Now, might not the prisoner prove an _alibi_ in regard to one of these crimes though not in regard to the other? But, further, the acts were different. It was in vain to say that all the murders were of the same _genus_, for this might be said of all the murders that ever had been or ever would be committed; and on the face of the indictment they were all different. In the major proposition no aggravation was libelled, but it was said that all these murders had been committed with the intent of disposing of the dead bodies to the Surgeons, or with some other purpose or intent to the Prosecutor unknown. Did the Learned Lord mean to say that he would fail if he did not prove this intent? But that purpose was a separate crime, as was sufficiently manifest from the late case (among others) of Bradwell at Glasgow. It could not, therefore, be maintained that he would fail by not proving the intent--by not proving a different crime from that libelled. It was perfectly plain that it was competent to prove the intent, but the not proving it could not in the least degree affect the libel. The crime consisted in the wilful murder; and unless the motive amounted to a justification, or an alleviation which reduced it to culpable homicide, the intent would be inferred from the fact, and the highest punishment of the law would follow a conviction. The evil of an indictment so framed as the present was to produce an illegitimate effect by this combination of intention or motive with the crime charged. The intent charged might have been laid as a separate offence; but had this been done we should now have been on a different objection, namely the competency of such a charge. To these principles in the abstract, no exception could be taken. Now, the Court would consider the situation in which the pannel was placed. He had been put upon his defence fifteen days after his examination; five declarations emitted by him were libelled on; and most manifestly there did exist great prejudice against him. He did not say that this would be a sufficient reason for postponing the trial, but it was a sufficient reason for the Court taking care that he suffered no injury in his defence. Another matter in which the prisoner was prejudiced, by lumping together separate charges in the same indictment, was in his challenges of the Jurymen. It was evident that the prisoner had an interest that way. He did not know who the Jurymen were to be, and of course could not mean to say that there was any danger of an improper person being balloted; but he had a clear right in the abstract--a right of which he ought not to be deprived. If he had been tried on separate indictments he would have had fifteen challenges, whereas by the combination of the charges in the same indictment he had only five. Now there might be Jurymen liable to challenge in one case and not in another, just as one witness might be perfectly unexceptionable in one