The affairs of Ireland were again in a muddle. Robert Emmet’s insurrection had just occurred, and martial law was eventually proclaimed. Mr. Fox protested in vain against the system under which that country was governed, as also did the _Political Register_.[7] A correspondent (Mr. Robert Johnson, a Judge of the Irish Common Pleas) sent some letters, signed “JUVERNA,” containing an able, but rather bitter, series of comments upon recent events, to which the editor gave a prominent place in his journal (November-December, 1803). These letters opened the flood-gates of wrath; and Mr. Cobbett was, accordingly, prosecuted in the following May for publishing “certain libels upon the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,” and others. “Juverna” had stated, among other matters, that “the government of a harmless man was not necessarily a harmless government;” that Lord Hardwicke “was in rank an earl, in manners a gentleman, in morals a good father and a good husband;” that “he had a good library in St. James’s Square,” and was “celebrated for understanding the modern method of fattening sheep as well as any man in Cambridgeshire;” and he wanted to know if the Viceroy was “one of that tribe who have been sent over to us to be trained up here into politicians, as they train the surgeons’ apprentices in the hospitals, by setting them at first to bleed the pauper patients?” Against Mr. Justice Osborne (of the Irish King’s Bench) the insinuation of “Juverna” was that he had _wrongfully_ stated, in a recent charge, that the progress of crime in Ireland had been effectually checked by the “well-timed efforts and strenuous exertions of a wise and energetic government.” Lord Redesdale, the Irish Chancellor, was sneered at in general terms; and alluded to as “a strong chancery pleader,” not entitled to claim one particle of trust or confidence from the public. The trial was like all the political trials in those days:--imputations of the worst motives, insinuations of motives undreamt-of, graced the Attorney General’s speech for the prosecution; Lord Ellenborough anticipated the decision of the jury by calling the words libellous: what more was to be expected than a verdict of guilty?[8] The defendant’s witnesses to character were all eminent men: Mr. Liston, Lord Henry Stuart, Mr. Windham, Mr. Charles Yorke, the Earl of Minto, and Mr. John Reeves, successively testified to his loyalty, and thereby practically supported the non-libellous view of the matter. The defendant’s counsel, Mr. Adam, pointed out that the avowed object of the writer was “the support of good government in Ireland, and the removal of the present administration.” But in vain. On the next day a civil action for damages was tried in the King’s Bench, brought by Mr. Plunkett, Solicitor-General for Ireland, on a passage in one of Juverna’s letters; the ground was all gone over again, and with a similar result. Mr. Erskine led the prosecution.