, and shew you to moral demonstration, that so far from being
injurious, they were highly salutary, would you, because other juries had
convicted in a state of ignorance, imitate their blindness, and convict
the defendant? Certainly not. Then to apply this to writings,
prosecuted as libels, though there may have been hundreds, and thousands,
nay tens of thousands of convictions upon them, yet, if you should be
convinced, that what are usually called libels (and this among them)
cannot be injurious, but so far from it, that they are innocent and even
salutary to the state, in which they are published, would you hand over
the publisher to punishment by a verdict of guilty? But I am
anticipating, I fear, my defence, and introducing too early observations,
which will better be urged in a subsequent part of my address to you. I
will, therefore, pass at once to the paper charged as a libel in the
indictment, and examine, under what circumstances it has come before you.
And in the first place, as to the publication, without which (whatever
the nature of the writing may be, there can be no crime) who are morally
the publishers of this pamphlet? Have you any evidence, whatever, that
any one of these pamphlets was in circulation, or ever would have been
circulated, but for the impertinent, obtrusive, sordid, and base part of
the ministers of the Constitutional Association? How otherwise is this
pamphlet here? Let us turn back to the evidence of the first witness. He
was the worthy servant of the Association in this and a few other recent
instances, but for the most part, within a year and a half, the servant
of the Society for the Suppression of Vice: a Society very different,
indeed, from that with which we have had to deal to-day;--not that I have
any affection even for that association: I would neither praise nor even
be suspected of approving it, but I will not be so unjust and scandalous
as to compare it with the Constitutional Association. Before this
witness was employed by that society, he was a Custom-house officer. Are
you, I asked him, now a Custom-house officer? No. How comes that? I
lost my place. How old are you? Fifty-four. Have you any pension? No.
Now, gentlemen, I beg to observe, that it is not the habit of the Custom-
house to turn away officers, who have grown grey in their service,
without a pension; unless they have richly deserved to be so discarded
and abandoned. Such, gentlemen, are the ins