Mr. Robert Wedderburn--or Robertus Wedderburn, as he delighteth to designate himself, is a man of colour--something of the colour of a toad's back, plump and puffy as a porpoise, and the magnitude of his caput makes it manifest that nature cut him out for a counsellor, had not the destinies decreed that he should cut out cloth. He therefore became a tailor and flourished (his shears), but age and fatty infirmity at length unfitted him for the operative department of his profession; his back would no longer bend to the board; his legs refused to let him cross them as he was wont to do; his eyes declined seeing a needle unless it was close to his nose; and though he got spectacles of all sorts, and let go his braces to their utmost limits, he could not manage it any how; and so, since he could no longer sew, he joined the _radicals_ of the day, and, from mending breeches, took to mending the state. His doings in this way made some noise in the world. He it was who had the honour of first inoculating the invincible Carlile with pure Deism; he it was who suffered pains, penalties, prosecutions, and imprisonments for his too liberal promulgation of too liberal politico-theological preachings; and he it will be that will have a place in the list of patriot martyrs of the nineteenth century--if a list of them should ever be published. _Shelved_, with the rest of the radicals, he turned his thoughts to literature; literature brought him acquainted with the prisoner; his acquaintance with the prisoner brought the prisoner to the bar of this office; and that brings us to the immediate matter at issue.