It is true, indeed, that in one of these letters he says that he had no accession to any of their depredations except the last, which is laid hold of as a direct acknowledgment of the crime. But, gentlemen, supposing the word depredation could not be otherwise explained, where is the evidence that the crime in question was the last of which these abandoned ruffians were guilty? and if there were such, it would not be conclusive. The word depredation is generic, and may as well apply to the depredations of the gaming-table as to acts of theft or house-breaking; and as there is but too much reason from the evidence, particularly the process at the instance of Hamilton for defrauding him by false dice, to believe that this unhappy man was not altogether free from accession to depredations that may at the gaming table have been committed by those persons against such as were unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, why should you, gentlemen, to reach the life of a fellow-citizen, construe so equivocal an acknowledgment, couched in so general terms, as applicable to a particular act of guilt; for the proof of which, against this prisoner, you have nothing but the most exceptionable of all human testimony, contradicted by the most direct proof of _alibi_. But this is not all. The terms of this acknowledgment, as repeated in the last of these two scrolls, exclude even the possibility that the prisoner could refer, or mean to refer, to the breaking of the Excise Office as the depredation to which he had an accession; for he expressly says that he lost ten pounds by it; but how, in the nature of things, is it possible that if he had been concerned in that affair he could have thereby lost ten pounds, or any sum whatever, seeing Brown and Ainslie have both sworn that the money was fairly divided, and that each of the parties concerned received four pounds and some old shillings for his share? To what other act of depredation, and whether to any committed at the gaming table, these words refer, it is not for me to suggest nor are you, gentlemen, bound to inquire; though it would seem that depredations at the gaming table are the only attacks upon the property of our neighbour that can be attended with patrimonial loss. It is enough to exclude these scrolls, and also the letters, from operating as evidence of the prisoner’s accession to the crime with which he is charged, that the only accession they acknowledge is inconsistent with the possibility of his guilt; and if he has been so far misguided as to have been concerned with those infamous persons in anything beyond that gambling connection, which he has all along admitted, it must have been some other offence not yet discovered, or not hitherto made the subject of prosecution; which, not being charged in the present indictment, could not have affected the prisoner, though a proof of it had come out in the course of his trial.