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 persecutors was amply satisfied in other ways. He had already suffered more than most men. "Neglect," he said, "I was accustomed to. But when an alleged offence was laid to my charge, in which, on the honour of a man now on the brink of the grave, I had not the slightest participation, and from which I never benefited, nor thought to benefit one farthing, and when this allegation was, by political rancour and legal chicanery, consummated in an unmerited conviction and an outrageous sentence, my heart for the first time sank within me, as conscious of a blow, the effect of which it has required all my energies to sustain."
It is needless now to say anything in proof of Lord Cochrane's innocence of the charge brought against him. The world has long since reversed the verdict passed at Lord Ellenborough's dictation. That an officer and a gentleman of Lord Cochrane's reputation should have demeaned himself by becoming a party to the fraud of which he was accused, is, to say the least, improbable. That, if he had been guilty of that fraud, he should not have availed himself of the only benefit that could be derived from it by investing in the stocks when they were low and selling out during the brief time of their artificial value, is far more improbable. That, when the fraud was perpetrated, and its chief instrument was undiscovered, he should have left the _Tonnant_ in order to expose him, instead of taking him away from England, and so almost ensuring the preservation of the secret, is utterly impossible.
His only faults were too great faith in his own innocence and a too chivalrous desire to protect, or rather to abstain from injuring, his unworthy kinsman. "I must be here distinctly understood," it was said by Lord Brougham, in his "Historic Sketches of British Statesmen," "to deny the accuracy of the opinion which Lord Ellenborough appears to have formed in this case, and deeply to lament the verdict of 'guilty' which the jury returned after three hours' consultation and hesitation. If Lord Cochrane was at all aware of his uncle Mr. Cochrane Johnstone's proceedings, it was the whole extent of his privity to the fact. Having been one of the counsel engaged in the cause, I can speak with some confidence respecting it, and I take upon me to assert that Lord Cochrane's conviction was mainly owing to the extreme repugnance which he felt to giving up his uncle, or taking those precautions for his own safety which would have operated against that near relation. Even when he, the real criminal, had confessed his guilt by taking to flight, and the other defendants were brought up for judgment, we, the counsel, could not persuade Lord Cochrane to shake himself loose from the contamination by abandoning him."