MR. HAMILTON. With submission, I have seen the practice in very great courts, and never heard it deemed unmannerly to— MR. CHIEF JUSTICE. After the Court have declared their opinion, it is not good manners to insist upon a point in which you are overruled. MR. HAMILTON. I will say no more at this time. The Court, I see, is against us in this point—and that I hope I may be allowed to say. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE. Use the Court with good manners and you shall be allowed all the liberty you can reasonably desire. MR. HAMILTON. I thank Your Honor. Then, Gentlemen of the Jury, it is to you that we must now appeal for witnesses to the truth of the facts we have offered, and are denied the liberty to prove. Let it not seem strange that I apply myself to you in this manner. I am warranted by both law and reason. The law supposes you to be summoned out of the neighborhood where the fact is alleged to be committed; and the reason of your being taken out of the neighborhood is because you are supposed to have the best knowledge of the fact that is to be tried. Were you to find a verdict against my client, you must take it upon you to say that the papers referred to in the information, and which we acknowledge we printed and published, are _false, scandalous, and seditious_. But of this I can have no apprehension. You are citizens of New York. You are really what the law supposes you to be, honest and lawful men; and according to my brief, the facts which we offer to prove were not committed in a corner. They are notoriously known to be true. Therefore in your justice lies our safety. And as we are denied the liberty of giving evidence to prove the truth of what we have published, I will beg leave to lay it down as a standing rule in such cases that the suppressing of evidence ought always to be taken for the strongest evidence; and I hope it will have that weight with you. But since we are not admitted to examine our witnesses, I will endeavor to shorten the dispute with Mr. Attorney, and to that end I desire he would favor us with some standard definition of a libel by which it may be certainly known whether a writing be a libel, yes or no. MR. ATTORNEY. The books, I think, have given a very full definition of libel. MR. HAMILTON. Ay, Mr. Attorney, but what standard rule have the books laid down by which we can certainly know whether the words or signs are malicious? Whether they are defamatory? Whether they tend to the breach of the peace, and are a sufficient ground to provoke a man, his family, or his friends to acts of revenge: especially the ironical sort of words? What rule have you to know when I write ironically? I think it would be hard when I say, “Such a man is a very worthy honest gentleman, and of fine understanding,” that therefore I mean, “He is a knave or a fool.”