18 ASSASSINATION OF PERCEVAL. [1812. 



who had refused to support some claim of his at St 

 Petersburg (where he was ambassador), but that 

 Perceval came in his way, and he must kill some- 

 body. The trial was the greatest disgrace to English 

 justice. On the evening of Monday, May 1 1th, the act 

 was committed. On the morning of Monday, May 

 18th, Bellingham was executed, the Court before which 

 he was tried having refused an application for a few 

 days' delay, grounded on the representation that evi- 

 dence of his mental incapacity could be obtained from 

 Liverpool, where he had resided and was known. 

 Indeed the panic occasioned by the act had not sub- 

 sided when, four days after, he was put upon his trial, 

 and when the judge and jury were called upon to 

 administer justice, callously, and inaccessible to all 

 feelings, especially to all outward impressions. How 

 often have I heard Erskine express his horror of this 

 proceeding ! He often referred, as he well might, to 

 that beautiful passage in his defence of Hadfield, de- 

 scribing " the whole nation as by statute placed under 

 a fifteen days' quarantine, to secure the mind from the 

 contagion of partial affections," in cases of treason.* 

 But in Bellingham's case there was the same conta- 

 gion ; and to defend the refusal of the application for 

 delay by technical objections of the want of an affi- 

 davit, was grossly absurd ; because nothing could dis- 

 arm the Court of its discretionary power to grant the 

 delay of a few days, when the application would cer- 

 tainly have been backed by affidavits, if indeed evi- 

 dence of his insanity had not been produced. They 

 who, like the military man referred to above as believ- 



* James Hadfield, tried and acquitted on the ground of insanity in 

 the year 1800, for firing at King George III. in Drury Lane Theatre. 



