"Mr. Hetherington has already suffered in body and mind, in purse and health; and probably awaits with apprehension the sentence, which may consign him to prison and ruin. He is down-stricken by the law; but those who have read his defence, and prefer reason to legal fictions, will place him far above the triumphant Attorney-General. He made an admirable pleading for free inquiry, which plain John Campbell instituted a prosecution to suppress. In his reply Sir John so far overstepped the bounds of propriety, that the Defendant would not allow him to proceed, and was supported by the Court. In a bad cause the Attorney-General used poisoned weapons. He upheld a prosecution for blasphemy, which is as ridiculous as a prosecution for witchcraft, and descended to misrepresent the accused. With our opinion of the law he was enforcing, we are bound to say that Sir John Campbell should have left such a duty to be performed by some taker of a half-guinea fee, who never got beyond the precincts of the Old Bailey. It was wholly unworthy of an eminent lawyer, who has risen into political power as a professed friend of free discussion. The slaves to lust have some pleasure for their punishment, but the servants of the grimgribber of Westminster Hall, who sacrifice present fame to a sense of duty to it, reap little more than disgrace for their nauseous drudgery. "Sir John Campbell prosecuted Mr. Hetherington, in the language of the indictment, for being ’a wicked, impious, and ill-disposed person, having no regard to the laws of this realm, but most wickedly, blasphemously, impiously, and profanely devising and intending to asperse and vilify that part of the Holy Bible which is called the Old Testament.’ Now, having no respect whatever for the fictions of the law, we have no hesitation in branding such accusations of a publisher as a monstrous tissue of falsehoods, and to affirm that it is a disgrace to any man who has the least respect for truth, to defend such a charge. We care not about its being the customary language of the law, for truth and men’s liberties are not to be sacrificed by and for such absurdities.