My Lord; my learned friend Mr. Serjeant Pell has alluded to the
different situations of the several defendants who now stand upon the
floor for your Lordships Judgment. It is, my Lords, a lamentable
spectacle, but it will not, I trust, be an unprofitable lesson to
mankind, that conspiracy, like "misery, acquaints a man with strange
bedfellows." The conspiracy of the 21st February was, for all the
defendants to act in concert, each man to perform his part toward the
accomplishment of their common purpose;--one to travel from Dover,
others to travel from Northfleet, and others to be on the spot at the
Stock Exchange, to avail themselves of the rise in the funds produced by
these operations. But the conspiracy on the day of trial, and the
conspiracy of this day, is, for each, to be distinct and separate, and,
as much as possible, unknown to the others.
I am willing to concede to my learned friends who have last addressed
your Lordships, that some of these defendants do stand in a very
different situation from the others. Of Holloway and Lyte, it is fairly
to be observed, that by their confession they did manifest a degree of
contrition; it must, however, be recollected respecting Holloway, that
the purpose which he conceived, was a fraud for his own personal
advantage: It is in evidence that his fraud took effect; and he has not
ventured to state to your Lordships, by affidavit, to what extent that
fraud was successful and profitable.
With regard to Sandom, the other defendant of this class, his part in
this transaction was a very prominent and important part; and he was
proved to be guilty by the evidence of others, not by his own;--he
cannot plead the merit of a confession. It may, however, fairly be urged
for all these three defendants, Sandom, Holloway and Lyte, that they did
not aggravate their case at the trial, in the manner in which the other
defendants aggravated theirs.
As to the defendant De Berenger, it appears that he was the hired and
paid agent of Lord Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, and Mr. Butt; and
having received his wages, he was attempting clandestinely to quit the
country: If he had effected that purpose, he would have escaped
punishment himself, and would probably have defeated justice with
regard to the others. But, my Lords, his case has been greatly
aggravated, as indeed have the cases of Lord Cochrane and Mr. Cochrane
Johnstone, by attempts to defeat public justice, as absurd as they were
wicked; for all the swearing before the trial, all the swearing at the
trial, and all the swearing of to-day, has proceeded on the presumption,
that if men will have the hardihood to swear, there will be found those
who will have the credulity to believe.
Your Lordship has reported to the Court to-day, the evidence that was
given on the part of Mr. Cochrane Johnstone and Mr. De Berenger, the
letters which were stated by Mr. Tahourdin to have been written by Mr.
Cochrane Johnstone and Mr. De Berenger, on the 22d February, the day
after this fraud had been perpetrated. Whether Mr. Tahourdin deposed to
that which was correctly true, or not, appears to me to make no
difference. If the letters were written at a period subsequent to their
dates, they were fabricated for the purpose of constituting an
artificial defence. If they were written at the time they bear date,
then they were equally fabricated for an artificial defence; and at the
very moment of the commission of the crime, the parties were providing
the means of a false defence, in case they should be detected.
There was a flat contradiction between Mr. Tahourdin and the letter
which Mr. Tahourdin produced; whether the evidence of the witness were
true, or the statement in the letter were true, matters not; the
contradiction, independent of all other circumstances, shews that the
whole of this transaction was one premeditated scheme of fraud.
There was still more evidence respecting De Berenger; a number of
witnesses were called to swear, that at the time when he was proved to
have been at Dover, he was actually in London, or at least in London so
short a time before, that he could not by possibility have been at
Dover. The persons who formed this scheme totally forgot the sort of
case they had to meet: they were endeavouring to meet a case of
recognition of the human countenance, by witnesses who might be mistaken
in that recognition; and they forgot, that to a recognition of the
countenance, a recognition however which surpassed every thing that ever
fell under my observation, though put to the severest test to which such
testimony was ever exposed--De Berenger, seated among a number of
persons, nothing distinguishing him, nothing to attract the attention of
the witnesses, yet witness after witness, with but a single exception,
on looking round the Court, recognized his person the moment he cast his
eyes upon his countenance.--I say, my Lord, that they who contrived this
false and perjured defence, forgot that, in addition to this, there was
the delivery of De Berenger from hand to hand, from Dover into the house
of Lord Cochrane; and into the house of Lord Cochrane it was never
pretended that any other person but De Berenger entered.
