out of a motion for papers by Lord Dudley Stuart. The House was very thin, and the proceedings languid on the whole. The Member for Birmingham (Mr. T. Attwood) was all for active measures; and his speech would have been received thirty years ago with immense applause as a specimen of the 'truly British spirit.' The ablest speech of the night was that of the Member for Bath (Mr. Roebuck), who was all for peace; but went, in my estimation, as much too far in one direction as the Member for Birmingham in the other. It really does not seem difficult to trace the proper line between the two, by a simple reference to the duties of private life, A man is not to go out 'colonelling ' and run his head into scraps in search of remote wrongs and dubious grievances. But neither is he to sit at home in his veranda, with his hookah luxuriously before him, and hear the cries of 'murder' and the rest of the four[1] pleas of the Crown—contenting himself with what he calls his 'moral influence'—and trusting to the height of his garden wall. Nations, like individuals, are, within certain limits, bound by a common interest on this point of repressing injustice. If England luckily has a high garden wall, or what is better, a deep fishpond all around, the inference is that England is bound to apply these advantages to the general good."
The words in italics show that General Perronet
- ↑ I have here substituted "four" for "five." General Thompson writes, "the rest of the five pleas of the Crown." I assume that he was thinking of Scott's "Old Mortality," chapter 25—where Scott's words are "running or screaming, division upon all those crimes which the lawyers call the four pleas of the Crown, namely, murder, fire, rape, and robbery."
