to determine whether there be sufficient | justice, which directs that a Jury shall be cause to put him on his trial; but, as a impartially selected, and attendance enGrand Jury is not always sitting, and as forced by fines of the Court; and, indeed, danger might arise to the State in some the Master of the Crown-Office might cases from the delay of assembling a Grand prevent all impartial persons from being Jury, the practice of filing a criminal In- summoned on a Jury destined to try beformation before the King at Westminster tween the Crown and the Subject, if every has been tacitly conceded to the Attorney-name be passed over which he determines General of the Crown, at such times as no to be a person not likely to attend. And Grand Jury shall be assembled; but it this conduct of the Returning Officer is has never been contended that the subject conceived to be strong presumptive evishould be deprived of the privilege of dence that he knows the characters of the having his case submitted to a Grand persons to be summoned, and has the Jury of his County, before he be put up- power of acting with partiality, which on his trial, except where pernicious con- power is contrary to the Constitution of sequences to the State would arise from these realms, and is strongly guarded the delay of calling together such Jury; against by the laws, in cases where no atbut this could not obtain in the case of tempts are made to take the trial out of the your Petitioner, because a Grand Jury of common course of justice; for, the Unhis County, namely, of the City of Lon-der-Sheriff (who summons Juries) cannot don, were actually sitting at the very time the criminal Informations were filed against him at Westminster.

Your Petitioner humbly craves leave to remind your honourable House that it was not even alledged in the said criminal Informations that the matter which gave rise to them was false or untrue, though the matter was alledged to be scandalous and malicious, and that it was the usage of the Court of King's Bench, till within the last forty years, not to permit any Information to be filed for libellous matter, which was not alledged to be false as well as mulicious, and indeed the most recent determination on the subject coincides with the opinions uniformly maintained by our ancestors; for, in the case of Sir John Carr, and Hood and Sharpe, the Plaintiff did not recover in action for a publication which was true, though admitted to be malicious and injurious.

Your Petitioner having had a criminal information filed against him, of the nature, and under the circumstances above stated, the Solicitor for the Crown moved for a Special Jury, to which notion the Judges of the Court of King's Bench acceded, and a Special Jury was awarded of such Freeholders who were entered in the Freeholders' Book belonging to the Sheriff, with the addition of Freeholder and Merchant, which Special Jury was struck, not by the Sheriff, but by the Master of the Crown-Office, who is a servant of the Crown, the Prosecutor in this instance; -and the names were not taken as named by the said Master, but several were passed over after he had named them, because he stated them to be not likely to attend, thereby subverting one of the principles of British

continue in oflice longer than one year, nor be re-chosen till after an interval of two years, lest, from his familiarity with office, he may be enabled to select a partial Jury.

Your Petitioner also reminds this Honourable House, that, by a Statute of the 7th and 8th year of King William 3, (ch. 32,) it is enacted, that "every sum"mons of any person qualified to any "of the aforesaid services, (namely, serving on Juries,) shall be made by the Sheriff, his Officer, or lawful Deputy, six days before, at the least;" but in the case of your Petitioner, the summonses to the Jury were not delivered six days before the day of trial, nor five days before, nor four days before; from which cause your Petitioner was not able to avail himself of a trial before a Special Jury, contrary to the Rights of the Subject and the law of the land; and this circumstance of not summoning the Jury six days before the trial, contrary to the positive and explicit enactments of the law of the land, has prevented your Petitioner from being tried by a Jury of such men as had been assigned him as his Peers.

Your Petitioner was not tried by a Jury of his Peers; for, as the Court of King's Bench had ruled that a Jury of Freeholders and Merchants were his Peers, it necessarily follows that those who were neither Freeholders nor Merchants could not be his Peers; and yet those who were added to the Special Jury were neither Freeholders nor Merchants, and therefore were not his Peers :-and of a Jury composed of men who were all of them neither Peers of your Petitioner, nor Peers among themselves, a verdict was given.

not Peers among themselves, they cannot ALL be Peers to the Defendant, and their verdict may not be a free and unbiassed verdict.

