The libel charged three separate acts; and in the major proposition the crime specified was murder without any aggravation. These murders were detached, as having taken place within the last six months; but they were all committed in Edinburgh, and all were charged as having been perpetrated with the same intent, which however is no aggravation. Murder, indeed, could scarcely admit of aggravation. When a prosecutor libels a positive intent, he is tied down to that, and there is no alternative. These cases were all of the same description--all murders, and all committed with the same intent. He admitted, that looking to the proceedings of the Criminal Court, it might be impossible to find a case of three murders combined in one indictment; but the present was a case unprecedented in the annals of this or of any other civilized country. There were numerous examples, however, where different charges were combined in the same libel. The passage quoted from Sir George Mackenzie did not apply to the case before the Court. It referred to a case of a nature totally different. He then quoted Hume II. 166, and maintained, upon his authority, that the crimes charged being all of the same name and species, might properly be included in the same indictment. It would indeed be dreadful if a prisoner, after having committed three murders, could only be tried for one of them. Mr. Hume referred to the case of James Inglis, tried upon three charges of horse-stealing, each of which, if proved, involved a capital punishment. Now, would not every argument which had been employed against the present libel apply to such a charge? Again, two acts of highway robbery were charged in the same indictment, any one of which would have been sufficient, if proved, to lead to a capital conviction. The whole tenor of our practice, indeed, confirmed this mode of procedure, and, if the contrary obtained--if charges of the same nature and description were put in separate indictments, prisoners would be exposed to the intolerable hardship of undergoing trial day after day; a hardship which he conceived would be incomparably greater than any that could possibly arise from the practice now complained of. He then referred to the case of Nairne and Ogilvie. Here it had been objected that there was a _cumulatio actionum_, but the objection had been repelled. His Lordship then cited the case of James Morton tried at the Glasgow Circuit in 1823 on four separate acts; of Donaldson Buchanan also tried there for stouthrief, housebreaking and theft (all separate acts); of Beaumont, tried at Aberdeen in 1826, where six acts of housebreaking were charged; and of Gillespie, tried at Aberdeen in 1827, upon no less than nine separate acts of forgery. His Lordship then quoted the case of Surridge and Dempster, indicted for two separate acts of murder, committed indeed at the short interval of an hour, but still in all respects completely separate acts. Upon