For the purpose not certainly of clearing up the question, but of sophisticating a very plain case, it will perhaps be asked, whether, if a man should avow himself before a Committee of the House of Commons to have been guilty of a crime, or to have partaken in it, is it meant to be contended that his candour is to be the safeguard of his guilt? One short answer is, that the remark is inapplicable to the case; for no such avowal has been even contended to have been made, but on the contrary a distinct and repeated general and circumstantial disavowal was made. Whether my declarations did or did not amount to such degree of information in my mind, at the time of giving my evidence, as presumed a knowledge two years before, that would be brought under the description of the _guilty knowledge_ described in legal phraseology, in an Act of Parliament, very obscure as is generally admitted, and never before put in practice, this was the utmost that the ingenuity of the prosecution could make out of my evidence--and this cannot be called an avowal of crime. The question is not, whether a crime avowed before a Committee of the House of Commons should or should not be prosecuted, using the avowal as one of the means of conviction--a question, which even so put is argued, I believe, on both sides by eminent lawyers--but whether in my case, such as it is, I have not a right to complain of the grossest and most unparalleled breach of good faith--whether the use made of my evidence is not one against which the conscience of every man revolts--whether it is likely to facilitate the public service, or to increase the respect due to the British Legislature at home and abroad, or to their proceedings--even if in other respects the course adopted is free from legal objections, which I believe is at least doubtful. The fact itself is unquestionable, and I must repeatedly assert it--that the materials for my prosecution were collected from my own evidence as laid before the public, in the printed Report of the Committee, for whose information it was given--that in collecting these materials the statements, although formally read as they were made, were virtually vitiated--that, although the whole was read, only that part which was thought susceptible of some adverse construction was avowed to be of any necessary weight; and statements, such as they were, which had been _made in 1842_, after information that was at any rate only furnished in that year, were applied for the purpose of raising _a presumption of guilty knowledge in 1840_.