ADMIRALTY INFLUENCE AGAINST ME.—APPOINTMENT OF MR. LAVIE AS
PROSECUTOR.—THE TRIAL.—CRANE, THE HACKNEY COACHMAN.—INDECISION OF
HIS EVIDENCE.—LORD ELLENBOROUGH’S CHARGE, AND UNJUSTIFIABLE
ASSUMPTIONS.—REPORT OF THE TRIAL FALSIFIED; OR, RATHER, MADE UP FOR
THE OCCASION.—EVIDENCE, HOW GOT UP.—PROVED TO BE POSITIVE
PERJURY.—THIS CONFIRMED BY SUBSEQUENT AFFIDAVITS OF RESPECTABLE
TRADESMEN.—ANOTHER CHARGE IN STORE FOR ME, HAD NOT THIS
SUCCEEDED.—THE CHIEF WITNESS’S CONVICTION.—HIS SUBSEQUENT
TRANSPORTATION AND LIBERATION.—AFFIDAVITS OF MY SERVANTS, THOMAS
DEWMAN, MARY TURPIN, AND SARAH BUST.—MY SECOND AFFIDAVIT.—APPEAL
FROM MY CONVICTION REFUSED.—EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE.—MINORITY IN MY
FAVOUR.
Had I been aware of a very curious coincidence connected with the trial
which followed, my confidence, arising from consciousness of innocence,
would have vanished in an instant; so that instead of indifference about
the result, I should have seen the necessity of meeting every accusation
with the most deliberate caution, supporting the same by every
attainable evidence, in place of no evidence at all.
The fact alluded to is this—that the same Mr. Lavie who had displayed so
much tact on Lord Gambier’s court-martial _was selected as solicitor to
the prosecution in the present case_, to the exclusion of the appointed
solicitor to the Committee of the Stock Exchange! The fact was
significant, as affording additional suspicion that an influence other
and higher than that of the Committee was at work.
As in various publications connected with Lord Gambier’s trial I had
spoken very freely of Mr. Lavie as regarded the fabricated charts,
exposed at the commencement of this volume, there could be no doubt of
his not unreasonable personal animosity towards myself. But when, _after
the trial_, I became for the first time aware that he had been employed
to conduct it, the enigma was solved as to how I, from having
voluntarily given the only information upon which the case could have
originated at all, came to be mixed up in one common accusation with a
number of persons, of most of whose very names I had never before heard.
More than this, it then became but too apparent that from the selection
of Mr. Lavie as prosecuting attorney, I was not so much the subject of a
Stock Exchange prosecution as of the political vindictiveness of which I
have spoken, and which had gone out of the usual course to secure his
services. That there was collusion between a high official at the
Admiralty and the Committee of the Stock Exchange on this point, I do
not hesitate for one moment to assert; nor do I think, from previous
revelations in this work, that many of my readers will be inclined to
differ with me.
I will not, however, dwell upon this matter. Whoever selected Mr. Lavie
had a perfect right so to do, as Mr. Lavie had to accept the conduct of
the case; the result of which is attributable to my being so satisfied
of my own innocence as to decide that an accusation which so little
concerned me ought not to take me from the more important duties in
which I was employed. Had I been aware at the time of Mr. Lavie’s
appointment, I should have known its meaning, and prepared accordingly.
The principal circumstance which was held to have implicated me in the
hoax practised on the Stock Exchange was this:—That (as gathered from my
own voluntary information) De Berenger came to my house on the 21st
February; but that instead of being dressed in a green uniform, as set
forth in my affidavit, he was in scarlet uniform, that being the alleged
costume in which he had disseminated the false intelligence at Dover. If
this point could be proved, it was inferred that I must have had a
motive in wrongly describing the uniform in my affidavit, and that
motive could be none other than my own knowledge of the hoax which had
been perpetrated. How this inference was arrived at will appear in the
sequel.
The main question relied on by the prosecution related to the colour of
De Berenger’s coat, whether _scarlet_ or _green_: the point held by the
Court being, that if _scarlet_, I must have made a false declaration in
my affidavit as to its colour, and therefore must have at least known
how De Berenger had been engaged. A _non sequitur_ truly, but
nevertheless the one relied on for my conviction as one of the
conspirators.
The evidence was this—that when De Berenger arrived from Dover at the
Marsh Gate, Lambeth, he exchanged the post-chaise in which he had been
travelling for a hackney coach, in which he drove to my house,—which was
true enough. The waterman on the stand was called as the first link in
the chain; but as he said “he did not see that he could recollect De
Berenger, having only seen him for half a minute,” (_Report_, p. 120,)
this evidence is not worth commenting on, unless to remark that, failing
to recognise De Berenger in court, the extraordinary course was taken of
pointing him out, and then asking the witness if “he _thought_ he _was
like_ the man who got into the coach?” The reply was “he _thought_ he
was, but he only saw him for half a minute.”—(_Ibid._)
The next witness brought forward was a man named Crane—the hackney
coachman who drove De Berenger. In his examination, Crane did not say a
word about the colour of De Berenger’s coat, but in his
cross-examination swore that he had on a “red coat underneath his great
coat” (_Report_, p. 124). At the same time he stated that De Berenger
had with him “_a portmanteau big enough to wrap a coat in_.” Other
witnesses proved that he had drawn down the sun blinds in the vehicle,
so that he had abundant opportunity to exchange his red coat in which he
appeared at Dover, for the green sharpshooter’s uniform, and this no
doubt he had done. The person of whom the red uniform had been purchased
also deposed, that he had carried it away from his shop in a
portmanteau, so that there was no doubt of the capacity of the latter to
contain the coat. In short, he left London in the uniform of the rifles,
and put on the scarlet uniform at Dover, to assume the pretended rank of
a staff officer. On his return to London he in like manner, no doubt,
changed his uniform by the way.
