Gentlemen of the Jury, our great and popular moralist, Dr. Johnson, has declared that "Truth is the basis of all excellence." This axiom is so clear and indisputable, that no intelligent man can hesitate to adopt it. How, then, can the truth, upon the various subjects interesting to human beings, be elicited? Not by letting interested men think for us, but by judging for ourselves--by collecting and examining facts and arguments, and communicating to society the impressions they respectively make upon our minds. There is no effectual mode of arriving at truth, but by the exercise of the right of free inquiry, and the unrestricted publication of the result of such inquiry. This right has been deemed of pre-eminent importance from time immemorial, and by men of all sects and parties; and although corrupt and tyrannical rulers in the past ages of the world have prosecuted honest men, and endeavoured to suppress the truth, you will find that in every case to which I shall call your attention, the intrepid advocates of truth have ultimately triumphed. Now, Gentlemen of the Jury, I will proceed at once to fortify myself with a few authorities,--not that I think truth depends upon great names, however numerous and illustrious they may be, but because I am determined to advance nothing that is not, in my opinion, strictly true, and sanctioned and maintained by the greatest intellects of the age. Gentlemen, I will begin with a Bishop. "God has given us rational faculties to guide and direct us, and we must make the most of them that we can; we must judge with our own reasons, as well as see with our own eyes; and it would-be very _rash, unmanly, and base_ in us to muffle up our own understandings, and deliver our reason and faith over to others blindfold."--_Bishop Burnett’s Thirty-nine Articles_, A. 39. "Gentlemen of the Jury, will you, by your verdict, consign a man to a dungeon, because he is too honest and independent to act a ’_rash, unmanly, and base_’ part? Will you declare, by your verdict, that henceforth we shall not ’_judge_ with our own reasons, nor _see_ with our _own eyes_?’ I feel confident you will not. "_Dr. Whitby_, in his _Last Thoughts_, tells us, "that belief or disbelief can neither be a virtue or a crime, in any one who uses the best means in his power of being informed. "If a proposition is _evident_, we cannot avoid believing it; _and where is the merit or piety of a necessary assent?_ If it is _not evident_, we cannot help rejecting it, or doubting of it; _and where is the crime of not performing impossibilities, or not believing what does not appear to us to be true?_"