being."-And you know, gentlemen, that she was a common prostitute, taken from the stews of Paris. "A most respectable and decent sort of being compared with that which the radicals have set up as the idol of their worship. They have elevated the goddess of lust on the pedestal of shame; an object of all others the most congenial to their taste, the most deserving of their homage, the most worthy of their adoration. After exhibiting her claims to their favour in two distinct quarters of the globe; after compassing sea and land with her guilty paramour, to gratify to the full her impure desires, and even polluting the Holy Sepulchre itself with her presence, to which she was carried in mock majesty astride upon an ass, -she returned to this hallowed soil so hardened in sin, so bronzed with infamy,-so callous to every feeling of decency or shame, as to go on Sunday last"-here, gentlemen, the reverend preacher alluded, not to the public procession to St. Pauls,— where her late Majesty returned thanks for her delivery, or to other processions which might, partly at least, be considered as political, but to her humble, unaffected, pious devotion in the Church of Hammersmith." to go on Sunday last clothed in the mantle of adultery, to kneel down at the altar of that God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,' when she ought rather to have stood barefooted in the aisle, covered with a shirt as white as unsunned snow,' doing penance for her sins. Till this had been done, I would never have defiled my hands by placing the sacred symbols in hers; and this she would have been compelled to do in those good old days when Church discipline was in pristine vigour and activity."

6

Gentlemen, the author of this scandalous, this infamous libel, is a minister of the Gospel. The libel is a sermon-the act of publication was preaching it-the

place was his church-the day was the Sabbaththe audience was his flock. Far be it from me to treat lightly that office of which he wears the outward vestments, and which he by his conduct profanes. A pious, humble, inoffensive, charitable minister of the gospel of peace, is truly entitled to the tribute of affection and respect which is ever cheerfully bestowed. But I know no title to our love or our veneration which is possessed by a meddling, intriguing, unquiet, turbulent priest, even when he chooses to separate his sacred office from his profane acts; far less when he mixes up both together-when he refrains not from polluting the sanctuary itself with calumny-when he not only invades the sacred circle of domestic life with the weapons of malicious scandal, but enters the hallowed threshold of the temple with the torch of slander in his hand, and casts it flaming on the altar; poisons with rank calumnies the air which he especially is bound to preserve holy and pure-making the worship of God the means of injuring his neighbour; and defiling by his foul slanders the ears, and by his false doctrines perverting the minds, and by his wicked example tainting the lives of the flock committed by Christ to his care!

Of the defendant's motives I say nothing. I care not what they were; for innocent they could not be. I care not whether he was paying court to some patron, or looking up with a general aspect of sycophancy to the bounty of power, or whether it was mere mischief and wickedness, or whether the outrage proceeds from sordid and malignant feelings combined, and was the base offspring of an union not unnatural however illegitimate, between interest and spite. But be his motives of a darker or lighter shade, innocent they could not have been and unless the passage I have read pro

ceeded from innocency, it would be a libel on you to doubt that you will find it a libel.

Of the illustrious and ill-fated individual who was the object of this unprovoked attack, I forbear to speak. She is now removed from such low strife, and there is an end, I cannot say of her chequered life, for her existence was one continued scene of sufferingof disquiet-of torment from injustice, oppression, and animosity-by all who either held or looked up to emolument or aggrandisement—all who either possessed or courted them—but the grave has closed over her unrelenting persecutions. Unrelenting I may well call them, for they have not spared her ashes. The evil passions which beset her steps in life, have not ceased to pursue her memory, with a resentment more relentless, more implacable than death. But it is yours to vindicate the broken laws of your country. If your verdict shall have no effect on the defendant,-if he still go on unrepenting and unabashed, it will at least teach others, or it will warn them and deter them from violating the decency of private life, betraying sacred public duties, and insulting the majesty of the Law.