ined. Their friends had been set
free. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of an
enraged multitude. The character of the government had been seriously
damaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes
in earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to
swear away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians, who
gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought to
have remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have been
on his guard against such wretches as Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunate
Secretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he was
dying; and it was certain that he would not long continue to hold the
seals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their eagerness to
improve it, they turned it into a defeat.

Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence and
asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable men,
highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smith
and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with great
judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories began to flinch. They
well knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and might
weaken it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced;
the verdict was definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the
false witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity
of repeating their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The
verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as respected
the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, and
were entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow,
because the Lancashire gentlemen had been found, and very properly
found, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or the
Solicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even of
rashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred
and two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides
should be ordered to attend. Several days were passed in examination
and crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into the
night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightly
instituted, and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had been
concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have been content
with a drawn