It was said, on the other side of the bar, that it was of no avail to prove an _alibi_ which was merely confined to the city. This is strange doctrine, gentlemen, and perfectly new. That an _alibi_ may be proved with greater certainty when the distance is greater than when it is small, I do not dispute; but does it follow that it may not be proved though the distance be ever so short? Suppose a felony to have been committed this day under that window, and that I should be accused of having been an actor in it. Could not I, gentlemen, bring sufficient evidence of an _alibi_, although within a few yards of the place where it was perpetrated? Could I not substantiate, by this numerous and respectable assembly, that I was here from nine in the morning till the present hour, employed in such a manner as to exclude the possibility of my being any way concerned in such felony? And could it be objected to such evidence that I had not proved myself absent from town, and that my _alibi_ was confined to within a few feet of the place where the fact was committed? It is to no purpose to say that the witnesses may not be accurate as to time, and that, making a small allowance for mistakes, the facts they swear to may be true, consistently with the evidence of Brown and Ainslie. For supposing Mr. Sheriff to have been mistaken as to the precise time he left the prisoner that night, he could not be mistaken as to his being constantly with him from the time of dinner till the time he left him, whatever it was; and this alone must defeat the testimony of Brown and Ainslie, who swear to the prisoner’s having been there in the afternoon long before the meeting, previous to their setting out for the Excise Office, which cannot possibly be true, if Mr. Sheriff’s evidence is to be believed. Here, then, is the most unequivocal and positive proof that the prisoner, Mr. Brodie, could have no accession whatever to this robbery of the Excise Office, unless you, gentlemen, shall conclude that the whole of these witnesses, consistent as they are and corroborated by circumstances the most simple and natural, have perjured themselves wilfully and deliberately; while Brown and Ainslie, witnesses, from their character, unworthy of all belief and swearing in circumstances the most suspicious, are deponing in the utmost purity of truth and fairness.