On this ground, also, I claim and am entitled to your verdict. Gentlemen, the Attorney-General has not done justice to Mr. Haslam; he has dwelt upon the passages contained in the indictment, but has left the Jury in total ignorance of the general nature of the work. In many parts of the book are to be found passages of great beauty. So far from a charge of blasphemy fairly attaching to Mr. Haslam’s Letters, he uniformly declares that he rejects the Jewish Scriptures because they are _irrational_, and _dishonour_ the God "that governs the universe." I will read a passage from his Second Letter, which shows the veneration he entertains for the Deity. "But is it not monstrous, that that power which gives life and motion to millions of worlds; which guides them in their eternal revolutions in the boundless ocean of space, and which preserves them in everlasting order and harmony; is it not monstrous that that power should be represented in this ridiculous point of view? Vain, violent, and boisterous, without the least indication of any thing rational, good, or merciful in any of his proceedings. Such a God may be the God of the Christians, but he is not the God who governs the universe. That God is no more to be compared to the Bible God, than the dazzling sun is to be compared to the glimmering light of a candle." Mr. Haslam’s work has many other passages of the same description; and the Attorney-General will see that the passage in the Eighth Letter--almost the only objectionable passage in the work--was not deliberately designed to give offence, when I tell him that the author, in deference to the opinion of his friends, has cancelled the objectionable passage, and re-written it. Now what would the learned Attorney-General have more? The object of prosecution has been always held to be preventive, or corrective, not vindictive. The object sought, then, is already attained. Mr. Haslam has anticipated your wishes by correcting the objectionable passage. Gentlemen, I have urged sufficient, I hope, to induce you to give me your verdict; but before I conclude, I will read a passage from the works of Dean Swift, which is worthy of your profound attention. "Whoever," he says, "could restore, in any degree, brotherly love among men, would be an instrument of more good to society than ever was or will be done by all the statesmen in the world."