ce this bill into a
law, as speedily as may be consistent with the order of your
proceedings, and with due preference of deliberation!"

Next day, in a committee of the whole house, on the third reading of
this celebrated bill, the Duke of Clarence having suggested the
propriety of instituting a distinct enquiry, under a particular act,
into the abuses of prize-money, Lord Nelson expressed himself to be of
the same opinion; but, though severely animadverting on the flagrant
enormities of prize-agents, his lordship, nevertheless, candidly
acknowledged, that there might be instances where the delays of the
payment of prize-money resulted, not from the villainy of the agents,
but from accidents by no means easily avoidable in the common course of
human affairs. In regarding the naval interests of his country, Lord
Nelson was not unmindful of it's commercial prosperity; in censuring
criminal abuses, he was careful not to involve innocence with guilt.

Lord Nelson's love of humanity led him, in February 1805, on the trial
of Colonel Marcus Despard, for high-treason, to bear the most honourable
testimony to that officer's character: they had, his lordship said,
formerly served together on the Spanish main; together been in the
enemy's trenches, and slept in the same tent; and he had every reason to
believe him a loyal man, and a brave officer. His lordship, however, was
fully satisfied, in the end, that Colonel Despard had been guilty of the
crime for which he was executed in Horsemonger Lane, Southwark, on the
21st of the same month. Lord Ellenborough, the learned judge before whom
Colonel Despard was tried and convicted, on noticing, in his address to
the jury, the circumstances of Lord Nelson's testimony, from the seat of
justice which he so worthily fills, delivered this fine panegyric on our
illustrious hero--"You have heard," said that manly, wise, and virtuous
judge, "the high character given of the prisoner, by a man _on whom to
pronounce an eulogy were to waste words!_ But, you are to consider
whether a change has not taken place, since the period of which he
speaks. Happy, indeed, would it have been for him, if he had preserved
that character down to this moment of peril!" Had there been a gleam of
doubt, as to the guilt of the culprit, the jury would certainly have
acquitted him in consequence of our hero's testimony as to his
character; and such was, after all, it's influence on their minds, that
when,