course of this trial, turn out to be not unimportant, the dirt arising from the breaking up of ships; you will by and by see the importance of that observation; upon the door being opened, the Prisoner came into the house, and flew immediately to the assistance of Mr. Blight; there was an interchange of affectionate expressions between them, and a desire, on the part of the Prisoner, that assistance might be immediately fetched, and you will find the servant got out of the kitchen window, and went to Frost's, who had been there the preceding night; he came immediately, and will describe the state in which he found him.

I take the liberty of saying, that my view of this cause is, that the evidence will exclude the possibility of any other person than the Prisoner having committed this horrid act; this is my first position; and I will tell you upon what it stands, the gates of the yard were close shut and fastened; the small gate was close shut, the state of the tide was such that nobody could have escaped that way, and to put it out of all doubt, there were, most providentially, within view of all those parts from which any stranger who had found access to the house of Mr. Blight and shot him could have escaped by land; I mean in contradistinction to their escape by water over the wharf; there were, I say, assembled several persons, who will be called as witnesses, one of them bearing a lighted link, who will tell you, with absolute certainty, that in fact no person did escape that way-could they, then, escape any other way? No, for the reasons which I have already stated, that if they had attempted to escape by the wharf, they would have had the chance of breaking their necks by the height they must necessarily jump, or of being suffocated in the mud into which they must immediately sink; therefore, my position is, that this is the only hand by which the murder could have been perpetrated.

Now, Gentlemen, to see whether there are not circumstances to induce a belief that the Prisoner did perpetrate the murder, we find him in a situation

in which, if he had the guilty purpose, he might with ease accomplish it. He has his friend sitting now in a state approaching towards sleep; he goes for a real or for a pretended purpose from him; he absents himself long enough certainly to go to the counting-house, if in that counting-house there was an instrument of death, and that time enough to return back again into the house. Give me leave to ask, what would have been the conduct of an innocent man, placed as the Prisoner was, in relation to Mr. Blight, upon the evening of Monday the 23d of September, if he had occasion to leave him for a single moment? If he was persuaded that his life was in danger, he well knew how the fact was; his conscience could inform him whether the shot of the preceding Thursday was the shot of an hostile hand or his own. If he was really impressed with an opinion that Mr. Blight's life was aimed at (for he disclaims any suspicion that any body means to attack his own), would he have left his friend in the circumstances that I have stated? Would he have left him with the door of that parlor open in which he was then composing himself to sleep? Would he have passed through that street-door in order to go upon his own necessary occasion without pulling it after him? For the spring lock, without any effort of his, would have shut it. Would he have passed with his key to the counting-house, and then on to this place,* shutting that counting-house door after him; and, above all when he heard the alarm of the pistol-shot, would he have been found in the place in which the evidence finds him? If I have excluded evey other hand; if I have shewn you the probability that the Prisoner was the guilty hand, you will ask me another question. You will ask me, what was, or what could be the motive for a deed of such complicated atrocity? Generally speaking, Gentlemen, when that question is put to a prosecutor's counsel, he has but an unsatisfactory answer to give. There is no motive that

*Pointing to the privy, and other parts of the premises, on the model, as described on the plan annexed to the trial.

can be adequate to make its impression upon a virtuous and good mind to occasion the death of one of his fellow-creatures. We must search into other causes for motives than into the causes which spring out of virtue and morality; but we do know, that those causes are to be found in the bad and corrupt passions of the human heart; that envy, jealousy, long-conceived hatred; above all, Gentlemen, I am afraid the love of inordinate gain, which can be obtained only by putting another to death, are found in the history of the depravity of the human heart, to be causes that produce these dreadful events. I shall shew that these causes, up to a most alarming degree, were certainly operating upon the Prisoner at the bar. I shall shew, by his declarations previous, I shall shew by his declarations subsequent to the murder, that there is not only the utmost probability, but that the circumstances almost exclude the possibility, of charity hanging a doubt upon it that he did the deed; and that he did it for the causes which I have stated to you.

