I know not whether it is of right or through some indulgence of your Lordship that I am allowed the liberty at this Bar and at this time to attempt a defence, incapable, and uninstructed as I am to speak. Since, while I see so many eyes upon me, so numerous and awful a concourse, fixed with attention, and filled with I know not what expectancy, I labour, not with guilt, my Lord, but with perplexity. For having never seen a Court but this, being wholly unacquainted with law, the customs of the Bar, and all judiciary proceedings, I fear I shall be so little capable of speaking with propriety in this place, that it exceeds my hope, if I shall be able to speak at all. I have heard, my Lord, the indictment read, wherein I find myself charged with the highest crime, with an enormity I am altogether incapable of, a fact to the commission of which there goes far more insensibility of heart, more profligacy of morals, than ever fell to my lot. And nothing, possibly, could have admitted a presumption of this nature, but a depravity not inferior to that imputed to me. However, as I stand indicted at your Lordship’s Bar, and have heard what is called evidence induced in support of such a charge, I very humbly solicit your Lordship’s patience, and beg the hearing of this respectable audience, while I, single and unskilful, destitute of friends, and unassisted by counsel, say something, perhaps like an argument, in my defence. I shall consume but little of your Lordship’s time; what I have to say will be short, and this brevity, probably, will be the best part of it. However, it is offered with all possible regard, and the greatest submission to your Lordship’s consideration, and that of this honourable Court. _First._ My Lord, the whole tenor of my conduct in life contradicts every particular of this indictment. Yet I had never said this, did not my present circumstances extort it from me, and seem to make it necessary. Permit me here, my Lord, to call upon malignity itself, so long and cruelly busied in this prosecution, to charge upon me any immorality, of which prejudice was not the author. No, my Lord, I concerted not schemes of fraud, projected no violence, injured no man’s person or property. My days were honestly laborious, my nights intensely studious. And I humbly conceive my notice of this, especially at this time, will not be thought impertinent or unreasonable, but, at least, deserving some attention. Because, my Lord, that any person, after a temperate use of life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, and without one single deviation from sobriety, should plunge into the very depth of profligacy, precipitately, and at once, is altogether improbable and unprecedented, and absolutely inconsistent with the course of things. Mankind is never corrupted at once; villainy is always progressive, and declines from right, step after step, till every regard of probity is lost, and all moral obligation totally perishes.