One more privilege of the historian, which the Attorney-General has not named, but to which his principles extend, it is now my duty to claim on behalf of my client; I mean the right of _republishing_, _historically_, those documents, whatever their original malignity may be, which display the character and unfold the intentions of governments, or factions, or individuals. I think my learned friend will not deny that a historical compiler may innocently republish in England the most insolent and outrageous declaration of war ever published against his Majesty by a foreign government. The intention of the original author was to vilify and degrade his Majesty’s government; but the intention of the compiler is only to gratify curiosity, or, perhaps, to rouse just indignation against the calumniator whose production he republishes. His intention is not libellous—his republication is therefore not a libel. Suppose this to be the case with Mr. Peltier. Suppose him to have republished libels with a merely historical intention. In that case it can not be pretended that he is more a libeller than my learned friend, Mr. Abbott [junior counsel for the crown, afterward Lord Tenterden], who read these supposed libels to you when he opened the pleadings. Mr. Abbott republished them to you, that you might know and judge of them—Mr. Peltier, on the supposition I have made, also republished them, that the public might know and judge of them. You already know that the general plan of Mr. Peltier’s publication was to give a picture of the cabals and intrigues, of the hopes and projects, of French factions. It is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part of this plan to republish all the serious and ludicrous pieces which these factions circulate against each other. The ode ascribed to Chenier or Ginguené I do really believe to have been written at Paris, to have been circulated there, to have been there attributed to some one of these writers, to have been sent to England as their work, and as such to have been republished by Mr. Peltier. But I am not sure that I have evidence to convince you of the truth of this. Suppose that I have not; will my learned friend say that my client must necessarily be convicted? I, on the contrary, contend that it is for my learned friend to show that it is not an historical republication. Such it professes to be, and that profession it is for him to disprove. The profession may indeed be “a mask”; but it is for my friend to pluck off the mask, and expose the libeller, before he calls upon you for a verdict of guilty.