l, destitute of friends, and
unassisted by counsel, attempt something perhaps like argument in my
defence. What I have to say will be but short, and that brevity may be
the best part of it.

"My Lord, the tenor of my life contradicts this indictment. Who can
look back over what is known of my former years, and charge me with one
vice--one offence? No! I concerted not schemes of fraud--projected no
violence--injured no man's property or person. My days were honestly
laborious--my nights intensely studious. This egotism is not
presumptuous--is not unreasonable. What man, after a temperate use of
life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, without one single
deviation from a sober and even tenor of conduct, ever plunged into
the depth of crime precipitately, and at once? Mankind are not
instantaneously corrupted. Villainy is always progressive. We decline
from right--not suddenly, but step after step.

"If my life in general contradicts the indictment, my health at that
time in particular contradicts it yet more. A little time before, I
had been confined to my bed, I had suffered under a long and severe
disorder. The distemper left me but slowly, and in part. So far from
being well at the time I am charged with this fact, I never, to this
day, perfectly recovered. Could a person in this condition execute
violence against another?--I, feeble and valetudinary, with no
inducement to engage--no ability to accomplish--no weapon wherewith
to perpetrate such a fact;--without interest, without power, without
motives, without means!

"My Lord, Clarke disappeared: true; but is that a proof of his
death? The fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort, from such
a circumstance, is too obvious to require instances. One instance is
before you: this very castle affords it.

"In June 1757, William Thompson, amidst all the vigilance of this place,
in open daylight, and double-ironed, made his escape; notwithstanding an
immediate inquiry set on foot, notwithstanding all advertisements, all
search, he was never seen or heard of since. If this man escaped
unseen through all these difficulties, how easy for Clarke, whom
no difficulties opposed. Yet what would be thought of a prosecution
commenced against any one seen last with Thompson?

"These bones are discovered! Where? Of all places in the world, can we
think of any one, except indeed the church-yard, where there is so great
a certainty of finding human bones, as a hermitage?