Note 337 — Chapter XVI · ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

The trials after this rebellion were not conducted with quite that appearance of impartiality which we now exact from judges. Chief Baron Montagu reprimanded a jury for acquitting some persons indicted for treason; and Tindal, an historian very strongly on the court side, admits that the dying speeches of some of the sufferers made an impression on the people, so as to increase rather than lessen the number of jacobites. Continuation of Rapin, p. 501 (folio edit.). There seems, however, upon the whole, to have been greater and less necessary severity after the rebellion in 1745; and upon this latter occasion it is impossible not to reprobate the execution of Mr. Ratcliffe (brother of that Earl of Derwentwater who had lost his head in 1716), after an absence of thirty years from this country, to the sovereign of which he had never professed allegiance nor could owe any, except by the fiction of our law.