and the protector of the most essential privileges which Englishmen can enjoy under the laws. if Gentlemen, such a prosecution against such a person ought to have had a strong foundation: putting private justice and all respect of persons wholly out of the question, it should not, but upon the most clear conviction and the most urgent necessity, have been instituted at all;-we are at this moment in a most awful and fearful crisis of affairs ;-we are told authentically by the Sovereign from the throne, that our enemies in France are meditating an invasion, and the kingdom from one end to another is in motion to repel it. In such a state of things, and when the public transactions of government and justice in the two countries pass and repass from one another as upon the wings of the wind, is it politic to prepare this solemn array of justice upon such a dangerous subject, without a reasonable foundation, or rather without an urgent call? At a time when it is our common interest that France should believe us to be, what we are and ever have been, one heart and soul to protect our country and our constitution-is it wise or prudent, putting private justice wholly out of the question, that it should appear to the councils of France,―apt enough to exaggerate advantages,—that the Judge representing the Government in the northern district of this kingdom should be sitting here in judgment in the presence of all the gentlemen whose property lies in this great county, to trace and to punish the existence of a rebellious con spiracy to support an invasion from France?-a conspiracy not existing in a single district alone, but maintaining itself by criminal concert and correspondence in every district, town, and city in the kingdom;-projecting nothing less than the utter destruction and subversion of the Government.Good God! can it be for the interest of Government that such an account of the state of this country should go forth? Unfortunately, the rumour and effect of this day's business will spread where the evidence may not travel with it, to serve as an antidote to the mischief; for certainly the scene which we have this day witnessed can never be imagined in France or in Europe-where the spirit of our law is known and understood;-it never will be credited that all this serious process has no foundation either in fact or probability, and that it stands upon the single evidence of a common soldier, or rather a common vagabond, discharged as unfit to be a soldier; of a wretch, lost to all reverence for God and religion, who avows, that he has none for either, and who is incapable of observing even common decency as a witness in the Court :-this will never be believed; and the country, whose best strength at home and abroad is the soundness of all its members, will suffer from the very credit which Government will receive for the justice of this proceeding. 1 What then can be more beneficial than that you should make haste, as public and private men, to undeceive the world, to do justice to your fellow-subjects, and to vindicate your country?what can be more beneficial, than that you, as honest men, should upon your oaths pronounce and record by your verdict, that, however Englishmen may differ in religious opinions, which in such a land of thinking ever must be the case; that however they may separate in political speculations as to the wisest and best formation of a House of Commons ;-that though some may think highly of the church and its establishment, whilst others, but with equal sincerity, prefer the worship of God with other ceremonies, or without any ceremonies ;-that though some may think it unsafe to touch the constitution at this particular moment, and some, that at no time it is safe to touch it, while others think that its very existence depends upon immediate reformation :-what, I repeat, can be more beneficial, than that your verdict should establish, that though the country is thus divided upon these political subjects, as it ever has been in every age and period of our history, yet that we all recollect our duty to the land which our fathers have left us as an inheritance;-that we all know and feel we have one common duty and one common interest? This will be the language of your verdict, whatever you yourselves may think upon these topics connected with, but still collateral to the cause-whether you shall approve or disapprove of the opinions or objects of the Defendants, I know that you will still with one mind revolt with indignation at the evidence you have heard, when you shall have heard also the observations I have to make upon it, and, what is far more important, the facts I shall bring forward to encounter it. To these last words I beg your particular attention:-I say, when you shall hear the facts with which I mean to encounter the evidence. My learned friend has supposed that I had nothing wherewith to support the cause, but by railing at his witness, and endeavouring to traduce his character by calling others to reproach it : he has told you, that I could encounter his testimony by no one fact, but that he had only to apprehend the influence which my address might have upon you; as if I, an utter stranger here, could have any possible weight or influence, to oppose to him, who has been so long known and honoured in this place. But although my learned friend seems to have expected no adverse evidence, he appears to have been apprehensive for the credit and consistency of his own; since he has told you that we have drawn this man into a lure not uncommon for the purpose of entrapping witnesses into a contradiction of testimony; that we have ensnared him into the company of persons who have drawn him in by insidious questions, and written down what he has been made to declare to them in destruction of his original evidence, for the wicked purpose of attacking the sworn testimony of truth, and cutting down the consequences which would have followed from it to the Defendants. If such a scene of wickedness had been practised, it must have been known to the witness himself; yet my learned friend will recollect, that though he made this charge in his hearing before his examination, he positively denied the whole of it; I put it to him point by point, pursuing the opening as my guide, and he denied that he had been drawn into any lure ;-he denied that any trap had been laid for him ;-he denied that he had been asked any questions by any body.-If I am mistaken, I desire to be corrected, and particularly so by my learned friend, because I wish to state the evidence as it was given. He has then denied all these things; he has further sworn that he never acknowledged to Mr. Walker that he had wronged or injured him, br that the evidence he had given against him was false; -that he never had gone down upon his knces in his presence, to implore his forgiveness;-that he never held his hands before his face, to hide the tears that were flowing down his cheeks in the moment of contrition, or of terror at the consequence of his crimes all this he has positively and repeatedly sworn in answer to questions deliberately put to him; and instead of answering with doubt, or as trying to recollect whether any thing approaching such a representation had happened, he put his hands to his sides, and laughed, as you saw, at me who put the questions, with that sneer of contempt and insolence which accompanied the whole of his evidence, on my part at least of his examination: if nothing therefore was at stake but the destruction of this man's evidence, and with it the prosecution which rests for its whole existence upon it, I should proceed at once to confound him with testimony, the |