ys viewed in the eye of the
law as a heinous offence; and where a number of persons connect
themselves together in order to carry into execution a plan which one
alone cannot carry into execution, and where that is done with the
evident intention of fraud, to put money into the pockets of certain
persons, and by that means to defraud others, such an offence is and
always has been considered in the eye of the law as an infamous offence,
and calling upon the court who are to administer the justice of the
country for a punishment, as far as they can inflict it, proportionate
to the infamy of the crime.

It is with pain that the court in passing sentence upon the defendants
have to advert to those circumstances, which, applying to particular
persons, appear to aggravate the guilt of the offence of which they have
been convicted; it is painful for the court to observe, that among those
who stand for judgment there should be any person whose situation from
rank, connections, education, and every thing held honourable among
mankind, ought to have felt himself so far above being connected with
persons of the description with whom he has been connected, and mixing
in traffic with which he has been mixed, which independently of the
crime of which he has been convicted is disgraceful and disreputable to
any man, I mean gambling in the funds to the amount and to the extent to
which it is proved; it is painful for the court to have to animadvert
upon such an offence in such a subject; and more painful to feel, that
in the exercise of their duty they are bound to say, that the greater
opportunity which a defendant had of knowing his duty, and the higher he
felt in rank and in situation, and the less temptation he ought to have
felt to have offended the laws of his country, in this respect the
heavier falls the weight of guilt upon him.

Another observation which one cannot fail to make in the present
instance, is, that in the course of this inquiry, certainly with respect
to the defence made by the defendant De Berenger, one cannot find any
circumstances of which the court can lay hold, as a ground upon which
they can mitigate the offence which the law calls for to be inflicted
upon that defendant, because after a weight of evidence not depending
upon the testimony of two, three, four or six persons, as to the
identity of the man and his clothes, an attempt was made at the trial to
delude the jury and the court, by inducing them to