Your Petitioner also craves the atten- | the meaning either of the Letter of the tion of this Honourable House, to the Law, or the Spirit of the British Constituwords used by sir Nash Grose on the trial, tion. And the necessity of a Jury being in his charge to the Jury, which your Pé- Peers among themselves as well as Peers titioner humbly presumes to have been a to the Defendant, has been ever recognideviation from the spirit of the Constitu- zed and insisted upon by the British Contion, which enjoins lenity and impartiality stitution, because, otherwise, the master to form the basis of the conduct of every and the servant, the creditor and the British Judge, to have been also inimical debtor, the employer and employed, to the letter and fair interpretation of the might be inclosed in the same Jury Box, Act of Parliament entitled "An Act to in which case it would imply an absurdity "remove doubts respecting the functions to assert that such Jury were Peers among "of Juries in cases of Libel," which Act themselves; for, the same individuals directs, that" on every such trial, the could not at the same time be both de"Court or Judge before whom such In-pendants and equals; and, if a Jury be "dictment or Information shall be tried, "shall, according to his or their discre"tion, give their or his opinion and direc"tions to the Jury in the matter in issue "between the King and the Defendant or "Defendants, in like manner as in all other " criminal cases.”—Your Petitioner there-" fore prays to submit, for the decision of this Honourable House, the propriety or impropriety of the following words, as used by sir Nash Grose on this occasion, and which instead of delivering an opinion or direction," as in all other criminal cases," And forasmuch as it is the privilege of are conceived by your Petitioner to be un- the citizens of the city of London to be precedented in the annals of modern British tried and adjudged within the said city, jurisprudence. The words that your Peti-though your Petitioner has been tried (if tioner complains of, and which were taken down at the time by Mr. Farquharson, the short-hand writer, are as follows:-" In "order to shew that they are most wicked, “gross, and abominable, Libels, it is only "necessary to read, not ALL, but one or "two of them. But, Gentlemen, under "this Act of Parliament, I am to give you "my opinion upon these Publications, "and I have no hesitation in saying that any thing more libellous I never heard "read: in my opinion they are gross, "scandalous, and abominable Libels !"

Your Petitioner humbly submits to the benignity of this Honourable House, whether these words ought not to have been considered, in strict impartiality, as sufficiently strong, in giving the opinion and direction of the Judge as warranted by the Act of Parliament above alluded to, without the addition of the following unprecedented expression :-"But, really, Gen"tlemen, I think it will be throwing dust "in your eyes if I say I entertain the "least doubt on the subject."--Your Petitioner humbly submits, whether an opinion and direction of the Judge thus given, and that without having read a tittle of the Libels in question, or the defence that had been urged to the Jury, comes within

And forasmuch as it is enacted by the Bill of Rights that "Jurors ought to be duly empannelled and returned;" and as no Juror can be duly returned who is not summoned six days at least before the day of trial, the Jurors summoned not four days before the trial of your Petitioner, were not duly returned.

the issue committed to a Jury not duly impannelled and returned can be called a trial,) yet he has not been adjudged with in the said city, contrary to the privileges of the citizens of the said city, and, therefore, such judgment being contrary to these privileges, is contrary to the Law of the Land, which has confirmed and established them.

And forasmuch as your Petitioner, if adjudged within the said city, could only have been adjudged to confinement within the prisons of the Sheriffs of the said city and county of Middlesex, it follows that a judgment which implies banishment from the said city, as well as confinement, is contrary to the lawful privileges of the citizens of the city, and when pronounced on a citizen in a place without the said city, for an alleged offence committed within the said city, is believed to be a violation of the Law of the Land, which acknowledges and confirms these privi leges.

