Gentlemen of the Jury, I must bring this defence to a close. Already it is too long for your patience, though far too short for the mighty interest at stake, for it is the Freedom of a Nation which you are to decide upon. I have shown you the aim and purposes of the Slave Power--to make this vast Continent one huge Despotism, a House of Bondage for African Americans, a House of Bondage also for Saxon Americans. I have pointed out the course of Despotism in Monarchic England; you have seen how there the Tyrants directly made wicked laws, or when that resource failed, how they reached indirectly after their End, and appointed officers to pervert the law, to ruin the people. You remember how the King appointed base men as Attorneys and Judges, and how wickedly they used their position and their power, scorning alike the law of God and the welfare of Man. "The Judges in their itinerant Circuits," says an old historian,[226] "the more to enslave the people to obedience, being to speak of the king, would give him sacred titles as if their advancement to high places must necessarily be laid upon the foundation of the People's debasement." You have not forgotten Saunders, Kelyng, and Jeffreys and Scroggs; Sibthorpe and Mainwaring you will remember for ever,--denouncing "eternal damnation" on such as refused the illegal tax of Charles I. or evinced an express disapprobation of his tyranny. [Footnote 226: In 2 Kennett, 753.] Gentlemen, you recollect how the rights of the jury were broken down,--how jurors were threatened with trial for perjury, insulted, fined, and imprisoned, because they would be faithful to the Law and their Conscience. You remember how the tyrannical king clutched at the People's purse and their person too, and smote at all freedom of speech, while the purchased Judges were always ready, the tools of Despotism. But you know what it all came to--Justice could not enter upon the law through the doors of Westminster Hall; so she tried it at Naseby and Worcester and with her "Invincible Ironsides" took possession by means of pike and gun. Charles I. laid his guilty head on the block; James II. only escaped the same fate by timely flight. If Courts will not decree Justice, then Civil War will, for it must be done, and a battle becomes a "Crowning Mercy."