"I will now, however, do my best to grapple with the case as presented to you by my learned friend; and, doing him full justice for his high eloquence, believing most sincerely that he has stated nothing but what he was instructed was true, I will still venture to say, that a more terrible misrepresentation was never made to an English jury. Now, in the very first instance my learned friend asserted that the prisoner at the bar is of a sharp and vindictive disposition; and he said that he should be able to show that such was the case. Gentlemen, I will ask you, has he proved that fact? I will ask you if he has made any attempt to prove it? I will ask you if his own witnesses have not proved the exact reverse; if they have not shown that the prisoner is of a kind and gentle disposition, winning the love and esteem of all around, high and low, rich and poor? and, whether we see him teaching the uneducated child, saving the drowning boy, or tending him in his after sickness, I will ask, if all that _has_ been proved does not excite admiration, and sympathy, and respect? Cast from your minds, then, such unjustified and vague expressions: look upon his general character as it is shown by the very evidence for the prosecution, tender rather than sharp, benevolent instead of vindictive. But the insinuation, gentlemen of the jury, has been made, though not supported; and it forces me to establish the contrary by proofs. Something was said too, gentlemen, of a duel between the prisoner and Viscount Overton, and a connexion must have instantly established itself in the minds of the jury, between that duel and the sharp and vindictive character ascribed to the prisoner. But, gentlemen, I will place that honourable nobleman in the witness-box, to speak to the character of the prisoner. He shall himself tell you what he thinks of the circumstances which produced the duel; and you shall judge from facts, not from insinuations. All this shall be triumphantly swept away, and I will not leave a vestige of such charges against my friend. I will call the old servants of his father's house, I will call the tenants, the parishioners, the neighbours. Their evidence need not be long, but it will be conclusive to show that a more honourable, upright, generous, kind-hearted man never existed; full of noble enthusiasms, gentle in habits, benevolent in disposition, incapable of a base or a cruel action.