The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. - Volume 1 by Thomas Cochrane Earl of Dundonald
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page 37 of 337 (10%)
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annals of English law, not often abused even in a much less degree,
can show. The straightforward evidence furnished by him was made the handle to an elaborate machinery of falsehood and perjury for effecting his own ruin. The solicitor who had managed the cause of the Admiralty at the court-martial on Lord Gambier, and therein proved his skill, was entrusted with the ugly work. By him an elaborate case for prosecution was trumped up, and Lord Cochrane, hindered from sailing to North America in the _Tonnant_, and hindered from obtaining any other employment in his country's service during four-and-thirty years, was, on the 8th of June, placed in the prisoner's dock at the Court of King's Bench on a charge of conspiring with his uncle, Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, with De Berenger, and with some other persons, to defraud the Stock Exchange. Lord Ellenborough, who presided at the trial, delivered a charge which was even more virulent and more marked by political spite than was his wont, and the too compliant jury brought in a verdict of "guilty." Lord Cochrane vainly sought for a new trial, and vainly adduced abundant proof of his innocence. The chance of justice that is every Englishman's right was denied to him. He was sentenced to an hour's detention in the pillory at the entrance of the Royal Exchange, to a year's imprisonment in the King's Bench Prison, and to a fine of a thousand pounds. The first part of the sentence was not insisted upon, as Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Cochrane's noble-hearted colleague as member for Westminster, avowed his intention of standing also in the pillory, if his friend was subjected to that indignity, and of thus encouraging the storm of popular indignation, that, without any such encouragement, would probably have led to consequences which the Government, already hated by all Englishmen who loved their birthright, dared not brook. But the unworthy vengeance of his |
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