sel, will grant me a
similar indulgence, and even that you will extend that indulgence
further to me on account of my not appearing by Counsel, for the reasons
which I had the honour to state to you upon a former occasion. In order
that those feelings which must agitate me on the present occasion, may
as little as possible enter into what I have now to state, I have judged
it proper to reduce it to writing; and in order to give the Court as
little trouble as possible, to make my statement as short as the
circumstances of the case appear to me to admit of.

It has been my very great misfortune to be apparently implicated in the
guilt of others with whom I never had any connexion, except in
transactions, so far as I was apprised of them, entirely blameless. I
had met Mr. De Berenger in public company, but was on no terms of
intimacy with him. With Mr. Cochrane Johnstone I had the intercourse
natural between such near relatives. Mr. Butt had voluntarily offered,
without any reward, to carry on stock transactions, in which thousands,
as well as myself were engaged, in the face of day without the smallest
imputation of any thing incorrect. The other four defendants were wholly
unknown to me, nor have I ever, directly or indirectly, held any
communication with them. Of Mr. De Berenger's concern in the fraud, I
have no information, except such as arises out of the late trial. With
regard to Mr. Johnstone and Mr. Butt, I am willing to hope that they are
guiltless. They repeatedly protested to me their innocence. They did not
dare to communicate any such plan to me, if such was projected by them,
or either of them. Be they guilty, then, or be they, one or both,
erroneously convicted, I have only to lament, that, without the most
remote suspicion of their proceedings, if they, or either of them, were
concerned in the fraud, I have, through my blameless intercourse with
them, been subject to imputations which might, with equal justice, have
been cast upon any man who now hears me. Circumstanced as I am, I must
keep myself wholly unconnected with those whose innocence cannot be so
clear to me as my own. Well had it been for me if I had made this
distinction sooner.

I do not stand here to commend myself--unhappily, I must seek only for
exculpation; but I cannot exist under the load of dishonour which even
an unjust judgment has flung upon me. My life has been too often in
jeopardy to make me think much about it; but my honour was