of a similar weapon
when he was in the Bay of Rosas, as he had thrown a mixture of lime,
sand, &c., upon the Frenchmen who attempted to board his ship, and
found it effectual." Another zealous organ of the Government added
that he had also provided himself with a bottle of vitriol, to be used
in the same way.

Had a penknife been found in his pocket, perhaps the Marshal of the
King's Bench, the Bow Street runner, the tipstaves, and the constables
would all have fled, deeming that the possession of so deadly an
instrument made the retention of their captive too dangerous a thing
to be attempted. The snuff having been seized, however, he was again
lodged on the officers' shoulders and so conveyed into the courtyard.
He then said that, being now beyond the privilege of the House, he was
willing to proceed quietly. A coach was called, and he was taken back
to the King's Bench Prison.

The indignity thus offered to him was small indeed in comparison with
the indignity offered to the Parliament of England. In former times
the slightest encroachment by the Crown, by the Government, or by
any humbler part of the executive, was fiercely resented; and to this
resentment some of the greatest and most memorable crises in the long
fight for English liberty are due. But rarely had there been a
more flagrant, never a more wanton, infringement of the hardly-won
privileges of the House of Commons. Had Lord Cochrane been detected
and seized violently in some out-of-the-way hiding-place, the
over-zealous servants of the Crown would have had some excuse for
their conduct. But in appearing publicly in the House, he showed to
all the world that he was no runaway from justice, that he was willing
to submit to its honest administration by honest hands, that all he
sought was a fair hearing and a fair judgment upon his case, and that,
believing it impossible to obtain that through the elaborate machinery
of oppression which then went by the name of administration
of justice, he now only asserted his right, the right of every
Englishman, and especially the right of a Member of Parliament, to
appeal from the agents of the law to the makers of the law, to call
upon the legislators of his country to see whether he had not been
wrongfully used by the men who, though practically too much their
masters, were in theory only their servants.

"I did not go to the House of Commons," he said, "to complain about
losses or sufferings, about fine or impri