The prisoner at your bar admits that the crimes which we charge him
with are of that atrocity, that, if brought home to him, he merits
death. Yet, when, in pursuance of our duty, we come to state these
crimes with their proper criminatory epithets, when we state in strong
and direct terms the circumstances which heighten and aggravate them,
when we dwell on the immoral and heinous nature of the acts, and the
terrible effects which such acts produce, and when we offer to prove
both the principal facts and the aggravatory ones by evidence, and to
show their nature and quality by the rules of law, morality, and policy,
then this criminal, then his counsel, then his accomplices and
hirelings, posted in newspapers and dispersed in circles through every
part of the kingdom, represent him as an object of great compassion,
because he is treated, say they, with, nothing but opprobrious names and
scurrilous invectives.
To all this the Managers of the Commons will say nothing by way of
defence: it would be to betray their trust, if they did. No, my Lords,
they have another and a very different duty to perform on this occasion.
They are bound not to suffer public opinion, which often prevents
judgment and often defeats its effects, to be debauched and corrupted.
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