It has been shown that the waterman who opened the coach-door for De
Berenger refused to identify him, but swore that the person alluded to
had a red coat beneath his military coat. It is also remarkable that the
hackney coachman, Crane, could not be got to identify him, though, like
the waterman, he swore to the red coat. The subjoined is Crane’s
evidence on the subject:—
MR. ADOLPHUS.—“Have you seen that person since that you drove that
morning?”
CRANE.—“Yes; I saw him in King Street, Westminster.” (At the
messenger’s house, where Crane was taken by Mr. Lavie for the purpose
of being identified by this witness.)
MR. ADOLPHUS.—“Do you see him in court?”
CRANE.—“I _think_ this is the gentleman here.”
MR. ADOLPHUS.—“Were you of the same opinion when you saw him in King
Street?”
CRANE.—“When I came down stairs he looked very hard at me.”
MR. ADOLPHUS.—“Did you know him then?”
CRANE.—“Yes: it was _something of the same appearance_, but he had
altered himself very much by his dress.”
MR. RICHARDSON.—“He was pointed out there as being the person in
custody?”
CRANE.—“No: I walked down stairs, and met the gentleman coming up
stairs.”
MR. RICHARDSON.—“You thought you saw a resemblance?”
CRANE.—“Yes, I thought he was _something like_ the same gentleman that
I had carried.”
MR. RICHARDSON.—“You do not pretend to recollect every person you
carry in your hackney coach every day?”
CRANE.—“_No_, but this gentleman that I took from a post chaise and
four: when he got out at Green Street, I saw that he had a red coat
underneath his great coat.”
Thus, neither the waterman nor the hackney coachman would swear to _the
man_, but to a red coat only. I have no hesitation in saying, that in a
court of justice in the present day no weight whatever would have been
attached to such evidence. I will, however, assume that the evidence was
such as to carry weight, and that it was in every respect
unexceptionable, because I shall shortly come to the reason why they
swore to the coat, but not to the man who wore it.
The case against me then stood thus. _One_ witness (the waterman), but
no more, swore to the under coat of a person whom he had seen step from
one vehicle into another; and _one_ witness, but no more (the hackney
coachman) swore to the person whom he brought to my house, as having on
a red coat beneath his military coat, but would not swear positively to
the wearer. It was, however, to support this extraordinary evidence that
my voluntary declaration in my affidavit, of lending De Berenger an old
hat and coat, because he alleged that he could not return to his
lodgings in the King’s Bench in uniform, without exciting suspicion of
his absence from the rules, and thus endangering his securities—was
charged against me as involving confederacy.
On the evidence here adduced—and there was not a tittle beyond it, on
the subject of the coat—the point was held by Lord Ellenborough to be
established that De Berenger stripped off the red coat in my house! and
as it was afterwards found in the river, his lordship charged the jury
in a way which bore the construction of my having been also a
participator in _that act_, though there was not a particle of evidence
on the trial which could give even the shadow of such a conclusion, nor
was there even a pretence on the part of the prosecution that such was
the case. His Lordship’s address to the jury on this head is amongst the
most remarkable that ever fell from the lips of an English judge.
“Now, gentlemen, he (_De Berenger_) is brought to the house of Lord
Cochrane; _further evidence afterwards arises upon the subject of his
being there_. We will at present follow the dress to its conclusion.
George Odell, a fisherman, says, ‘In the month of March, just above
Old Swan Stairs, off against the Iron Wharfs, when I was dredging for
coals, I picked up a bundle which was tied with either a piece of
chimney line or window line in the cover of a chair bottom; there were
two slips of a coat, embroidery, a star, and a piece of silver, with
two figures upon it; it had been sunk with three pieces of lead and
some bits of coal; I gave that which I found to Mr. Wade, the
Secretary of the Stock Exchange; it was picked up on the Wednesday,
and carried there on the Saturday. I picked this up on the 24th of
March.’ _You have before had the animal hunted home, and now you have
his skin_, found and produced as it was taken out of the river, cut to
pieces; the sinking it could have been with no other view than that of
suppressing _this piece of evidence_, and preventing the discovery
which it might otherwise occasion; this makes it the more material to
attend _to the stripping off the clothes which took place in Lord
Cochrane’s house_.”—(_Report_, p. 478.)
That this unwarrantable assumption, based on no evidence whatever, of De
Berenger’s stripping off his clothes at my house, could have anything to
do with a coat found in the river, was positively absurd, and was not
supported by a particle of evidence. Besides which, I had some
reputation for shrewdness, and should not have been likely to tie up the
coat “in an old chair cover, with three pieces of lead and some lumps of
coal!” when the winter’s fire in my grate would in five minutes have
destroyed the coat and its evidence together, had it been “stripped off”
in my house, or had I been a party to its destruction. The position in
which the coat was found, showed where it came from, viz. from the
Southwark side of the river, where De Berenger’s lodgings were.