as to make her delighted with having confided so sacred a trust to his honour-Did you so act? Did she feel that, however precious to your heart, she was still more exalted and honoured in your reverence and respect? Or did she find you coarse and paltry, fluttering and unpurposed, unfeeling, and ungrateful? You found her a fair and blushing flower, its beauty and its fragrance bathed in the dews of heaven. Did you so tenderly transplant it, as to preserve that beauty and fragrance unimpaired? Or did you so rudely cut it, as to interrupt its nutriment, to waste its sweetness, to blast its beauty, to bow down its faded and sickly head? And did you at last fling it like "a loathsome weed away?" If then to such a woman, so clothed with every title that could ennoble, and exalt, and endear her to the heart of man, you would be cruelly and capriciously deficient, how can a wretched fugitive like this, in every point her contrast, hope to find you just? Send her then away. Send her back to her home, to her child, to her husband, to herself." Alas, there was no one to hold such language to this noble defendant; he did not hold it to himself. But he paraded his despicable prize in his own carriage, with his own retinue, his own servants-this veteran Paris hawked his enamoured Helen from this western quarter of the island to a sea-port in the eastern, crowned with the acclamations of a senseless and grinning rabble, glorying and delighted, no doubt, in the leering and scoffing admiration of grooms and ostlers, and waiters, as he passed.

In this odious contempt of every personal feeling, of public opinion, of common humanity, did he parade this woman to the sea-port, whence he transported his precious cargo to a country, where her example may be less mischievous than in her own; where I agree with my learned colleague in heartily wishing he may remain with her for ever. We are too poor, too simple, too unadvanced a coun

try, for the advancement of such atchievements. When the relaxation of morals is the natural growth and consequence of the great progress of arts and wealth, it is accompanied by a refinement, that makes it less gross and shocking: but for such palliations we are at least a century too young. I advise you, therefore, most earnestly to rebuke this budding mischief, by letting the wholesome vigour and chastisement of a liberal verdict speak what you think of its enormity. In every point of view in which I can look at the subject, I see you are called upon to give a verdict of bold, and just, and indignant, and exemplary compensation. The injury of the plaintiff demands it from your justice; the delinquency of the defendant provokes it by its enormity. The rank on which he has relied for impunity calls upon you to tell him, that crime does not ascend to the rank of the perpetrator, but the perpetrator sinks from his rank, and descends to the level of his delinquency. The style and mode of his defence is a gross aggravation of his conduct, and a gross insult upon you. Look upon the different subjects of his defence as you ought, and let him profit by them as he deserves; vainly presumptuous upon his rank he wishes to overawe you by the despicable consideration. He next resorts to a cruel aspersion upon the character of the unhappy plaintiff, whom he had already wounded beyond the possibility of reparation; he has ventured to charge him with connivance as to that, I will only say, gentlemen of the jury, do not give this vain boaster a pretext for saying, that if her husband connived in the offence, the jury also connived in the reparation. But he has pressed another curious topic upon you. After the plaintiff had cause to suspect his designs, and the likelihood of their being fatally successful, he did not then act precisely as he ought. Gracious God, what an argument for him to dare to advance! It is saying this to him: "I abused your confidence, your

