8 a.m. . to midnight the case proceeded. On the last day Erskine spoke from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., his voice dying away into a whisper at the end from exhaustion. Still on leaving court he had to address the vast crowds, which had collected outside every day and had escorted him home and mobbed Scott every night, begging them to leave the law to take its course (Twiss, Eldon, i. 270). After some hours of consultation the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The crown persevered. Horne Tooke was tried next, and the jury acquitted him without leaving the box; then Thelwall, who also escaped. No more cases were taken. Bonfires were lit, and the crowd dragged Erskine's carriage in triumph to his house in Serjeants' Inn. His portraits and busts were sold all over the country, tokens were struck bearing his effigy, and he was presented with the freedom of numerous corporations. Subsequently he defended William Stone, for whom he procured an acquittal in spite of strong evidence that he had invited a French invasion. On 26 July 1796 he appeared at Shrewsbury to defend the Bishop of Bangor and several of his clergy on a charge of riot, committed while ejecting from the diocesan registry one Grindley, who claimed to be registrar. He appeared on 24 June 1797 as prosecutor for the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which proceeded against Williams, a bookseller, who had sold Paine's 'Age of Reason.' He delivered a powerful speech in support of the truth of Christianity, and obtained a conviction, but the society rejecting his view of the proper course to pursue in suppressing such publications he declined to appear further for them. In this year appeared his pamphlet on the 'Causes and Consequences of the War with France,' which, though in great part written in court during the hearing of cases, ran quickly through forty-eight editions. In 1799 he defended, but without success, the Earl of Thanet and Robert Cutlar Fergusson [q. v.] at the bar of the king's bench, who were tried for an attempted rescue of Arthur O'Connor as he was being re-arrested after being acquitted of high treason. It was an unfortunate answer of Sheridan's in cross-examination that lost the case. Both were fined and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. On 21 Feb. 1799 he defended Cuthell, a respectable bookseller, who had inadvertently sold some copies of Gilbert Wakefield's pamphlet in answer to the Bishop of Llandaff, and though the prisoner was convicted his punishment was remitted. On 15 May James Hadfield fired at the king at Drury Lane Theatre, and was tried on 26 April 1800. Erskine defended him and established his plea of insanity, and under the statute 40 Geo. III, c. 96, subsequently passed, Hadfield was confined for the remainder of his life. In all these cases his speeches, which are models of advocacy and forensic eloquence, were published.
In the House of Commons he had been in the meantime playing a less and less conspicuous part. There seems to have been some doubt of his complete fidelity to the whigs. Rose says that Pitt had told him of overtures made by Erskine many years before 1806, perhaps in 1797, and when Addington came in (January 1801) Erskine wrote to him expressing a disposition to take office (Rose, Diaries, ii. 263; Pellew, Sidmouth, i. 476, ii. 256). After the suggestions which were made of his taking the chancellorship from Addington, to which the Prince of Wales's opposition put an end, his practice for some time fell off. He spoke and voted seldom in the House of Commons during the last years of Pitt's administration. He opposed the projected coalition between Fox and a section of Pitt's former followers, friends of Grenville and Windham, drafted the remonstrance to Fox which was adopted at the meeting at Norfolk House, and supported the peace of Amiens. His principal speeches were on 17 Nov. 1796, against the Seditious Meetings Bill; on 30 Nov., against the bill to make conspiracy to levy war against the crown high treason, though no overt act were proved; in seconding Grey's annual motion for reform, 26 May 1797; and on 3 Feb. 1799, upon the rejection of the overtures for peace made by Bonaparte on becoming first consul. He did not speak on the union with Ireland. In 1802 he visited Paris during the peace, and found himself almost unknown. He was presented to Napoleon. 'Etes-vous légiste?' said Napoleon. This was crushing to Erskine's egotism (Trotter, Memoirs of Fox, p. 268; but see Campbell's Life on this, p. 541 ). He knew little French, and never revisited the continent. Like most of the other whigs he supported (23 May 1803) the renewal of the war on the rupture of the peace of Amiens, and the imposition of the property tax on 5 July. Of his speech on the army estimates (12 Dec.) Fox writes: 'Erskine made a foolish figure, I hear.' When the volunteers were raised he became colonel of the Temple corps. He never had been more than able to put his company in the royals through their manual exercise; now he was seen by Campbell giving the word of command from directions written on a card, and doing it ill. However, he argued successfully in the king's bench the right of volunteers to resign without waiting for the
