highly respectable Counsel, declared that they would suffer prejudice if they were put upon their trial on all the charges, and it was not for the Court to say whether that might or might not be the case. Three consecutive trials might or might not be beneficial to the prisoner. In his opinion they were more advantageous to the Prosecutor. By this means he learned how to conduct his case; and if he saw a link awanting in one trial, he might endeavour, by means of additional evidence, to supply it in the next. It did appear to him, therefore, that what the pannels asked for by the mouths of their counsel, was calculated to do them more prejudice than submitting to go to trial upon the indictment as it now stood. But they had doubtless been well and judiciously advised, and were prepared to take the consequences. He held, however, that the Prosecutor had done right in including both of them in the same indictment; and that by doing so he had taken the only and most effectual means in his power not to prejudice them either in preparing for their defence or on their trial. He well remembered a case in which the danger, disadvantage, and odium attending consecutive trials were strikingly exemplified. It happened in consequence of the Aberdeen riots, and the parties were brought to trial at the instance of a private prosecutor. His Lordship was counsel for the pannels, and they were acquitted. Not satisfied with this, however, the private prosecutor reared up a new indictment upon new grounds. And he could never forget the feeling which was excited, by this attempt to bring the parties acquitted to a second trial, in the Court, the Bar, and the country at large; there was one general cry of indignation against a proceeding so shameless and oppressive; the consequence of which was, that the private prosecutor became alarmed, and the attempt was quashed. This was the natural course of things. And, in general, it was lenity, and humanity, and justice, to include all such cases in the same indictment. In the present instance, no result such as that which took place in Aberdeen was to be feared. But the Court being clearly vested with a discretion, and the pannels having strongly appealed to that discretion, it was his opinion that the cases should be tried separately.