of more absolute power than had ever before been carried into practice — awak ened the sleeping lion, and that when his successor, Charles I., strained the preroga tive beyond the example of former ages, the popular leaders overturned the mon archy.1 The nature and extent of the king's prerogative in a colony like that of New 1 4 Black. Com., Book IV., c. 33.
York, which had been acquired by conquest, is a subject the exposition of which would occupy too much space in an article like the present. It is one that I have exam ined very fully, and in respect to which I am able to state that Atwood's claim that the king, by virtue of it, had the sole, ex clusive, and absolute power of governing in the colony, was without foundation.
OLD WORLD
TRIALS.
IX. REGINA v. BELLINGHAM. OF all the criminal trials of the present century there is none of which Eng lish lawyers have such good cause to be ashamed as that which forms the subject of the present paper. On nth May, 1812, the Rt. Hon. Spencer Perceval, second son of the Earl of Egmont, and then first Lord of the Treasury, was shot, while entering the lobby of the House of Commons, by a man who had been watching for him near the door, named John Bellingham. The bul let entered Mr. Perceval's left breast, and he died almost immediately. Bellingham made no attempt to escape, and confessed his crime. Practically the only question at is sue was as to his sanity. The Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., appointed a special commission to try him, and four days after the murder, viz., on 15th May, he was brought before this tribunal, of which Sir James Mansfield was president. The pris oner, we are told, was brought in " heavily ironed on each leg, and advanced firmly up to the front of the bar, where he bowed re spectfully to the court. He was dressed in a shabby brown duffle great-coat, buttoned close up to his chin so as to render his neck cloth, which was dirty, scarcely perceptible. He placed his hands upon the bar, and
stooped forward as if to listen with great attention to what was passing." On being asked to plead to the indictment, he declared himself not ready to go to the trial, as the documents necessary for his defense had been taken from him. He was directed simply to plead guilty or not guilty. He put in the latter plea. Then his counsel, a Mr. Alley, moved the court to postpone the trial, as there had not been time to com municate with the prisoner's friends who could prove his insanity, and supported his motion by two affidavits by relations of Bellingham's, stating that his insanity was noto rious to every one who knew him. The court refused the motion in its indecent haste to proceed to judgment. Then the case was opened by the Attorney-General. The facts, as he stated them, were these : Bellingham had gone to Russia some years before, for a mercantile house in Liverpool, and had been imprisoned at Archangel on a charge of having given information concerning the loss of a ship to Lloyd's coffee-house. After his release Bellingham appealed to Lord Leveson Gower, the British ambassador in St. Petersburg, for redress, but nothing was done. He then returned to Liverpool, and set up in business on his own account. But
