because twelve sworn men of Warwick-because our greatest law officers because our best divines-because common sense and reason, denounce them as calculated to bring our holy Religion, and its divine Original, into utter contempt. I call them seditious, because even the Ultra Whigs allowed them to be so, in the Upper House-because part of the wretched faction that rewarded their profane author stood forth in Parliament to assert, that on an indictment embodying such a charge, a verdict of guilty would have been returned; and because they are calculated to eradicate every particle of respect for our venerable "King, and all that are put in authority under him."

It is curious to observe the compound of apology and accusation that the pride of a Bedford, or the perversity of an Erskine, mix up, in attempting to convert these proscribed productions, and the circumstances connected with an unsuccessful attack upon them, to the purposes of party. Their sedition first justifies a verdict of acquittal, inasmuch as sedition is not blasphemy: here their sedition is allowed, that it

may be brought forward as proof in support of an accusation of ill-conducted prosecution. But they contribute to the subscription in behalf of the acquitted; unless, therefore, they plead guilty to the charge of knowingly encouraging, promoting, and pensioning sedition, they are in their old dilemma-compelled to assert and deny the same thing in the same breath. The object of this contradictory artifice is to shift the responsibility of the hideous effects produced by promoting competition in crime, from those who did not scruple to portion profligacy, to the better men who fain had awarded it condign punishment.

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Gentlemen, your verdict is at issue with that which acquitted Mr.Hone. As the subject either decided upon is precisely the same, of consequence, one judgment must be correct, the other incorrect. Could the publisher of a tissue of blasphemy persuade a Metropolis to subscribe certificates of his religious zeal, you have set an example how little such testimony is to be regarded by the side of the invalidating facts of continuous bad conduct. Were the assertions of a culprit or his friends to have any weight with a jury, what blasphemer would not

follow the example of James Tucker, and declare himself a warm friend to religion?" Could appeals to pity cheat justice of her due, a"large," a" dependent family," or a "state of crippleness," would become indemnity from retributive justice, and consequently embolden trespass upon the rights and privileges of society from those who have the greatest inducements to wish them inviolate. It would be inverting the purposes of all the ties that link us to social life, if those very ties should be suffered to treble the difficulty of conviction, or mitigate the penalty of transgression. In this case a father would have greater temptation to be a rogue than a single man, since he would be far less likely to suffer the reward of his crimes. This, without removing the incentive of pinching necessity, would abolish the wholesome fear of ruining his family in making himself the victim of public justice. If, again, dotage and decrepitude are allowed to become a panoply from harm, they will speedily be converted into weapons of offence. Juries should bear one maxim ever in mind, that when justice is defrauded of its due, the commonweal must infallibly suffer. Can we be at a loss for instances to exemplify this position, while the

acquittals of Hone make us sensible of it in their fearful effects?.

In bringing the verdicts of Guilty and Not Guilty, returned upon one and the same transaction, to overthrow the doctrine of " Jury infallibility," I would by no means be understood as wishing to disparage the general, the almost uniform, purity of trial by Jury. My object is, to wrest from the hands of party purpose a doctrine which, though often dispensed with when in opposition to its views, is sometimes enlisted to impart a character of incontrovertibility to its dogmatical assumptions. When Hone was acquitted, the factious chuckled at the idea, that by well-wielded plausibility they could persuade the nation that all was right, because regulated by the fiat of a Jury; they struggled to enlist our glorious prejudices in behalf of Jury supremacy on the side of sedition and blasphemy: they attempted to confound supremacy with perfection, and thus juggle us out of our senses to view blasphemous parodies as neither criminal nor dangerous. They well knew, if they could thus blind us to the true nature and effect of such primers of treason, they might catechize with success the Jacobin

creed of Liberty and Equality, and consummate their hopes in the imitative orgies of a new reign of anarchy and terror.

From this summary of design, it is cheering to turn to the counteraction of its malignant progress. From the moment the sense of the nation was shocked by the acquittal of Hone, it firmly, and without ceasing, continued to deplore that never-anticipated event, and deprecate the effects it foresaw as inseparable from such a fatal error. The reputable portion of the press reflected the general feeling of alarm, and private life participated in a vague disquietude and uneasiness that is scarcely to be defined. Many an old man shook his head, and thousands prematurely predicted inevitable revolution. The conviction of Carlile did something to re-animate confidence, though it was far from re-assuring many, who attributed it to the obligation of precedent, and the barefaced impudence of the deluded wretch himself, both previous to and upon his trial. In this opinion I certainly cannot agree, as I believe from my heart that a conscientious abhorrence of blasphemy procured his verdict of condemnation. Parliament met just in time to snatch us from im