“‘Sir,—The situation in which Messieurs Muir and Palmer are at this moment placed is sufficiently known within a certain circle, but is by no means sufficiently adverted to by the public at large. Give me leave, through the channel of your paper, to call their attention to it.
“‘All the consolations of civilized society are pertinaciously refused to them. Property, whether originally their own or the gift of their friends, is to be rendered useless. Supplies of clothing, it seems, have been graciously received on board the vessels; but stores of every kind and books have constantly been denied admission. The principle which has been laid down again and again by the officers of Government is—they are felons like the rest,
“‘This, sir, is a species of punishment scarcely
precedented in the annals of mankind. Tiberius, and his modern antitype, Joseph the Second, are mere novices in the arts of cruelty
compared with our blessed administration. Joseph took
judges from the bench, men accustomed to reflection, to deference and elegant
gratification, and made them scavengers in the streets of Vienna. Mr Pitt probably took the hint from this
example. But he has refined upon his model, inasmuch as he has sent the victims
of his atrocious despotism out of the country. If I must suffer under the
barbarian hand of power, at least let me suffer in the face of day. Let me have
this satisfaction, that my countrymen may look on and observe my disgrace. Let
them learn a great lesson from my suffering. It is for them to decide whether
it shall be a lesson of aversion to my guilt, or abhorrence against my
punisher.
| 122 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“‘Perhaps, Mr Editor, I may be told that, in holding up these proceedings to the indignation of my countrymen, I am guilty of sedition. You know, sir, that there is not in the Island of Great Britain a more strenuous advocate for peaceableness and forbearance than I am. But I will not be the partaker of their secrets of State. What they dare to perpetrate, I dare to tell. Do they not every day assure us that the great use of punishment is example, to deter others from incurring the like offence? And yet they delight to inflict severities upon these men in a corner, which they tremble to have exposed in the eyes of the world. I join issue with administration on this point: I, too, would have the punishment of Messieurs Muir and Palmer serve for an example. Sir, there are examples to imitate and examples to avoid.
“‘Mr Dundas
told Mr Sheridan, when that gentleman
applied to him officially upon this subject a few months ago, that he saw no great hardship in a man’s being sent to
Botany Bay. Observe that in this sentence, as now appears, is meant to
be included an exclusion from all the means of intellectual pleasure and
improvement, a reduction of men of taste and letters to the condition of
galley-slaves. I can readily believe that to a man so obdurate in feeling and
unhumanised in manners as Mr Dundas, a privation of the
sources of intellectual pleasure may appear no hardship. Let me appeal, then,
to Mr Burke. Who knows so well as he
what is due to elegance of education, delicacy of manners, and refinement in
literature? Who has declaimed so powerfully against those systems, by which all
classes of society are confounded together, and all that is venerable for
antiquity, lovely in cultivation, and elevated by imagination and genius, is
overwhelmed by the iron hand of a barbarous usurpation? Never was the principle
of taking lessons from an enemy so extensively adopted as at present. We
declaim against the French, and we
| GERRALD’S TRIAL. | 123 |
“‘And who are the men that are destined to this treatment, that are to be considered as felons like the rest? I hear the moderate and respectable friends of Government perpetually confessing that they are men of excellent character and irreproachable manners. What is it by which they have incurred this punishment? I learn from the same quarter that it is by an ill-directed zeal for what they thought a good cause. I agree to that statement; I think they did wrong. Let us suppose that for that wrong, that well-meant but improper zeal, they ought to be punished. In what manner punished? Not, sir, as if they were felons. A mild and temperate punishment might, for aught I know, have operated upon others to induce them to act with more becoming deliberation. But a punishment that exceeds all measure and mocks at all justice, that listens, to no sentiment but revenge, and plays the volunteer in insolence and cruelty—a punishment the purpose of which is to inflict on such men slavery, degradation of soul, a lingering decay and final imbecility—can do nothing but exasperate men’s minds, and wind up their nerves to decisive action.
“‘You will perceive, sir, that in this letter I have entered into no comment upon the justice of the sentence of the Court of Session, and that the baseness of which I complain belongs exclusively to the Secretary of State for the Home Department and the rest of the Cabinet junto.’
