Influenced as
they must have been by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, they
could perhaps have found no other verdict. What of that charge? Any
strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill-befit the
solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my
lord--you who preside on that bench--when the passions and the
prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own
conscience, and ask of it, was your charge what it ought to have
been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown? My
lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it
may seal my fate; but I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may
cost--I am here to regret nothing I have ever done, to regret nothing
I have ever said--I am here to crave with no lying lip the life I
consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it. Even
here--here, where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left
their foot-prints in the dust--here, on this spot, where the shadows
of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an
unanointed soil open to receive me--even here, encircled by these
terrors, that hope which first beckoned me to the perilous sea on
which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, and enraptures
me.
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