Having thus abruptly paid his compliments to the American judges with whose decisions he differed he went back across the sea to England and John Wedderbourn’s case and Deacon’s case and that of the king versus Captain Vaughan, who went aboard a vessel called the _Loyal Clencartie_ in the service of the French king to cruise against the subjects of the English king. As he expounded the law in this masterly fashion how could he have failed to bring a blush to the cheek of Mr. Ritchie of the _Enquirer_ who had used his columns to belittle Luther Martin and scoff at the absurdity of importing a Maryland lawyer to try a case in a Virginia court. It was gossiped that during the preparation for his appearance Mr. Martin had drunk even more freely than was his usual custom. If so the indulgence had done nothing to befuddle his brain or dim his memory of precedents. Next he turned to the incident of Lord Balmerino entering the gates of Carlisle and holding the city for the Pretender. He cited other allegedly treasonable acts having to do with the efforts of the Stuarts to regain their throne. This was a fruitful field for English precedents for acts of treason. But, he contended, those who had levied war in Perth were charged with levying it in Perth. So, too, were those who levied war in Aberdeen charged with levying it in Aberdeen. He could find no case in which a person was charged with levying war in a place where he was not present. “But,” he observed, “if the counsel for the Crown in Great Britain had found out this new doctrine discovered by the ingenuity of the counsel for this prosecution, prosecutions would have been easily conducted and much trouble saved. If this new doctrine be as the gentlemen effect to believe, unanswerably correct, then it shows incontrovertibly great ignorance on the part of the lawyers who prosecuted in Great Britain in encountering so much unnecessary trouble and adopting a mode of prosecution so difficult as they did, and the superior ingenuity of the gentlemen in discovering this very easy and plain mode.”