The day to make that application was Monday, March 19th. All the preliminary ceremonies having been duly performed, the earl was asked what he had to say why judgment should not pass. Wintoun turned his eyes towards Sir Constantine Phipps, and that great lawyer, in the most apologetic tone, had only half expressed his ‘humble hopes that, if their lordships pleased, there was a point of law,’――when, suddenly, the Attorney-General arose in a flutter of indignation, ‘I hear,’ he cried in a sort of pious horror, ‘a gentleman of the long robe offering to speak!――and to a point of law; before, too, the accused had propounded the point, and their lordships had allowed that it was one!’ The Attorney, having fallen back on his seat, full of breathless amazement, Mr. Cowper, with the utmost legal fervour, could hardly find words to express his surprise that Sir Constantine should presume to speak! ‘If,’ said Phipps, ‘I had only been heard ten words more――――.’ ‘No!’ interrupted Thomson, ‘he has no right to be heard one word more!’ And the Lord High Steward followed with a stinging rebuke at Sir Constantine’s audacity in daring to speak before he had obtained the permission of the House. That was what Phipps was about to ask for when Northey heard his voice and choked it in the utterance. Sir Constantine sat perfectly silent under the accumulated rebuke, but he was at length allowed to speak on the point that in the impeachment the time of any alleged overt act was not stated with proper certainty. The Jacobite lawyer made a good speech, in which he said that,――if in an indictment for less perilous actions the time of action was omitted, the indictment would fail. How much more should an indictment fall through which perilled life, and omitted to state the date on which the act was committed, which placed the accused in danger of death. To general charges the Earl of Wintoun could not be expected to give particular answers. Had a day been named, which brought him and a stated act together, he might have brought forward witnesses to prove an _alibi_. But every charge was laid down against acts committed ‘_on or about_.’ [Sidenote: _A FIGHT FOR LIFE._] Williams followed up his leader on this line by saying that ‘on or about!’ a certain day would be bad; ‘on or about September,’ worse; but ‘in or about September, October, and November,’ was worse than all. Then, in allusion to Wintoun being called ‘the unhappy lord,’ Williams remarked, ‘He is unhappy as being in that doubtful state of memory,――not insane enough to be within the protection of the law, nor sane enough to do himself in any respect the least service whatever.’ At this natural observation all the managers of the Commons became ‘uneasy,’ as they said, at the learned gentleman going into a matter of fact. Mr. Williams therefore restored their equanimity by simply declaring that as the impeachment was defective, judgment should not be executed. [Sidenote: _THE FIGHT GROWS FURIOUS._]