hospitality; I laid a base plan for the seduction of the wife of your bosom; I succeeded at last, so as to throw in upon you that most dreadful of all suspicions to a man fondly attached, proud of his wife's honour, and tremblingly alive to his own; that you were possibly a dupe to the confidence in the wife, as much as in the guest in this so pitiable distress, which I myself had studiously and deliberately contrived for you, between hope and fear, and doubt and love, and jealousy and shame; one moment shrinking from the cruelty of your suspicion; the next, fired with indignation at the facility and credulity of your acquittal; in this labyrinth of doubt, in this phrensy of suffering, you were not collected and composed; you did not act as you might have done, if I had not worked you to madness; and upon that very madness which I have inflicted upon you, upon the very completion of my guilt, and of your misery, I will build my defence. You will not act critically right, and therefore are unworthy of compensation." Gentlemen, can you be dead to the remorseless atrocity of such a defence! And shall not your honest verdict mark it as it deserves? But let me go a little further; let me ask you, for I confess I have no distinct idea, what should be the conduct of an husband so placed, and who is to act critically right? Shall he lock her up, or turn her out, or enlarge or abridge her liberty of acting as she pleases? Oh, dreadful Areopagus of the tea-table! how formidable thy inquests, how tremendous thy condemnations! In the first case he is brutal and barbarous, an odious eastern despot. In the next; what! turn an innocent woman out of his house, without evidence or proof, but merely because he is vile and mean enough to suspect the wife of his bosom, and the mother of his child! Between these extremes, what intermediate degree is he to adopt? I put this question to you at this moment,—uninfluenced by any passion as you now are, but cool and

collected, and uninterested as you must be, do you see clearly this proper and exact line, which the plaintiff should have pursued? I must question if you do. But if you did or could, must you not say, that he was the last man from whom you should expect the coolness to discover, or the steadiness to pursue it? And yet this is the outrageous and insolent defence that is put forward to you. My miserable client, when his brain was on fire, and every fiend of hell was let loose upon his heart, he should then, it seems, have placed himself before his mirror, he should have taught the stream of agony to flow decorously down his forehead; he should have composed his features to harmony; he should have writhed with grace, and groaned in melody. But look farther to this noble defendant, and his honourable defence; the wretched woman is to be successively the victim of seduction, and of slander. She, it seems, received marked attentions -here, I confess, I felt myself not a little at a loss. The witnesses could not describe what these marked attentions were, or are. They consisted, not, if you believe the witness who swore to them, in any personal approach, or contact whatsoever-nor in any unwarrantable topics of discourse. Of what materials then were they composed? Why, it seems, a gentleman had the insolence at table to propose to her a glass of wine, and she, oh most abandoned lady! instead of flying like an angry parrot at his head, and besmirching and bescratching him for his insolence, tamely and basely replies, port, sir, if you please.' But, gentlemen, why do I advert to this folly, this nonsense? Not surely to vindicate from censure the most innocent, and the most delightful intercourse of social kindness, or harmless and cheerful courtesy-" where virtue is, these are most virtuous." But I am soliciting your attention, and your feeling, to the mean and odious aggravation-to the unblushing and remorseless, barbarity, of falsely aspersing the

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wretched woman he had undone. One good he has done, he has disclosed to you the point in which he can feel; for how imperious must that avarice be, which could resort to so vile an expedient of frugality? Yes, I will say, that with the common feelings of a man, he would have rather suffered his thirty thosand a year to go as compensation to the plaintiff, than have saved a shilling of it by so vile an expedient of economy. He would rather have starved with her in a gaǝl, he would rather have sunk with her into the ocean, than have so vilified her,—than have so degraded himself. But it seems, gentlemen, and indeed you have been told, that long as the course of his gallantries has been, and he has grown grey in the service, it is the first time he has been called upon for damages-To how many might it have been fortunate, if he had not that impunity to boast. Your verdict will, I trust, put an end to that encouragement to guilt, that is built upon impunity-the devil it seems has saved the noble marquis harmless in the past; but your verdict will tell him the term of that indemnity is expired, that his old friend and banker has no more effects in his hands, and that if he draws any more upon him, he must pay his own bills himself. You will do much good by doing so; you may not enlighten his conscience, nor touch his heart, but his frugality will understand the hint. It will adopt the prudence of age, and deter him from pursuits, in which, though he may be insensible of shame, he will not be regardless of expense. You will do more, you will not only punish him in his tender point, but you will weaken him in his strong one, his money. We have heard much of this noble lord's wealth, and much of his exploits, but not much of his accomplishments or his wit; I know not that his verses have soared even to the poet's corner. I have heard it said, that an ass laden with gold could find his way through the gate of the strongest city. But, gentlemen,