Your Petitioner also humbly craves leave to, observe that the measure of punishment assigned to him for the publication of the said Letters is equal to the measure of punishment assigned in any case where the Libel was proved to be

of your Petitioner has never been called in question.

false, though the truth of the publications | continued swimming in the head, and a partial stagnation of the circulation of the blood in his feet, he found, after trial, that the walking on the stones and the circular direction in which he was obliged to walk aggravated his disorder to such an excess, that he was obliged to abandon the attempt; and, although he represented this frequently, by letter and otherwise, to the visiting Magistrates, and intreated that he might be permitted to walk in the garden, as Mr. Gilbert Wakefield, Mr. Redhead Yorke, and all other prisoners in similar situations, had been permitted to do before him, this was refused him, until he partially obtained the indulgence, through the benevolent interposition of Mr. Calcraft, one of the Magistrates for the County, and the representation being first made to him by the Medical Gentleman attending the prison, that he considered your Petitioner's being permitted to walk in the garden essential to the preservation of his health. In consequence of this interference and this representation, your Petitioner has, since the 15th of October last, been permitted to walk in the garden, in company of the Gaoler of the prison, for the very limited space of one half an hour every day, and which limited

Your Petitioner also humbly states, that, when he was removed from the prison of the Court of King's Bench to the County Gaol of Dorchester, he was consigned to the Magistrates' custody, as will appear from an Order of Sessions, made at the Midsummer Quarter - Sessions for the County of Dorset, respecting his treat ment in confinement, though by the Law of the Land, he could only be committed to the Sheriffs' custody, (allowing for the sake of argument, that he might be imprisoned in a different county from that in which the offence was committed, and it is allowed for the sake of argument only). Now, the Magistrates of any county have no jurisdiction except what is given them by Statute, and no jurisdiction is given to them by Statute over a person convicted of misdemeanor, who is, during his confinement, emphatically, a Sheriff's Prisoner. Your Petitioner, therefore, is placed by his sentence in a situation which the law knows not, and therefore he prays the consideration of his case may receive the attention of this Honourable House, not on his personal account, but as his treatment may be drawn into a precedent ini-indulgence your Petitioner's health has mical to the freedom and liberties of the Subjects of these realms.

That your Petitioner further submits to your Honourable House some peculiar privations and hardships to which he has been subjected since his confinement in Dorchester-Gaol, which commenced on the evening of the 6th of July, 1808, and when your Petitioner was labouring under a very severe and afflicting state of illness, which had been proved to the Judges of the Court of King's Bench by the affidavits of four most respectable Medical Gentlemen. That notwithstanding this infirm state of your Petitioner's health, he was denied, by the controlling Magistrates of Dorchester prison, for the interval of more than three months, viz. from the 6th of July to the 15th of the ensuing October, all access to the open air, even to the taking ordinary exercise, unless your Petitioner would take the same in a small circular stone yard, which was allotted in common for prisoners who were sentenced for fines, such as Smugglers and those who had evaded the Excise-Laws, &c. &c. Your Petitioner's complaint being a long standing bilious disorder, attended with a complication of alarming symptoms, among which he was subject to an almost

been such as almost to preclude him from availing himself of. Your Petitioner, therefore, humbly submits to this Honourable House that such extreme coercion and restriction is not necessary for the secure confinement of your Petitioner, and is inconsistent with the benign spirit of the British Constitution. Your Petitioner, in candor and justice, begs leave to state that he considers this restriction as being personally cruel towards him, because, since his confinement in the Gaol of Dorchester, an unlimited indulgence in walking in the garden has been extended to a FELON, by the partial courtesy of the Magistrates, and your Petitioner having given no cause of complaint against the propriety of his conduct, to justify such restriction.

In addition to this heavy grievance, your Petitioner begs to state that his family consists of a wife and two sons:-that, from the enjoyment of all personal intercourse with one of his sons, whose business confines him in London, he is wholly bereaved, by the great distance which separates them:-that his wife and his other son have taken lodgings at Dorchester, at an immense increased expense to your Petitioner, for the purpose of mitigating his calamity as much as possible by the com

forts of their society; but hitherto they have only been admitted, by the order of the Magistrates, alternately to visit him for three days in a week, and each day limited to eight hours, with the exception of your Petitioner's wife, for some weeks past, having been permitted to be with him on a Sunday, and during the night, in consequence of the Medical Gentleman attending him having given it as his opinion that it was indispensibly necessary, on account of the alarming state of your Petitioner's health.

