are admitted that are insisted upon as matter in
charge,) that should come in the original state of the
cause, and the defendant in common justice must be heard
upon that, and then, and then only, come the
observations in reply.

_Mr. Burke._ We do not know, not are informed, that any
charge, information, or indictment, that is before the
court, and upon record, and is not denied by the
defendant, does not stand in full force against him. We
conceive it to be so; we conceive it to be agreeable to
the analogy of all proceedings; and the reason why we
did not go into and insist upon it was, that, having a
very long cause before us, and having the most full and
complete admission upon this subject, we did not proceed
further in it. The defendant defends himself by averring
that _it was not his duty_. It was not our business to
prove that it was his duty. It was he that admitted the
facts assumed to be the foundation of his duty; the
negative he was bound to prove, and he never offered to
prove it. All that I can say upon this point is, that
his delinquency in the matter in question appeared to us
to be a clear, distinct case,--to be a great
offence,--an offence charged upon the record, admitted
upon the record, and never by us abandoned. As to his
defence having been abandoned, we refer your Lordships
to the last petition laid by him upon your table, (that
libellous petition, which we speak of as a libel upon
the House of Commons,) and which has no validity but as
it asserts a matter of fact from the petitioner; and
there you will find that he has declared explicitly,
that, for the accommodation and ease of this business,
and for its expedition, he did abandon his defence at a
certain period.

_Lord Chancellor._ A charge consisting of a variety of
articles in their nature (however connected with each
other in their subject, but in their nature) distinct
and specific, if only certain articles are pressed in
the charge, to those articles only can a defence be
applied; and all the other articles, that are not made
matter of charge _originally_, have never, in the course
of any proceeding whatever, been taken up _originally_
in reply.

_Mr. Burke._ With great respect to your Lordship's
judgment, we conceive that the objection taken from our
no