protection than what the laws of the country
afford; and though they are willing and ready to give to every
foreign Government all the protection against offences of this
nature which the principles of their laws and Constitution will
admit, they can never consent to new-model those laws or to change
their Constitution to gratify the wishes of any foreign power.'

But Napoleon indignantly declined to avail himself of the means of
redress suggested to him, and continued to urge the English Government;
who at length made a sort of compromise, by undertaking a prosecution of
Peltier, the proprietor of _L'Ambigu_. Mackintosh was his counsel; and
in spite of his speech for the defence, which Spencer Perceval
characterized as 'one of the most splendid displays of eloquence he ever
had occasion to hear,' and Lord Ellenborough as 'eloquence almost
unparalleled,' Peltier was found guilty--but, as hostilities soon after
broke out again with France, was never sentenced. The best part of the
story, however, is, that all the time ministers were paying Peltier in
private for writing the very articles for which they prosecuted him in
public! This did not come out until some years afterward, when Lord
Castlereagh explained the sums thus expended as 'grants for public and
not private service, and for conveying instructions to the Continent
when no other mode could be found.' The trial of Peltier aroused a
strong feeling of indignation in the country; the English nation has
always been very jealous of any interference with its laws at the
dictation of any foreign potentate, as Lord Palmerston on a recent
occasion found to his cost.

Cobbett was soon after tried for a libel--not, however, upon Napoleon,
but upon the English Government. There must have been an innate tendency
in Cobbett's mind to set himself in opposition to everything around him,
for whereas he had made America too hot to hold him by his
anti-republican views, he now contrived to set the authorities at home
against him by his advanced radicalism. He had to stand two trials in
1804, in connection with Robert Emmet's rebellion. On the second of
these he was fined L500, and Judge Johnson, one of the Irish judges, who
was the author of the libels complained of, retired from his judicial
position with a pension. These reflections in question upon the Irish
authorities would hardly be called libels now-a-days, consisting as they
did chiefly of ridicule