or less than a process for the ’Benefit of Clergy.’ Thus, my Lord, have I humbly attempted to prove that your punishment of this individual will be in strong and violent opposition to the principles, opinion, and feelings which you have avowed on the Ministerial Benches of the House of Commons; and if the Whig Administration is so infatuatedly base as to call the defendant up for punishment your Lordship will be in the unenviable position of passing a sentence, as Lord Chief Justice of England, against the nature, principles, and objects of which you have expressed little less than abhorrence in the character of Her Majesty’s Attorney-General in the House of Commons. At that period, my Lord, you were the freely and most honourably chosen representative of one of the largest and most enlightened constituencies of Great Britain--the town of Nottingham--and your constituents expressed no dissatisfaction at your speech. Is there not a sympathy between Nottingham and other large, and populous, aud enlightened towns and cities, and between them all and the general population of the empire? I have likewise, my Lord, shown, to the best of my very humble abilities, as a legist, that any punishment inflicted on this individual, violates the only principle on which all punishments can be justified--the prevention of the offence--if it be one. "What, in other respects, will be the effects of this brutal prosecution? Burn Mr. Hetherington alive,--slowly roast him, torture him by every device, hang him, quarter him, and stick his head on Temple-bar, and his quarters on the gates of four of our principal cathedral towns, as in all such cases used to be the practice of our most pious Christian ancestors in ’the good old times’--or let your Lordship pass the most lenient sentence on him, and what will be the result? Will any thing be proved, disproved, strengthened, or invalidated, by either mode of punishment? If divines or laymen argue upon the Scriptures _in toto_ or in parts, _en masse_ or in detail, could any of the disputants establish his point by arguing that Mr. Hetherington or Mr. Snookes, for the names are indifferent, was or was not in gaol, or that the sentence was six days’ or six months’ incarceration--how would the case stand syllogistically? A asserts that the Bible ought to be burnt--A is not prosecuted--ergo, the Bible ought to be burnt. B asserts that the Bible ought to be burnt--B is prosecuted--B is acquitted by the Jury--ergo, the Bible ought to be burnt. C asserts that the Bible ought to be burnt--C is prosecuted--C is found guilty--ergo, the Bible ought not to be burnt. Again, D, E, F, and G, are prosecuted for saying that the Bible ought to be burnt. They are all found guilty under different Judges, and their sentences vary from three, six, twelve, and eighteen months’ imprisonment. Here the public mind is in utter confusion between the cases of A, B, and C, and between