oates and Bedlow are commended to the jury as worthy of implicit credence. The whole weight of judicial authority and influence is thrown into the scale of condemnation.

On the seventeenth of the same December, Whitebread, Fenwick, Ireland, Pickering and Grove, were brought to trial. The chief witnesses against them were Oates and Bedlow. The counsel for the crown thus opened the case: 'May it please your lordships, and you gentlemen of the jury, the persons here before you stand indicted of high treason; they are five in number; three of them are Jesuits, one is a priest, the fifth is a layman; persons fitly prepared for the work in hand.' After a few other observations, he proceeds to institute a comparison between this Plot and the famous Gunpowder Plot. The second and third points of resemblance in the two, he thus states: 'Secondly, the great actors in the design were priests and Jesuits, that came from Valladolid in Spain, and other places beyond the seas. And the great actors in this Plot are priests and Jesuits that are come from St. Omers and other places beyond the seas, nearer home than Spain.

'Thirdly, that Plot was chiefly guided and managed by Henry Garnet, superior and provincial of the Jesuits then in England; and the great actor in this design is Mr. Whitebread, superior and provincial of the Jesuits now in England.'

The evidence of Oates was the same in substance that he gave at Coleman's trial, but with such additional particulars as he judged necessary to keep the popular excitement alive. Thus, in answering the question, what he knew of any attempts to kill the king at St. James' park, he said: 'I saw Pickering and Grove several times walking in the park together, with their secured pistols, which were longer than ordinary pistols, and shorter than some carbines. They had silver bullets to shoot with, and Grove would have had the bullets to be champt for fear that if he should shoot, if the bullets were round, the wound that might be given might be cured.'

ATT. GEN. 'Do you know any thing of Pickering's doing penance, and for what?'

'Yes, my lord. In the month of March last, (for these persons have followed the king several years;) but he at that time had not looked to the flint of his pistol, but it was loose, and he durst not venture to give fire. He had a fair opportunity, as Whitebread said; and because he missed it through his own negligence he underwent penance, and had twenty or thirty strokes of discipline, and Grove was chidden for his carelessness.'

Of the 'four Irish ruffians' that went to Windsor to kill the king, Oates could give no account. How he could reconcile it with his duty to His Majesty to let these assassins lie in wait from August to October, without notifying any one of their murderous intentions, he did not see fit to explain, and of course the attorney general and the judges forgot to ask him.