Your Petitioner trusts that this Honour able House will liberally consider what a cruel aggravation this must be, merely arising from the local rules of the Magistrates, and neither expressed in the sentence, nor warranted by the Bill of Rights; for, surely every father and husband must deem that imprisonment cruel which confines a man for three years, and allows him only twenty-four hours in each week to have intercourse with his wife and child. That your Petitioner has confined himself, in these instances, to a simple statement of facts, and commits the whole to the benignity, discretion, and wisdom, of your Honourable House.

lative to the recent INQUIRY in the House of Commons, respecting the Conduct of the DUKE OF YORK. (Continued from p.658.)

BURGH OF ANNAN, (continued.) 2. Resolved unanimously, That the Thanks of this Meeting be given to sir Francis Burdett, bart., lord visc. Folkestone, J. C. Curwen, esq., S. Whitbread, esq., general Fergusson, and sir S. Romilly, knt., and to the other members, who voted in support of Mr. Wardle's motion, and to the Minority who spoke or voted against the motion of the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

3. Resolved unanimously, That the Evidence lately brought before the House of Commons-the discussion that followed on that evidence-and the decision of the majority, afford the most convincing proof, that such a Reform as will place the ministers of the crown under the controul of an independant and vigilant Parliament, consisting of the true representatives of the people, is essentially necessary to the safety of this kingdom; and in short, that all the steps which have hitherto been taken in this most momentous affair, are of no avail, but as they stand preparatory to a radical Reform in the Commons House of Parliament.

4. Resolved unanimously, That the Thanks of this Meeting be given to the independent Citizens of London and Westminster, for the manly and patriotic manner, in which they have come forward on the present occasion, as well as upon others of a similar nature, with a free expression of their sentiments, thereby af fording a glorious example to the other in

Your Petitioner submits to the consideration of this Honourable House, the extreme severity of the sentence passed upon him, as being contrary to the Rights and Liberties of every British subject in these realms, guaranteed to them by the Bill of Rights, which expressly says, "that excessive fines ought not to be imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted," your Petitioner having already suffered, under a state of severe and dangerous ill-habitants of the kingdom. And the Meetness, upwards of nine months imprison- ing are impelled by their feelings to ment and banishment in Dorchester-Gaol, express a hope, that these patriotic bodies from his home, his business, and the Coun- of men will persevere in the noble cause ty where he was tried, and which has al- they have espoused, and which from their ready subjected him to a pecuniary ex- local situation they are so well calculated pense of upwards of £.500, and which, to maintain, until corruption, chased from unless mitigated by the interference of all its hiding places, shall have fled the this Honourable House, it is more than pro-country, and left the constitution to operate bable will prove fatal to the life of your on its true and genuine principles. Petitioner, and ruinous to his circumstances, and future welfare of his family.

5. Resolved unanimously, That the Thanks of this Meeting be given to Richard Forest, esq., Provost of this Burgh, for the promptness and alacrity with which he acquiesced in the request to call the present Meeting; and to Bailie Scott, the Chairman of the Meeting, for the becoming manner in which he has conducted himself HENRY WHITE. while in the Chair.

And your Petitioner most humbly craves that he may be permitted to prove the truth of his allegation before a Select Committee, or at the Bar of your Honourable House, and he prays such relief as in your wisdom shall seem meet.

PROCEEDINGS

In COUNTIES, CITIES, BOROUGHS, &c. re

6. Resolved unanimously, That these Resolutions be signed by the Chairman, and inserted in a London newspaper, and

in such of the provincial papers as will give sufficient publicity to the sentiments they contain (Signed) JAMES SCOTT, Chairman.

visc. Folkestone, S. Whitbread, esq. sir S. Romilly, knt. general Ferguson, and the rest of the glorious Minority, who so ably supported Col. Wardle through his arduous undertakings in the late Investiga

tion.

