his passion, and withdrawn from the riot. There the business ended. Gentlemen, this is the case which you have to try; and I think I can venture that if the facts are proved in the manner I have described, and I take upon me to say I have stated them most correctly, it is impossible for you not to find a verdict for the prosecutor.

to say,

Gentlemen, it would be in vain, and an absurd thing in me, to detain you with any particular address to yourselves. I have the honor of knowing hardly any of you personally, although among the jury there are some gentlemen whom I have had an opportunity of seeing in another scene in life. I know your characters, and I know that however you may feel yourselves bound to protect the ministers of our church, though I think this prosecution can have no effect upon any but the particular churchmen engaged in this transaction, that you will yet guard yourselves against deviating from those principles according to which you are bound to act, and that you will find according to the evidence.

Gentlemen, there is no principle implanted in the human mind, stronger than the sympathy which we feel for the situation and sufferings of persons of high rank and condition: it is one of those principles that bind society together; and is most admirably infused into our nature, for the purposes of good government, and the well-being of civil order. But whatever the rank may be, that rank can never stand between a defendant

and the proof of the fact, with a jury of Englishmen. They know their duty too well: neither compassion, sympathy, nor any other principle, can possibly affect their minds. Consider what is the peculiar situation of these defendants; reflect, that they are set apart by the laws of the land, and the regulations of the christian religion, for the purpose of preaching the doctrines of Christ. Our law has been so peculiarly cautious with respect to their character, that even when it empowers the civil magistrate to quell a riot by calling to his assistance every other member of the community, it peculiarly excepts, with women and children, the clergy. I have brought before you persons of that description, who, instead of claiming an exemption from being called upon, have themselves been guilty of a riot; for which they are justly amenable to the laws of their country.

AFTER THE EXAMINATION OF THE WITNÈSSES," AND THE CLOSE OF THE PROSECUTOR'S CASE,

MR. ERSKINE SPOKE AS FOLLOWS:

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,

MY learned friend, in opening the case on the part of the prosecution, has, from personal kindness to me, adverted to some successful exer tions in the duties of my profession, and particularly in this place. It is true, that I have been in the practice of the law for very many years, and

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more than once, upon memorable occasions, in this court; yet, with all the experience which, in that long lapse of time, the most inattentive man may be supposed to have collected, I feel myself wholly at a loss in what manner to address you. I speak unaffectedly when I say, that I never felt myself in so complete a state of embarrassment in the course of my professional life; indeed, I hardly know how to collect my faculties at all, or in what fashion to deal with this most extraordinary subject. When my learned friend, Mr. Adam, spoke from himself, and from the emanations of as honorable a mind as ever was bestowed upon any of the human species, I know that he spoke the truth when he declared his wish to conduct the cause with all charity, and in the true spirit of Christianity. But his duties were scarcely compatible with his intentions; and we shall, therefore, have, in the sequel, to examine how much of his speech was his own candid address, proceeding from himself; and what part of it may be considered as arrows from the quiver of his CLIENT. The cause of the bishop of Bangor can suffer nothing from this tribute, which is equally due to friendship and to justice: on the contrary, I should have thought it material, at any rate, to advert to the advantage which Mr. Grindley might otherwise derive from being so represented. I should have thought it right to guard you against blending the client with the counsel. It would have been my duty to warn you, not to confound the

one with the other, lest, when you hear a liberal and ingenuous man, dealing, as he does, in humane and conciliating expressions, and observe him with an aspect of gentleness and moderation, you might be led by sympathy to imagine that such were the feelings, and that such had been the conduct, of the man whom he represents,* On the contrary, I have no difficulty in asserting, and I shall call upon his Lordship to pronounce the law upon the subject, that you have before you a prosecution, set on foot without the smallest color or foundation: a prosecution, hatched in mischief and in malice, by a man, who is, by his own confession, a disturber of the public peace; supported throughout by persons who, upon their own testimony, have been his accomplices, and who are now leagued with him in a conspiracy to turn the tables of justice upon those who came to remonstrate against their violence, who honestly, but vainly, endeavored to recall them to a sense of their duty, whose only object was to preserve the public peace, and to secure even the sanctuaries of religion from the violation of disorder and tumult.

What then is the cause of my embarrassment? It is this: in the extraordinary times in which

* No observation can be more just than this. It is the most consummate art of an advocate, when he knows that an attack is likely to be made upon his client for turbulence and malice, to make the jury think, by his whole speech and demeanor, that mildness and justness were his characteristics; and Mr. Adam appears, with great ability, to have ful filled this duty.

we live; amidst the vast and portentous changes which have shaken, and are shaking the world; I cannot help imagining, in standing up for a defendant against such prosecutors, that the religion and order, under which this country has existed. for ages, had been subverted; that anarchy had set up her standard; that misrule had usurped the seat of justice, and that the workers of this confusion and uproar had obtained the power tó question their superiors, and to subject them to ignominy and reproach, for venturing only to remonstrate against their violence, and for endeavoring to preserve tranquillity, by means not only hitherto accounted legal, but which the law has immemorially exacted as an INDISPENSIBLE DUTY from all the subjects of this realm. Hence it really is that my embarrassment arises; and, however this may be considered as a strong figure in speaking, and introduced rather to captivate your imaginations, than gravely to solicit your judgments, yet let me ask you-Whether it is not the most natural train of ideas that can occur to any man, who has been eighteen years in the profession of the English law?

In the first place, gentlemen, WHO are the parties prosecuted and prosecuting? What are the relations they stand in to each other? What are the transactions, as they have been proved by themselves? What is the law upon the subject? and, What is the spirit and temper, the design and purpose, of this nefarious prosecution?