Gentlemen, let us look at the pecuniary concerns of this gentleman; and let us see how the Prisoner conducts himself upon them; but before I come to that, it may be proper to proceed a little more in the detail of the narrative of the transaction. I have said, that in my judgment there is no other hand that could have done this. Well, but is there any body else upon whom any suspicion has fallen? Yes, there is; and we shall see who has created that suspicion. Is there any man whom the conimon acquaintances of that man, and Mr. Blight, can point out as a man likely to do this? I remember a case, a very remarkable one, which I am sure his Lordship will recollect; and probably you may have heard of the case of a man of the name of Bensteed, prosecuted at Bury, who had long had a grudge with a neighbouring farmer; he had impounded his cow, and when the man went to feed his cow, he set a boy, who was half an idiot, with a gun, when that man came to feed his cow, to shoot and destroy him; this proceeding from malice, an old grudge: Show me some man that had a grudge against Mr. Blight, and

then I will look about, and see what account that man can give of himself at the time this murder was committed.

You will find that one of the most intelligent persons with whom I have the honor to be acquainted, to speak of whom in his peculiar profession is to name excellence in that profession, I mean Mr. Astley Cooper, was called upon to attend Mr. Blight in consequence of the wound which he had received, and he did that which was natural for every body to do, but which it was abundantly the duty of the pri soner to do, to look about to enquire who could have done this, to search his own recollection, and enquire of others, upon whom the suspicion might fall, and trace that suspicion home. Mr. Cooper asked Mr. Blight, is there any body that you suspect? now, Gentlemen, I entreat your attention to this circumstance; the enquiry is made by Mr. Cooper, in the presence of the Prisoner; the deceased is asked, Is there any body that you suspect? the good man himself has a mind free from all suspicion, the last man in the world upon whom his suspicions could have fallen certainly was the Prisoner; he had, indeed, no suspicion of him, nor of any body else, but his answer to the interrogatory of Mr. Cooper was this, "Mr. Patch has mentioned to me that there is reason to suspect one Webster."-Mr. Patch tells ne, there is reason to suspect one Webster-Upon what ground does Mr. Patch suspect one Webster? how has he followed up his suspicion? what has he done?-has he desired any body to go and see whether Webster was at home?-has he desired any body to find out his haunts to enquire about him?—what, again, is the ground upon which his suspicion rests? Mr. Cooper, upon hearing this, naturally says, addressing himself to the Prisoner, "Who is this Webster?" oh, a man who is suspected of having stolen Mr. Blight's planks, and whose son has absconded. Now, if the surrounding circumstances of a transaction will lead the world to look to me as the perpetrator of a deed of guilt, I shall best protect myself by getting rid of that suspicion, by giving it a

different direction, and turning it to another.-Let me see, then, whether this is a bona fide suspicion of the Defendant, whether he did really suspect Webster, whether he had any ground upon which to suspect him, or whether he did not know that it was a groundless assertion, made only to divert Mr. Blight's mind from his real murderer. One should have thought that however painful and distressing to the mind of a dying friend to entertain a suspicion which would attach the crime of base black ingrati tude, of an inhuman unnatural attempt against his life, to be executed by deliberate and most determi. ned unheard-of contrivance and artifices, to one who had been living under his roof and protection, and deriving all his benefits from his generous friendship; I say, however painful such a suspicion must have been, and however reluctant the human mind would naturally be to give it reception, yet if Mr. Blight had been left coolly to deliberate upon all the extraordinary circumstances of his most calamitous case, it was next to impossible that a suspicion should not have glanced at the person now accused as his murderer.

It was therefore well to discard all that suspicion, or to prevent its arising in the mind of the deceased, by giving it another direction, and the Prisoner gives it a direction to Webster; then you will take it for ganted that he gave some information to the magistrates against Webster, that he put the Police in activity against Webster; he tells Mr. Cooper not only that he is suspected by him, because he has stolen some of Mr. Blight's deals, he tells him his house has been searched; that generates resentment; and above all, to confirm the suspicion, his son has absconded— who told him so? I will prove that there is not the least foundation, in fact, for the assertion; I will prove that Webster was not the murderer, by shewing where he was, and fully accounting for his time; I will prove that his son never did abscond, and that therefore the Prisoner never could have believed that he did; he had, in fact, left London some time before,