illegal assembly at common law; and I have also argued that the prosecution is unwise, and calculated to excite discontent.  Gentlemen, I shall now endeavour to show you that the procession of the 8th of December did not violate the statute entitled the Party Processions’ Act.  The learned judge in his charge told the grand jury that under this act all processions are illegal which carry weapons of offence, or which carry symbols calculated to promote the animosity of some other class of her Majesty’s subjects.  Applying the law to this case, his lordship remarked that the processions of the 8th of December had something of military array—­that is, they went in regular order with a regular step.  But, gentlemen, there were no arms in that procession, there were no symbols in that procession intended or calculated to provoke animosity in any other class of the Queen’s subjects, or in any human creature.  There were neither symbol, nor deed, or word intended to provoke animosity, and as to the military array—­is it not absurd to attribute a warlike character to an unarmed and perfectly peaceful assemblage, in which there were some thousands of women and children?  No offence was given or offered any human being.  The authorities were so assured of the peacefulness and inoffensiveness of the assemblage that the police were withdrawn in a great measure from their ordinary duties of preventing disorders.  And as to the remark that the people walked with a regular step, I need only say that was done for the sake of order and decorum.  It would be merely to doubt whether you are men of common sense if I argued any further to satisfy you that the procession did not violate the Party Processions’ Act, such as it is defined by the learned judge.  The speech delivered on that occasion is an important element in forming a judgment upon the character and object of the procession.  The speech declared the procession to be a peaceable expression of the opinion of those who composed it upon an important public transaction, an expression of sorrow and indignation at an act of the ministers of the government.  It was a protest against that act—­a protest which those who disapproved of it were entitled by the constitution to make, and which they made, peaceably and legitimately.  Has not every individual of the millions of the Queen’s subjects the right to say so say openly whether he approves or disapproves of any public act of the Queen’s ministers?  Has not all the Queen’s subjects the right to say altogether if they can without disturbance of the Queen’s peace?  The procession enabled many thousands to do that without the least inconvenience or danger to themselves, and with no injury or offence to their neighbours.  To prohibit or punish peaceful, inoffensive, orderly, and perfectly innocent processions upon pretence that they are constructively unlawful, is unconstitutional tyranny.  Was it done because the ministers discovered that the terror of suspended habeas corpus