wicked; for all the swearing before the trial, all the swearing at the
trial, and all the swearing of to-day, has proceeded on the presumption,
that if men will have the hardihood to swear, there will be found those
who will have the credulity to believe.

Your Lordship has reported to the Court to-day, the evidence that was
given on the part of Mr. Cochrane Johnstone and Mr. De Berenger, the
letters which were stated by Mr. Tahourdin to have been written by Mr.
Cochrane Johnstone and Mr. De Berenger, on the 22d February, the day
after this fraud had been perpetrated. Whether Mr. Tahourdin deposed to
that which was correctly true, or not, appears to me to make no
difference. If the letters were written at a period subsequent to their
dates, they were fabricated for the purpose of constituting an
artificial defence. If they were written at the time they bear date,
then they were equally fabricated for an artificial defence; and at the
very moment of the commission of the crime, the parties were providing
the means of a false defence, in case they should be detected.

There was a flat contradiction between Mr. Tahourdin and the letter
which Mr. Tahourdin produced; whether the evidence of the witness were
true, or the statement in the letter were true, matters not; the
contradiction, independent of all other circumstances, shews that the
whole of this transaction was one premeditated scheme of fraud.

There was still more evidence respecting De Berenger; a number of
witnesses were called to swear, that at the time when he was proved to
have been at Dover, he was actually in London, or at least in London so
short a time before, that he could not by possibility have been at
Dover. The persons who formed this scheme totally forgot the sort of
case they had to meet: they were endeavouring to meet a case of
recognition of the human countenance, by witnesses who might be mistaken
in that recognition; and they forgot, that to a recognition of the
countenance, a recognition however which surpassed every thing that ever
fell under my observation, though put to the severest test to which such
testimony was ever exposed--De Berenger, seated among a number of
persons, nothing distinguishing him, nothing to attract the attention of
the witnesses, yet witness after witness, with but a single exception,
on looking round the Court, recognized his person the moment he cast his
eyes upon his countenance.--I say, my Lord, that they who cont