such a defence, coming from such a quarter, would not at all surprise me. Poor-unfortunatefallen female! How can she expect mercy from her destroyer? How can she expect that he will revere the characters he was careless of preserving? How can she suppose that, after having made her peace the pander to his appetite, he will not make her reputation the victim of his avarice? Such a defence is quite to be expected: knowing him, it will not surprise me; if I know you, it will not avail him. every Having now shown you, that a crime almost unprecedented in this country, is clothed in aggravation, and robbed of every palliative, it is natural you should inquire, what was the motive for its commission? What do you think it was? Povidentially-miraculously, I should have said, for you never could have divined-the Defendant has himself disclosed it. What do you think it was, Gentlemen? Ambition! But a few days before his criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked him for the almost princely expenditure of his habits, "Oh," says he, "never mind; Sterne must do something by which Sterne may be known!" I had heard, indeed, that ambition was a vice, but then a vice, so equivocal, it verged on virtue; that it was the aspiration of a spirit, sometimes perhaps appalling, always magnificent; that though its grasp might be fate, and its flight might be famine, still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, and played in heaven's lightnings; that though it might fall in ruins, it arose in fire, and was withal 1 R 30 splendid, that even the horrors of that fall be came immerged and mitigated in the beauties of that aberration! But here is an ambition!-base, and barbarous and illegitimate; with all the grossness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the virtue; a mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, in the silence of sleep, and in the shades of midnight, steals his Ephesian torch into the fane, which it was virtue to adore, and worse than sacrilege to have violated! Gentlemen, my part is done; yours is about to commence. You have heard this crime-its origin, its progress, its aggravations, its novelty among us. Go, and tell your children and your country, whether or not it is to be made a precedent. Oh, how awful is your responsibility! I do not doubt that you will discharge yourselves of it as becomes your characters. I am sure, indeed, that you will mourn with me over the almost solitary defect in our otherwise matchless system of jurisprudence, which leaves the perpetrators of such an injury as this, subject to no amercement but that of money. I think you will lament the failure of the great Cicero of our age, to bring such an offence within the cognisance of a criminal jurisdiction: it was a subject suited to his legislative mind, worthy of his feeling heart, worthy of his immortal eloquence. I cannot, my Lord, even remotely allude to Lord Erskine, without gratifying myself by saying of him, that by the rare union of all that was learned in law with all that was lucid in eloquence; by the singular combination of all that was pure in morals with all that was profound in wisdom; he has stamped upon every action of his life the blended authority of a great mind, and an unquestionable conviction. I think, Gentlemen, you will regret the failure of such a man in such an object. The merciless murderer may have+ manliness to plead; the highway robber may have want to palliate; yet they both are objects of eriminal infliction: but the murderer of connubial bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy;-the robber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in this case, may be his instrument; he is suffered to calculate on the infernal fame which a superfluous and unfelt expenditure may purchase. The law, however, is so: and we must only adopt the remedy it affords us. In your adjudication of that remedy, I do not ask too much, when I ask the full extent of your capability: how poor, even so, is the wretched remuneration for an injury which nothing can repair,-for a loss which nothing can alleviate? Do you think that a mine could recompense my client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than life to him? "Oh, had she been but true, Though Heaven had made him such another world, He'd not exchange her for it!" take to I put it to any of you, what would you stand in his situation? What would you take to have your prospects blasted, your profession despoiled, your peace ruined, your bed profaned, your " * parents heart-broken, your children parentless? Believe me, Gentlemen, if it were not for those children, he would not come here to-day to seek such remuneration; if it were not that, by your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent defrauded wretches from wandering beggars, as well as orphans, on the face of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask this verdict from your mercy; I need not extort it from your compassion; I will receive it from your justice. I do conjure you, not as fathers, but as husbands;-not as husbands, but as citizens ;-not as citizens, but as men ;-not as men, but as Christians;-by all your obligations, public, private, moral, and religious; by the hearth profaned; by the home desolated; by the canons of the living God foully spurned;-save, oh! save your fire-sides from the contagion, your country from the crime, and perhaps thousands, yet unborn, from the shame, and sin, and sorrow of this example! My Lords and Gentlemen, I AM instructed as of counsel for the Plaintiff, to state to you the circumstances in which this action has originated. It is a source to me, I will confess it, of much personal embarrassment. Feebly, indeed, can I attempt to convey to you, the feelings with which a perusal of this brief has affected me; painful to you must be my inefficient transcript-painful to all who have the common feelings of country or of kind, must be this calamitous compendium of all that degrades our individual nature, and of all that has, for many an age of sorrow, perpetuated a curse upon our national character. It is, perhaps, the misery of this pro |