The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841
Pelham, Camden
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England)
"The court decided upon my trial to commit murder rather than depart in
the slightest degree from its usual forms; nay, it is with me a
question if the form is usual, which precluded me from examining
witnesses to prove the infamy of Adams, of Hieden, and of Dwyer. Ere the
solicitor-general replied to the address of my counsel, I applied to the
court to hear my witnesses: the court inhumanly refused, and I am in
consequence to be consigned to the scaffold. Numerous have been the
instances in which this rule of court has been infringed; but to have
infringed it in my case would have been to incur the displeasure of the
crown, and to forfeit every aspiring hope of promotion. A few hours
hence I shall be no more, but the nightly breeze which shall whistle
over the silent grave that shall protect me from its keenness, will bear
to your restless pillow the memory of one, who lived but for his
country, and died when liberty and justice had been driven from its
confines, by a set of villains, whose thirst for blood is only to be
equalled by their activity in plunder. For life, as it respects myself,
I care not--but while yet I may, I would rescue my memory from the
calumny, which I doubt not will be industriously heaped upon it, when it
will be no longer in my power to protect it. I would explain the motives
which induced me to conspire against the ministers of his majesty, and I
would contrast them with those which those very ministers have acted
upon in leading me to my ruin. To do this, it will be necessary to take
a short review of my life for a few months prior to my arrest for the
offence for which I am to be executed, without a trial, or at least
without an impartial one, by a jury of my peers. 'Tis true the form, the
etiquette of a trial, has been gone through; but I challenge any of the
judges on the bench to tell me, to tell my country, that justice was not
denied me in the very place where justice only should be administered. I
challenge them to say that I was fairly tried; I challenge them to say
if I am not murdered, according to the etiquette of a court, falsely
called of justice? I had witnesses in court to prove that Dwyer was a
villain beyond all example of atrocity. I had witnesses in court to
prove that Adams was a notorious swindler, and that Hieden was no
better; these were the three witnesses--indeed almost the only ones
against me--but the form and rules of court must not be infringed upon
to save an unfortunate individual from the scaffold. I called those
witnesses at the close of Mr. Adolphus' address to the jury, and before
the solicitor-general commenced his reply, but the court decided that
they could not be heard. Some good men have thought, and I have thought
so too, that before the jury retired all evidence was in time for either
the prosecutor or the accused, and more particularly for the latter;
nay, even before the verdict was given, that evidence could not be
considered too late.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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