Will you suffer this court to proclaim the sacred nature of an oath, and openly violate it in the same hour and under the same roof? I might ask in the spirit of that Christianity you sit there to administer, how do you propose to answer to your God in that day when the secrets of all hearts are to be opened, when all dissembling is to be exposed, and all perjury punished; how do you pro-pose to answer for having invoked the name of God in this assembly only to disregard it, on the poor plea of precedent--that others have done so before? For, gentlemen, there is nothing else that even the subtlest sophistry can conjure up to justify you. But I best prefer appealing to you as honest men, in the spirit of my own reasoning, and thinking; as men with an eye to the improvement of mankind, who would break the unjust shackles that bind them, who would discard prejudice in order to be just, who will not condemn me because I am not rich, and who will listen to humanity rather than to bigotry, and respect truthfulness wherever you may find it. I believe that in every honest heart there is a sense of rectitude that rises superior to creeds, that respects all virtue and protects all truth, that asks for no names and seeks no precedents before resolving to do rightly, that fears no man's frowns, and dares to be just without custom's permit. To this feeling, gentlemen, only do I appeal, and by its verdict I am willing to abide. Mr. Justice Erskine: Gentlemen of the jury, although the lengthened address of the defendant has demanded from you so long endurance, in this vitiated atmosphere, I still trust we shall have enough of power left to direct our minds to the parts of this case which are important. The greater part of the time has been wasted on subjects with which you have nothing to do. We are not sitting here as a deliberative assembly to consider whether in respect of such cases as this it is politic or wise to imprison for opinions--whether men ought to be punished for uttering such sentiments--and I shall have nothing to say to you on that point. We have to decide on the law as we find it. I shall make no law--the judges made no law, but have handed it down from the earliest ages. I should have no more power to alter this than to say the eldest son is not the heir of his father. Allusion has been made to some expressions of mine, when in the course of my duty I directed the attention of the grand jury to these cases. Certainly the printed report was highly incorrect. I said nothing to prejudice them. Inasmuch as this offence directly tended to take away that foundation on which real morality can alone be safely based, I told them what I feel, that without religion there is no morality. I recommended that that foundation may be made by early education and habits of thought, but in so doing I did not mean to prejudge, nor do I seem to have been considered as doing so, I am not going to lay down as law that no man