trial, which has demonstrated that we hold our lives, and every thing most dear to us, under a law which nothing can supersede; since there is little likelihood that men will desire to change a constitution which so thoroughly protects them.-And before this cause is over, you will see that no man has ever had any such disposition.

Gentlemen, we now come to the merits of the cause itself; and though, if I were myself at the bar, instead of the honourable Gentleman who is arraigned before you, I should be disposed to trouble you very little in my own defence, yet I mean to pursue no such course as the advocate of OTHErs, I say the advocate of OTHERS; for my Client must forgive me if I almost lose sight of him in the determination of my duties. Indeed, I can hardly find him out in the mass of matter which has been read to you. One is obliged to search for him through the proceedings, and with difficulty can find his name; whilst others, to whom I owe a similar attention, and who stand behind for trial, are undoubtedly implicated in part of that which has been fruitlessly read against HIM. It is this alone which obliges me at all to consider the quality of the transactions before you, and to apply them to the law, lest assumed facts and erroneous doctrines should meet me at another time, and in another character, touching in their consequences the safety of the other Prisoners, and of the whole people of this land.

The first thing we have to consider in this, as in all other trials, is, the nature of the accusation.— What are we here about?-For, to say the truth, it is a little difficult at first view to find it out. It is the glory of the English law, that it requires, even in the commonest cases (à fortiori in a case of blood), the utmost precision of charge, and a proof correspondingly precise;-hitting the bird in the very eye; strictly conformable, not merely to the substance of the crime, but to the accusing letter.

Let us see, therefore, what the charge is

When I had the honour to discuss this subject before, it was to another Jury, and, indeed, to another Court; for I now see on the Bench an honourable and learned Judge, who was not then present: some of you also, Gentlemen, most probably were in the way of hearing, and of receiving an impression from the able address of the Attorney General, in the introduction of Mr. Hardy's Trial: you were bound to be present in Court when the Jury was called, and it is not to be supposed, that, after having discharged, on that day, your duty to the public by a painful attendance, while the case was opened, you would continue it in order to hear the defence with which you had no manner of concern. If you come, therefore, with any bias upon your minds from the situation you were placed in by your duties, it must be a bias against me; for you heard every thing on one side, and nothing upon the other: it becomes my duty, therefore, to go over

again the same arguments which I employed before, though some of you are not yet recovered from the fatigue of attending to them. Nor is the task less nauseous to myself; but irksome as it is, it must be performed:-I am not placed here to establish a reputation for speaking, or to amuse others with the novelty of discourse; but to defend innocence, and to maintain the liberties of my country.

Gentlemen, the charge is this

The Indictment states, "That all the Prisoners" (whose names I shall hereafter enumerate when I come to remark upon the evidence), "intending to "excite insurrection, rebellion, and war against "the King, and to subvert the rule and govern"ment of the kingdom, and to depose the King "from his royal state and government of the

kingdom, and to bring and put the King to death "maliciously and traitorously, and with force, "did among themselves, and together with other "false traitors, conspire, compass, and imagine, -" to excite insurrection, rebellion, and war against "the King, and to subvert the legislature, rule,

and government of the kingdom, and to depose "the King from the royal state and government

of the kingdom, AND TO BRING AND PUT OUR " SAID LORD the King to DEATH." This is the whole charge-But as it is an offence which has its seat in the heart, the treason being complete by the unconsummated intention, it is enacted by positive statute, and was indeed the ancient practice upon

the general principles of English law, that he who is accused of this crime, which consists in the invisible operations of the mind, should have it distinctly disclosed to him upon the same records, what acts the Crown intends to establish, upon the trial, as indicative of the treason; which acts do not constitute the crime, but are charged upon the record as the means employed by the Prisoner to accomplish the intention against the King's life, which is the treason under the first branch of the statute.

The record therefore goes on to charge, that, "in "order to fulfil, perfect, and bring to effect their "most evil and treasonable compassings and imagi"nations," (that is to say, the compassings and imaginations antecedently averred, viz. to bring and put the King to death,) "they met, consulted, con"spired, and agreed among themselves, and others, "to the Jurors unknown, to cause and procure a "convention and meeting of divers subjects of the "realm, to be held and assembled within this king"dom." Now, in order to elucidate the true essence of this anomalous crime, and to prevent the possibility of confounding the treason with the OVERT ACT, which is only charged as the manifestation of it, let us pause here a little, and see what would have been the consequence if the charge had finished here, without further connecting the OVERT ACT with the TREASON, by directly charging the convention to have been assembled FOR THE PURPOSE OF BRINGING THE KING TO DEATH. I

shall not be put to argue that no proceedings could have been had upon such a defective indictment; since common sense must inform the most unlettered mind, that merely to hold a convention of the people, which might be for VARIOUS PURPOSES, without alleging for WHAT PURPOSE it was assembled, would not only not amount to high treason, but to NO CRIME WHATSOEVER. The Indictment, therefore, of necessity, proceeds to aver, that

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they conspired to hold this convention, WITH "INTENT, and in order, that the persons so to be "assembled at such convention and meeting, should "and might, wickedly and traitorously, without and "in defiance of the authority, and against the will

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of the Parliament of this kingdom, subvert and "alter, and cause to be subverted and altered, the legislature, rule, and government of the king"dom." What then is the charge in this first count of the Indictment, when its members are connected together, and taken as one whole? It is, that the Prisoner conspired, and confederated, with others, to subvert the rule and government of the kingdom, and to depose the King, and TO BRING AND PUT HIM TO DEATH; which last of the three is the only essential charge for I shall not be put to argue that the Indictment would have been equally complete without the two former, and wholly and radically defective without the latter; since it has been, and will again be conceded to me, THAT THE COMPASSING THE KING'S DEATH IS THE GIST OF THE IN