the Attorney-General's consent. The trial was proceeded
with before Justice Willis at the opening of the Court on the morning of
Monday, the 14th. The defendants, upon being arraigned, pleaded "Not
guilty." The proceedings extended over two days, during which the same
evidence was given that had been adduced at the trial in 1817. All the
horrible details of the duel were revived for the edification of a
crowded Court-room. Many of the spectators, as well as the Judge
himself, were affected to tears. The custom of society was once more
successfully pleaded in extenuation of a cruel and dastardly murder. As
the chief offender had himself escaped scot-free, however, it would have
seemed anomalous to punish the accessaries. The charge from the bench
was eloquent and judicial, and the jury were absent from the box only
ten minutes, when they returned into Court with a verdict of acquittal.

The trial of the type-rioters next required consideration. Collins's
counsel moved for leave to the prosecutor to conduct this case also by
private counsel, but to this the Attorney-General firmly refused to
consent. It was urged that one of the accused was his nephew, and that
two others had been clerks in his office at the time of the outrage. No
matter; he was determined to withstand any further interference with
Crown prosecutions on the part of the bar. There was no telling, he
remarked, where such interference would end. There had already been too
much of it. He was about to proceed with the prosecution, when Mr. Rolph
arose on behalf of Collins, and expressed a wish that, as the painful
investigation of the murder case had been finished, the prosecutions for
libel might be discontinued. Judge Willis warmly seconded the proposal,
and further suggested that the prosecution of the type-rioters might
also be dropped. The type-rioters, however, were ready and waiting for
their trial, and, through their counsel, objected to any abandonment so
far as they were concerned. It was urged on their part that they had
never wished to avoid prosecution, but had rather courted it; that they
would accept of no compromise of a proceeding which had been maliciously
and vexatiously instituted, not by the person injured, but by one who,
being brought into Court for libel, had been received as a sort of
public prosecutor, and allowed to harass them by raking into old
transactions which had long since been investigated and atoned for. They
insisted upon