in the box were brought with other papers, and
were packed by a lady, for the purpose of wrappers, &c., for plants.
The pamphlets given to him in New York, by a person from whom he had
purchased a book, he had received without any knowledge of their
contents, and the package remained unopened in his trunk until it was
taken by the constables. No mischief had been produced; no insurrection
raised; no human being injured, except the unfortunate traverser
himself, whom, after an incarceration of eight months, the prosecutor
wishes you still further to punish. This was a reproach to our
community; a burlesque of our courts of justice; it had no support in
principle or reason. Was this the boasted intelligence, spirit, and
generosity of the South!

From a review of the testimony it would be found that the traverser
came into possession of the papers innocently; that he retained them
innocently; and that they were never distributed by him.

Mr. Coxe then proceeded to maintain, at length, that, granting the
publication, there was nothing in the quotations from the pamphlets
incorporated in the indictment from which a criminal intent could be
inferred. If there was no criminal matter in the extracts, then there
was no crime charged. He went on to prove that they did not contain a
single sentiment or expression on the subject of slavery, and its
political, moral, and social results, which had not also been used by
slaveholders; by the statesmen, and lawyers, and writers of the South.

Mr. Coxe proceeded to compare the language charged as seditious in the
indictment, with passages from colonization speeches made by Mr. Key
himself; by Mr. Archer, Mr. Custis, Bishop Smith, General Harper;
by Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention; Mr. Pinckney, in the
Legislature of New York; by Mr. Jefferson, in his notes on Virginia;
by Judge Tucker, in his notes to Blackstone's Commentaries; and by
other distinguished gentlemen at the South.

Neither he, nor the jury, nor the District Attorney, could distinguish
the language and sentiment of one of those parties from the other. If
there was any difference it was in this, that the northern publications
were somewhat more temperate than the others. The controversy which had
grown up between the rival Societies for Colonization and Abolition had
given birth to this excitement. Which of them was right, or whether they
were both right or wrong, was not now a matter in issue; but he would
allu