TOWN OF SHEFFIELD.

At a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Sheffield (at which not less than Five Thousand Persons were assembled), con

BOROUGH OF CARMARTHEN. At a Meeting of the Mayor, Burgesses, and respectable Inhabitants of the said Borough, held at the Guildhall, in the said Borough, on the 5th of April, 1809, convened in pursuance of a requisition delivered to the Mayor of the said Corpora-vened by public Advertisement, and held tion for a Common Hall to consider of the propriety of addressing a Vote of Thanks to COLONEL WARDLE, for his conduct in Parliament on a late occasion.-WILLIAM MORGAN, esq. Deputy Mayor, in the Chair. It was unanimously Resolved,

this day April 12, at the Cutlers'-hall, and adjourned from thence to Paradise-square, Mr. E. RHODES, Master Cutler, in the Chair.

It was Resolved unanimously,--1. That, ardently as we wish to promote the welfare and prosperity of our country, and warmly attached as we are to its true Constitutional Government, we cannot but deeply lament, that such shameful instances of corruption, such undue influence, and such unwarrantable practices, should ever have existed, as have been developed by the late proceedings of the Ilouse of Commons.

Resolved unanimously,-2. That Gwyllym Lloyd Wardle, esq., by instituting the Inquiry which has brought this scene of corruption before the judgment of the public, has deserved eminently well of his country, and that the Thanks of this Meeting, with feelings of respectful gratitude, be presented to him for the manly, firm, and independent manner in which, amidst great discouragements; undaunted by threats of infamy and heavy responsibility; equally unconnected with, and unsupported by party-he has conducted this important and patriotic Inquiry,

That conscious of the blessings we derive from the Constitution under which we live, and anxious to perpetuate them pure and unsullied, we cannot but look on every man who has courage and manliness to oppose the inroad of corruption, and stem the torrent of vice, by which its excellencies are perverted, and even its vicality endangered, as the best friend to the Throne, the truest friend to his country. Impressed with this conviction, we cannot but be sensible of the services rendered by Col. Wardle, who, with unexampled intrepidity and most persevering industry, so eminently, and so honourably displayed on a late occasion in Parliament, instituted and prosecuted inquiries into abuses tending to the degradation of the Army, and bversive of its dearest interests; which, in opposition to every discouragement and difficulty, he made manifest to the nation, and for which he is justly entitled to the approbation and acknowledgments of every well-wisher to his King and his Country. Resolved unanimously,-3. That we We, therefore, participating in the gene- also wish to convey the Approbation and ral sentiment of gratitude such patriotism the Thanks of this Meeting to sir Francis merits, and in some degree also actuated Burdett, who seconded Mr. Wardle's Moby a laudable, though national feeling of tion, to lord Folkestone, Mr. Whitbread, pride and exultation, that the object of sir Samuel Romilly, general Ferguson, this Address derives his origin from Cam-admiral Markham, and all those Members. brian Blood, beg leave to tender to G. L. of the House of Commons who voted in Wardle, esq. our grateful acknowledgments the Minorities on the several questions for the services done to his country: and which arose in the course of this most inwhile we thus cordially return him our teresting Investigation. thanks, we cannot but regret that, restrict- Resolved unanimously,-4. That the ed as we are by the Constitution of our particular Thanks of this Meeting be given Charter, we are prevented from gratifying to William Wilberforce, esq, and the our warmest wishes in presenting to so right hon. lord visc. Milton, the two Rehonourable and independent a character presentatives of this extensive and poputhe Freedom of our ancient Borough. lous county, for the discriminating and inResolved, That the Thanks of this Meet-dependent sanction and support aflorded ing, as well as of the whole country, are justly due to sir F. Burdett, bart. -lord

by them to Mr. Wardle, in his meritorious efforts to detect and counteract