Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A49825
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The vindication of the dead: or, six hours reflections upon the six weeks labour in answering Mr. Ashton's Speech published by authority
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Lawton, Charlwood, 1660-1721.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing L739E; ESTC R221695
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7,695
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7
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THE VINDICATION OF THE DEAD OR Six Hours Reflections upon the Six Weeks Labour in Answering Mr. Ashton's Speech published by Authority § 1. THE Case of Mr. Ashton was indeed so hard and his Speech so handsom that I don't wonder to see a Secretary's Command for Printing an evasive trifling and malicious Paper that endeavours to load his Person and blast his Writings but the Subject will bear no more and the Government stands in need of a Defence However I can't but wonder the late Answerer should expect to perswade the World it was not his because he who professes himself an illiterate Man and unskill'd in the Laws uses the Terms of Impending Prevaricating Premises and Consequence two of which are not Terms of Art none of the Law and those other two that are Logical made familiar to all those that have ever had any sort of Breeding or Conversation for all that is said of this Nature both at the Beginning and End of the Answer will appear very impertinent to any one that reads his Tryal even as it is thought fit to be published wherein some Things have been omitted as well as others amended to make it fit for perusal For in that he defends himself so sensibly that it provoked the L. Ch. Just Pol to rage and sufficiently proved himself capable to write such a Paper whose natural Parts were so very strong and so well improved And if he was so well satisfied that those that Comply with as well as those that Support the present Establishment are Guilty of Perjury and partake with Rebels it very well became the Charity of a dying Man to warn those he left behind him to Repent and if the Words of dying Men have generally more Weight and make deeper Impressions he did but his duty to recommend to those who surviv'd him Amendment and Restitution § 2. As for those Matters of Law which he thought hard in his Tryal I believe he neither complained of nor desired any thing but what the Lord Chief Justice Pollexfen Sir Francis Child Mr. Herbert and almost every Man upon his Jury as well as Tremain and all the other Council would have Censured or thought fit to be Granted in any other Reign But by this we see they have learnt to practise those Methods of Tryal which themselves formerly complained of as Arbitrary and Illegal and have borrowed Law from the Tories while to make them Amends they have taught them their Gospel I must confess I know nothing could have seemed to warrant the late Extraordinary Proceedings so well as a Reformation of our former ill Measures and proved that that and not private Advantage was the true Motive of the Undertaking It cannot be denied but we are poorer of late than formerly and if the evil Inâ—â—â—â—ments in the late Reigns are fit to be our Ministers under this and what was Male-Administration then commences just and necessary Politicks now we shall too certainly and too soon be miserable if they don't change Things you are little the better for changing the Men The hardship and inequality of Tryals and Innovations upon the Rights of Subjects in that particular made a very specious Head of the Prince of Orange 's Declaration and it is one of the Articles of our new Original Contract that the Subjects shall be free from such Burthens But yet our Judges are in the beaten Road of Arbitrary Power and can do nothing contrary to those blessed Precedents and though it was great and the self-denial of a dying Christian in Mr. Ashton not to name the L. Ch. Just P. and Mr. H. for fear of transgressing that Law of Christ of forgiving Enemies yet it is to be hoped that some Parliament will mark them down to Posterity for Examples sake I am sure I wish them no Punishment but what may be necessary to keep a Judg who ought to be the Prisoner's Council from being an Advocate against him and a Jury-man from Party and Faction where Life and Death are concerned § 3. What Mr. H. did is thought so much the more strange because 't is confidently reported that upon hearing the Papers so Charged upon my Lord Preston at his Tryal he said that Night publickly at the Grecian Coffee-house in Devereux-Court near the Middle Temple that if he was not Excepted against upon Monday he could not bring in either of the other Guilty in Relation to the Papers yet he it was that would have helped them to Evidence and improv'd one Insinuation against Mr. Ashton which the Answerer I suppose had from the same Mint viz. That one of the Papers was written in Mr. Ashton's Hand though as the Answerer observes it had been very material to have made Proof of that upon his Tryal which they might easily have done had it been true no Man's Hand being better known and they having in their Hands Volumes of his Writing when he was in Places at Court Though it had been after all for the Honour of our Deliverers to have exploded Similitude of Hands from being Evidence in Cases of High Treason And unless the Answerer proves the Delivery of it to a third Person he will be thought as much the virulent and unjust Murtherers of his Reputation as the others were of his Body for want of due Proof that he knew the Contents I think a Man is innocent of what he dies for in the Sight of the Law if the Evidence does not amount to Legal Proofs of the Indictment and that ought in Common Justice as well as Charity to be thought the meaning of his Asserted Innocency for he does not pretend he had not endeavoured to Restore the Uncle and the Father of Him and Her that possess the Throne § 4 I don't see in Mr. Ashton's Paper so much Art as Honesty according to his Principles but I find in the Answerer all the advantage taken that his own six Weeks Labour and a Club could furnish from hence a Compliment Mr. Ashton makes the Court Fol. 112 and 115. is with him a Proof that Mr. Ashton had a Copy of the Indictment Pannel of the Jury sufficient notice c. which I believe and always did to be necessary to make a Tryal just and equitable according to the Laws of England at least the stress this Answerer lays upon that Compliment proves that he esteems all the management of that Tryal to have been very fair and that so Pol 's Brats in the Charge is a Language well becoming a Judge and that Herbert's ensnaring Questions are no less becoming an impartial Jury-man I omit to mention any other hardships both in Mr. Ashton's and in my Lord Preston's Tryal but particularly the King's Council's excepting against so many Jury-men without shewing Cause which is so notorious a Prejudice to a Prisoner that unless they can shew very Authentick Presidents of the like Practice in Criminal Cases they must give me and others leave to think it one of the boldest Encroachments upon the People's