Then, my Lords, we have the affidavit of Lord Cochrane, to which he has
added the affidavit of to-day, respecting the dress which De Berenger
wore upon that occasion. It is singular that a servant of Lord
Cochrane's should have been called upon the trial, examined upon other
points to the confirmation of his master's affidavit, and that my
learned friends, who were of counsel for Lord Cochrane, whose ability,
whose discretion, and whose zeal, no man who knows them can question,
did not venture to put to that servant a question as to the colour of De
Berenger's coat; and that they did not venture to call the two other
servants, one of whom at least was in attendance, and if the other had
been wanted, it would not have been difficult for Lord Cochrane to have
detained him in England, that he too might have been examined. No man
can doubt that the reason why my friends abstained from asking that
question, and going into that examination, was, that after the evidence
which had been given by all the witnesses for the prosecution, as to his
dress, continued up to the last moment by the driver of the
hackney-coach, who swore to De Berenger's entering the house in a
_scarlet_ coat; if all the servants in Lord Cochrane's house had been
called to swear that the colour of De Berenger's coat was _green_, no
man alive could have believed them.
Your Lordships have before you the whole extent of this gigantic
Conspiracy and Fraud; you have seen the stock account of these persons,
and you find that on the morning of this day Lord Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane
Johnstone, and Mr. Butt, were possessed of as much in Consols and
Omnium, as, reduced to Consols alone, would amount to £.1,600,000; on
which sum, the fluctuation of only one-eighth per cent. would produce a
loss or gain of £.2,000; and although these defendants have not profited
to the extent they anticipated, first, because the telegraph did not
work,--no thanks to them that it did not;--and next, because the fruit
of their fraud was intercepted,--the stolen goods were stopped in
transitu,--still it appears from the evidence of Mr. Baily, that they
have been materially enriched by their fraud, for they were enabled to
get rid of this immense amount of Consols and Omnium, without loss,
which, but for the operation of this fraud, they could not have done.
At the trial, Mr. Serjeant Best pressed very eloquently upon your
Lordship and the jury, the former services of Lord Cochrane: I must
observe, my Lord, that those services had neither been forgotten nor
unrewarded by his Sovereign or his Country:--by his Sovereign, he had
been raised to a high rank in his profession, and was in the path to the
highest; he had also been invested with a most honourable personal
distinction, which adds lustre even to nobility itself; which, at the
same time that it was a reward for the past, ought to have been an
incentive for the future:--He had been raised by a grateful Country to
the proud and enviable station of representative in Parliament for the
city in which your Lordships are now sitting; which, at the same time
that it imposed on him the duty of watching, and if necessary, of
animadverting on the conduct of others, especially bound him to guard
the purity of his own. For all this, what return has he made?--he has
engaged in a conspiracy to perpetrate a fraud, by producing an undue
effect on the public funds of the Country, of which funds he was an
appointed guardian, and to perpetrate that fraud by falsehood: He
attempted to palm that falsehood upon that very Board of Government,
under the orders of which he was then fitting out, on an important
public service; and still more, as if to dishonour the profession of
which he was a member, he attempted to make a brother officer the organ
of that falsehood.
This offence, my Lord, does not proceed from the infirmity of a noble
mind, from the impetuosity of youthful passion, from the excess of any
generous feeling;--it is cold, calculating fraud, scarcely capable of
aggravation; but, if it be capable of aggravation, it has received this
great aggravation, that when threatened with detection, he endeavoured
to avert it by the deliberate commission of a crime which, I repeat, has
all the moral turpitude of Perjury, without its legal responsibility. I
have to add one observation only, which applies equally to Lord Cochrane
and Mr. Butt, that they stand before your Lordship, though convicted,
unrepenting.
The Prosecutors in this case have, through many difficulties, conducted
this Prosecution to its termination: they have sought an honourable end
by honourable means: they have sought for justice, and justice only; and
to your Lordships justice they commit these Defendants.
_Lord Ellenborough._ Let all the Defendants stand committed, and be
brought up to-morrow morning to receive the Judgment of the Court.
Court of King's Bench.
_Tuesday, June 21, 1814._
_Charles Random De Berenger, Lord Cochrane, Richard Gathorne Butt, Ralph
Sandom, John Peter Holloway, and Henry Lyte were brought up pursuant to
the order of the Court to receive judgment._