Gentlemen, these observations upon the proof on both sides I submit to your most careful and deliberate consideration. You have on the one side a direct and positive proof of _alibi_; which, if the witnesses are not foresworn, must preclude the possibility of the prisoner’s guilt; and that these witnesses have departed from the truth there is not the shadow of reason to suspect. On the other hand, the whole direct evidence against the prisoner is the testimony of two witnesses, who, besides being destitute of all right to be believed as witnesses in any case, have been brought to give evidence in the present in circumstances of the very strongest temptation to convict my unhappy client whether innocent or guilty, as, but for their having accused him, one or both of them must have stood at this bar in his place. It is for you, gentlemen, to consider, under all the circumstances of the case, to which of those contradictory proofs you will adhibit your belief. In the hands of an upright and intelligent jury I leave this unfortunate gentleman, confident that whatever verdict you shall pronounce will be the result of your ripest judgment, tempered, in case of doubt, with that tenderness with which it becomes you to decide when the fame and life of a fellow-citizen are at stake. * * * * * At half-past four o’clock in the morning the Lord Justice-Clerk proceeded to charge the jury. [Illustration: The Lord Justice-Clerk (Lord Braxfield). (From an Engraving by Beugo after the Portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn.)] The Lord Justice-Clerk’s Charge to the Jury. [Sidenote: Lord Justice-Clerk] The LORD JUSTICE-CLERK--Gentlemen of the jury, the crime which is charged against the prisoners at the bar is of a kind the most hurtful to society. The situation of the pannels, and particularly one of them, is also exceedingly distressful. Mr. Brodie’s father, whom I knew, was a very respectable man, and that the son of such a man--himself, too, educated to a respectable profession and who had long lived with reputation in it--should be arraigned at this bar for a crime so detestable, is what must affect us all, gentlemen, with sensations of horror. This unhappy situation seems to have arisen from a habitude of indulging vices which are too prevalent and fashionable, but it affords a striking example of the ruin which follows in their train. That the Excise Office was broke into is not disputed. The question therefore is, who broke into it? Was it the pannels?