as laid to my charge, in which, on the honour of
a man now on the brink of the grave, I had not the slightest
participation, and from which I never benefited, nor thought to
benefit one farthing, and when this allegation was, by political
rancour and legal chicanery, consummated in an unmerited conviction
and an outrageous sentence, my heart for the first time sank within
me, as conscious of a blow, the effect of which it has required all my
energies to sustain."

It is needless now to say anything in proof of Lord Cochrane's
innocence of the charge brought against him. The world has long since
reversed the verdict passed at Lord Ellenborough's dictation. That
an officer and a gentleman of Lord Cochrane's reputation should have
demeaned himself by becoming a party to the fraud of which he was
accused, is, to say the least, improbable. That, if he had been guilty
of that fraud, he should not have availed himself of the only benefit
that could be derived from it by investing in the stocks when they
were low and selling out during the brief time of their artificial
value, is far more improbable. That, when the fraud was perpetrated,
and its chief instrument was undiscovered, he should have left the
_Tonnant_ in order to expose him, instead of taking him away from
England, and so almost ensuring the preservation of the secret, is
utterly impossible.

His only faults were too great faith in his own innocence and a too
chivalrous desire to protect, or rather to abstain from injuring, his
unworthy kinsman. "I must be here distinctly understood," it was said
by Lord Brougham, in his "Historic Sketches of British Statesmen," "to
deny the accuracy of the opinion which Lord Ellenborough appears to
have formed in this case, and deeply to lament the verdict of
'guilty' which the jury returned after three hours' consultation
and hesitation. If Lord Cochrane was at all aware of his uncle Mr.
Cochrane Johnstone's proceedings, it was the whole extent of his
privity to the fact. Having been one of the counsel engaged in the
cause, I can speak with some confidence respecting it, and I take upon
me to assert that Lord Cochrane's conviction was mainly owing to the
extreme repugnance which he felt to giving up his uncle, or taking
those precautions for his own safety which would have operated against
that near relation. Even when he, the real criminal, had confessed his
guilt by taking to flight, and the other defendants were brought up
f