ed in malice. The trial by jury, gentlemen, is the glorious bulwark of our constitution, and if any thing lifts us above the rest of the world, it is the manner in which special juries are conducted in this country. I am not surprised at the manner in which my learned friend opened his case, at the anxiety he expressed, or at the strenuous manner in which his colleagues supported him. That anxiety certainly originated in the manners of the age. One assertion, however, that he made, has not been. proved; viz. the general gallantry of the defendant.

"The manner in which men who fall into this situation endeavour to defend themselves in common, is to represent the behaviour of the husband to be improper, and that the infidelity of the wife originated in an antecedent period to their connection with her. My client, however, commands me to forbear from such a scandalous mode of conduct. He comes before you with the infirmities of human nature hanging about him. He comes, not with that exulting joy which the rich man expressed, when he thanked God that he was unlike the publican; but he comes like the repentant man, mentioned by our Redeemer. He desires me to say, and I will make use of his own words, by which it will be seen how far he is charged with wilful seduction. He says, "Without meaning to impute the present transaction to Mr. Martin's absence, beyond a doubt it was the cause of all our misforHad he been with her, I could not thus have seen her, nor could we have met so frequently. I desire to call no evidence; and with respect to my fortune, Mess. Truman and Co. my agents, can prove that I am not so rich as is said. All my fortune is vested in Tobago, and from the situation of affairs there, I do not know at this moment I have any fortune at all. Could any sacrifice recal past time, willingly would I make it. Mr. Martin is a man of fortune. He does not want large damages; and the ends of justice will be answered as well by small.

tunes.

Because, if large are given against me, my innocent children will be involved in my crime, and will be ruined." Mr. Erskine read the above from his brief.

"Gentlemen, this cause is not marked by atrocious circumstances: there are no violations of friendship; no breaches of hospitality; none of that colouring which died a case, in which I had the honor to be concernedI mean the action brought by Captain Barlow against Mr. Sykes.

"Gentlemen, the best security for the honor of a wife, is prudence on the part of a husband. Mrs. Martin was not detained at Paris by any particular business.-The time was eventful; she was in a capital of the greatest luxury; I might also say, of abomination. It is to be lamented that she was allowed to be present at a scene (with the political nature of which, in this country, we have no concern) that was certainly the most improper for a woman whose husband was absent to behold. It is to be lamented that she was not permitted to share in the toils of an election: for in these occurrences female aid is often most beneficial; and it is also to be lamented that Mr. Martin did not send some female friend to be her companion. But it may be said that he had such confidence in her, that he could trust her at Paris, surrounded by dissipation, while he was pursuing the paths of ambition in his own country. Alas! would he had known that the moral page presents every where the infirmities and frailties of human nature, sublimed by all the aid of poetry. Would that he had recollected the whole scene between our first parents, so beautifully described by the poet! Would that he had remembered these lines:

But all other doubt possesses me, lest harm

Befal thee, sever'd from thee

leave not the faithful side

That gave thee being.

The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays.*

PARADISE LOST. Book IX.

Had he left Mr. PETRIE there to guard his wife-had he said to him, “ You are a countryman, escort my wife to Ireland. To your honor, as a gentleman, I bequeath her," I should have been ashamed to have addressed you. -But Mr. PETRIE never knew the plaintiff, and it is rather remarkable that no evidence has been produced of the commencement of the seduction. I cannot help thinking that the lady hardly deserves the character given her; for in two little months from the departure of her husband, were her affections severed from him-then she receives a letter from him, she turns away in alienation. and disgust. In March the plaintiff leaves her; and in June her affections are vanquished, and her honor conquered. You are left to conjecture whether the seduction was committed by her or by the defendant, for no evidence is produced on this point. I have said before, that there have been cases where large damages have been given, but they were replete with atrocious circumstances; this case however has none. You have before you a gentleman who has fallen a sacrifice to a beautiful person, joined to a most refined understanding. This seduction would not have happened if the husband had been there. The moral sense would then have checked the vicious appetite.

"I trust that the learned judge will do me the justice to say, that I do not represent these matters as justifications of the defendant's conduct. Far from it: a letter has been read, and the defendant has been represented to be a man of management. But this letter, I affirm, cannot increase the damages one penny: for would it not have been base in Mr. PETRIE to have suffered the lady to have fallen polluted in the arms of her husband? It would have been impossible, on account of the change in her affections, but that matter sooner or later would have been discovered.

"Gentlemen, in conclusion, I must again observe, that the commencement of the seduction has not been proved in evidence. This circumstance should have its proper weight. My client does not wish that the plaintiff should receive no compensation for the injury he has sustained ; he only entreats that you will take the whole of the case into consideration."

SPEECH of the Hon. THOMAS ERSKINE, (now Lord ERSKINE) in defence of the Rev. WILLIAM DAVID SHIPLEY, Dean of St. Asaph, for a libel, at the Assizes at Shrewsbury, on the 6th of August, 1784.

The defendant was charged in the indictment, (which contained the libel at full length,) with having published a seditious pamphlet, entitled, "The Principles of Government, in a Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Farmer."

"Gentlemen of the Jury,

My learned and respectable friend (for so upon this, as upon all other occasions, he has approved himself) having informed the court that he means to call no other witnesses to support the prosecution, you are now in possession of the whole of the evidence on which the prosecutor has ventured to charge my reverend friend and client, the dean of Saint Asaph, with a seditious purpose to excite disloyalty and disaffection to the person of his king, and an armed rebellion against the state and the constitution of his country; which evidence is nothing more than his direction to another to publish this dialogue, containing in itself nothing seditious, with an advertisement

prefixed to it, containing a solemn protest against all sedition.

"The only difficulty therefore, Gentlemen, which I feel in resisting so false and malevolent an accusation, is to be able to repress the feelings of my mind, excited by its folly and injustice, within those bounds, which leave its faculties their natural and unclouded operations; for I solemnly declare to you, that if he had been indicted as a libeller of our holy religion, only for publishing that the world was made by its Almighty Author, my astonishment could not have been greater than it is at this moment, to see this little book, which I hold in my hand presented by a grand jury of English subjects, as a libel upon the government of England.-Every sentence contained in it, if the interpretation of words is to be settled, not according to fancy, but by the common rules of language, is to be found in the brightest pages of English literature, and in the most sacred volumes of English laws: if any one sentence from the beginning to the end of it be seditious or libellous, the bill of rights (to use the language of the advertisement prefixed to it) was a seditious libel; the revolution was a wicked rebellion; the existing government is a traitorous conspiracy against the hereditary monarchy of England; and our gracious sovereign, whose title I am persuaded we are all of us prepared to defend with our blood, is an usurper of the crowns of these kingdoms.

"That all these absurd, preposterous, and treasonable conclusions, follow necessarily and unavoidably from a conclusion upon this evidence, that this dialogue is a libel; I follow the example of my learned friend, who has pledged his personal veracity in support of his sentiments, and assert upon my honor to be my unaltered, and I believe I may say, unalterable opinion, formed upon the most mature deliberation; and I choose to place that opinion in the very front of my address to you, that you