"My Lord, and Gentlemen of the Jury--Under greater difficulties than ever man encountered, I now rise to vindicate my character and defend my life. I have been supported in this hour of trial, by the knowledge that my cause is heard before an enlightened tribunal, and that the free institutions of my country have placed my destiny in the hands of twelve men, who are uninfluenced by prejudice, and unawed by power. I have been represented by the press, which carries its benefits or curses on rapid wings from one extremity of the kingdom to the other, as a man more depraved, more gratuitously and habitually profligate and cruel, than has ever appeared in modern times. I have been held up to the world as the perpetrator of a murder, under circumstances of greater aggravation, of more cruel and premeditated atrocity, than it ever before fell to the lot of man to have seen or heard of. I have been held forth to the world as a depraved, heartless, remorseless, prayerless villain, who had seduced my friend into a sequestered path, merely in order to despatch him with the greater security--as a snake who had crept into his bosom only to strike a sure blow--as a monster, who, after the perpetration of a deed from which the hardest heart recoils with horror, and at which humanity stands aghast, washed away the remembrance of my guilt in the midst of riot and debauchery. You, gentlemen, must have read the details, which have been daily, I may say, hourly published regarding me. It would be requiring more than the usual virtue of our nature to expect that you should entirely divest your minds of those feelings which such relations must have excited; but I am satisfied, that as far as it is possible for men to enter into a grave investigation with minds unbiassed, and judgments unimpaired, after the calumnies with which the public has been deluged--I say, I am satisfied, that with such minds and such judgments, you have this day assumed your sacred office. The horrible guilt which has been attributed to me is such as could not have resulted from custom, but must have been the innate principle of my infant mind, and must have 'grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength.' But I will call before you gentlemen whose characters are unimpeachable, and whose testimony must be above suspicion, who will tell you, that the time was, when my bosom overflowed with all the kindly feelings; and that even my failings were those of an improvident generosity, and an unsuspecting friendship. Beware then, gentlemen, of an anticipated verdict. Do not suffer the reports which you have heard to influence your judgment. Do not believe that a few short years can have reversed the course of nature, and converted the good feelings which I possessed, into that spirit of malignant cruelty, to which only demons can attain. A kind, affectionate, and a religious mother, directed the tender steps of my infancy in the paths of piety and virtue.