A month after this awful letter was written, Paine no doubt knew its imprudence. It was sprung on the Court by the Attorney-General, and must alone have settled the verdict, had it not been foregone. Erskine, Paine's leading counsel, was Attorney-General for the Prince of Wales--foremost of "Mr. Guelph's profligate sons,"--and he was compelled to treat as a forgery the letter all felt to be genuine. He endeavored to prevent the reading of it, but Lord Kenyon decided that "in prosecutions for high treason, where overt acts are laid, you may prove overt acts not laid to prove those that are laid. If it [the letter] goes to prove him the author of the book, I am bound to admit it." Authorship of the book being admitted, this was only a pretext. The Attorney-General winced a good deal at the allusion to the profligate sons, and asked: "Is he [Paine] to teach human creatures, whose moments of existence depend upon the permission of a Being, merciful, long-suffering, and of great goodness, that those whose youthful errors, from which even royalty is not exempted, are to be treasured up in a vindictive memory, and are to receive sentence of irremissible sin at His hands?" It may be incidentally remarked here that the Attorney-General could hardly have failed to retort with charges against the author, had not Paine's reputation remained proof against the libellous "biography" by the government clerk, Chalmers. The main part of the prosecution was thus uttered by Paine himself. While reading the letter the prosecutor paused to say: "If I succeed in this prosecution he shall never return to this country otherwise than _in vinculis_, for I will outlaw him."* * 22 Howell's State Trials 357. Other reports are by Joseph Gurney and "by an eminent advocate." The brief evidence consisted mainly of the notes and statements of Paine's publishers already mentioned in connection with the publication of the indicted work. The Attorney-General cited effectively the reply to Paine which he attributed to Vice- President Adams. Publicola's pamphlet gave great comfort to Paine's prosecutors. Mr. Long writes to Mr. Miles, agent in Paris (December 1st), about this "book by the American Adams, which is admirable, proving that the American government is not founded upon the absurd doctrine of the pretended rights of man, and that if it had been it could not have stood for a week." Erskine's powerful defence of the constitutional rights of thought and speech in England is historical. He built around Paine an enduring constitutional fortress, compelling Burke and Fox to lend aid from their earlier speeches. The fable with which he closed was long remembered.