able to suppose, that those who had hearts to perpetrate the atrocities which I have described, are not likely to be very scrupulous as to the evidence they give against the Protestants. This is a strange picture of justice ! We behold the petty offender visited with the severest penalties of the law, while the- perpetrator of the most atrocious crimes — the murderer — not only remains unpunished, but is let loose to renew his practices with impunity, and to immolate new victims to his ferocious bigotry or revenge.
“Sir, I am not now inclined to move an immediate Address to the crown, calling upon Government to interfere on this subject. I am desirous of first knowing what has taken place between His Majesty’s Ministers and the Government of France respecting the excesses committed against the Protestants. I am glad to afford an opportunity to the noble Secretary of State to give to the House more detailed information, and from more authentic sources, than I can be supposed to possess. I have purposely avoided entering into details on this subject. I could give a long list of the names of Protestants murdered at Nismes, to not one of whom could it be imputed that he had taken part with Buonaparte. It is incumbent on those ministers, who, with the Duke of Wellington, have said that the French Government has taken all the measures in its power to prevent these atrocities and to extend protection to all classes of its subjects, to shew that this has been the case.
"Sir, if precedents are necessary now to justify the line of conduct which I wish the House to adopt, I need bring forward no other than that recent one which has reflected such honour on this country — I mean that unanimous expression of English feelings with respect to our fellow-creatures on the coast of Africa, for I cannot think that they had stronger claims on us than our fellow-creatures in the south of France. The interference on that recent occasion would even serve to justify our conduct if France were indifferent to us. But such is not the case.
"We have taken a great part in the Restoration of the Bourbons. If the Protestants are disarmed, we have assisted in disarming them. At the moment when these bloody scenes were acting in Languedoc, three Protestant armies might be said to occupy France. His Most Christian Majesty could not look from the windows of his palace without seeing guns pointed against it, and matches ready to fire them off if necessary. This was the state of France at the time when all these bloody transactions were taking place. Our responsibility calls upon us, if we did not at the moment interpose our good offices, to do so now. The House well knows that many parts of France are still in a state of trouble and disorder. Who can say, if the fears of those who call themselves the Loyalists should be excited, what may be the situation of the Protestant inhabitants of Nismes, who are doomed to be now jostled as they walk along the streets by the murderers of their wives, their children, or their parents, threatening them with their looks, and exulting in their former successful villany? And what sort of blame will fall on us having this responsibility if we shall not ask protection for these unfortunate people? Sir, I move that a humble address be presented to His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, that he would be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House copies or extracts of all communications which have passed between His Majesty’s Government and the Government of France relative to the Protestants in the Southern Departments of that kingdom.”
[Sir Samuel Romilly’s motion was negatived.]
A few London newspapers made malicious and ignorant attacks on him on account of this speech. The Courier inserted an epigram:—
“Pray, tell us why, without his fees,
He thus defends the refugees,
And lauds the outcasts of society?
Good man! he’s mov’d by filial piety.”
The factiousness of newspapers in those days betrayed itself in a recklessness of which we have little or no experience now. Of this Sir Samuel had to complain. To Dr. Parr he wrote —
“I hope you do not give any credit to the accounts published in the Morning Chronicle of what passes in the Court of Chancery; much of what is there stated is the pure invention of the reporter. He has lately made Sir Arthur Piggott and me pay high compliments to the chancellor, of which not a single word was uttered; and he has made me express myself with a degree of incivility towards Basil Montagu, which I never shewed to any man at the bar — much less, to one whom I esteem so highly as I do him.”
None, however, but the desperately factious ever attacked Romilly. We find his praises everywhere. Lord Brougham wrote an able panegyric, attributing to him “an extraordinary reach of thought; great powers of attention and of close reasoning; a memory quick and retentive; a fancy eminently brilliant, but kept in perfect discipline by his judgment and his taste.” “His manner,” Brougham goes on to say, “was perfect in voice, in figure, in a countenance of singular beauty and dignity; nor was anything in his oratory more striking or more effective than the heartfelt sincerity which it throughout displayed in topic, in diction, in tone, in look, in
