y than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury,
is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage
should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?"

Mr. Savage, hearing his defence thus misrepresented, and the men who
were to decide his fate incited against him by invidious comparisons,
resolutely asserted that his cause was not candidly explained, and began
to recapitulate what he had before said with regard to his condition,
and the necessity of endeavouring to escape the expenses of
imprisonment; but the judge having ordered him to be silent, and
repeated his orders without effect, commanded that he should be taken
from the bar by force.

The jury then heard the opinion of the judge, that good characters were
of no weight against positive evidence, though they might turn the scale
where it was doubtful; and that though, when two men attack each
other, the death of either is only manslaughter; but where one is the
aggressor, as in the case before them, and, in pursuance of his first
attack, kills the other, the law supposes the action, however sudden, to
be malicious. They then deliberated upon their verdict, and determined
that Mr. Savage and Mr. Gregory were guilty of murder, and Mr. Merchant,
who had no sword, only of manslaughter.

Thus ended this memorable trial, which lasted eight hours. Mr. Savage
and Mr. Gregory were conducted back to prison, where they were more
closely confined, and loaded with irons of fifty pounds' weight. Four
days afterwards they were sent back to the court to receive sentence,
on which occasion Mr. Savage made, as far as it could be retained in
memory, the following speech:--

"It is now, my lord, too late to offer anything by way of defence or
vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but
the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against
men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded that as mere
men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the
tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation
of those whom the law sometimes perhaps exacts from you to pronounce
upon. No doubt you distinguish between offences which arise out of
premeditation, and a disposition habituated to vice or immorality, and
transgressions which are the unhappy and unforeseen effects of casual
absence of reason, and sudden impulse of passion. We therefore hope
y