8 HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

CHAP, committed to prison, and his indictment was pre-I-xix. sen ted to the grand jury. The new sheriffs ofJ5S1, London, Shute and Pilkington, were engaged asdeeply as their predecessors in the country-party;And they took care to name a jury devoted tothe fame cause: A precaution quite necessary,when it was scarcely possible to find men indif-ferent or attached to neither party. As far asswearing could go, the treason was clearly provedagainst Shaftcsbury; or rather so clearly as tosiiafteabury merit no kind of credit or attention. That?E(iimt£d. veteran leader of a party, inured from his earlyyouth to faction and intrigue, to cabals andconspiracies, was represented as opening withoutreserve his treasonable intentions to these obscurebanditti, and throwing out such violent andoutrageous reproaches upon the king, as nonebut men of low education, like themselves, couldbe supposed to employ. The draught of anassociation , it is true , against popery and theduke , was found in Shaftelbury’s cabinet; anddangerous inferences might be drawn from manyclauses of that paper. But it did not appear,that it had been framed by Shaftessiury, or somuch as approved by him. And as projects ofan association had been proposed in parliament,it was very natural for this nobleman, or hiscorrespondents , to be thinking of some plan ,which it might be proper to lay before thatassembly. The grand jury , therefore , afterweighing all these circumstances, rejected the in-dictment ; and the people, y/ho attended the