It does, indeed, seem to me that this is a singularly unfortunate time to bring on this trial. But yet, gentlemen, I feel buoyed up with hope, because I know the unbending integrity of the Judges that officiate, and I know that the Jury, which sits in judgment over the lives of these men, is chosen from the citizens of New York--a city in which, if any city in the world possesses large, liberal, and enlightened views, we may hope to find them. But, still, the officers of the Government must excuse me for saying that I think it unfortunate, and somewhat illiberal in them, considering the character of the charge made against these men, to try them now. It does seem to me that it is, at best, but trying treason with an odious name. Gentlemen, this is no new thing. Years ago this very question, as to the propriety of trying men situated as these men are, was brought before the mind of that liberal and enlightened statesman, Edmund Burke--the long-tried and faithful friend of America; and I trust that I may be pardoned for referring to his words on this occasion, and for reading to you a passage from his celebrated letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, in 1777, which, perhaps, will more fully illustrate my views than anything I can say. Speaking about American privateersmen, then in the same position as these men now are, he says: "The persons who make a naval warfare upon us, in consequence of the present troubles, may be rebels; but to treat and call them pirates is confounding, not only the natural distinction of things, but the order of crimes; which, whether by putting them from a higher part of the scale to the lower, or from the lower to the higher, is never done without dangerously disordering the whole frame of jurisprudence. "Though piracy may be, in the eye of the law, a less offence than treason, yet, as both are, in effect, punished with the same death, the same forfeiture, and the same corruption of the blood, I never would take from any fellow-creature whatever any sort of advantage which he may derive to his safety from the pity of mankind, or to his reputation from their general feelings by degrading his offence, when I cannot soften his punishment. "The general sense of mankind tells me, that those offences which may possibly arise from mistaken virtue are not in the class of infamous actions. "Lord Coke, the oracle of the English law, conforms to that general sense, where he says, 'That those things which are of the highest criminality may be of the least disgrace.' * * * * * "If Lord Balmerine, in the last rebellion, had driven off the cattle of twenty clans, I should have thought it would have been a scandalous and low juggle, utterly unworthy of the manliness of an English judicature, to have tried him for felony as a stealer of cows.