ow our still more melancholy duty to apply its salutary, though
severe enactments to a case of a very singular character, in which the
crime (for a crime it is, and a deep one) arose less out of the
malevolence of the heart, than the error of the understanding--less from
any idea of committing wrong, than from an unhappily perverted notion of
that which is right. Here we have two men, highly esteemed, it has been
stated, in their rank of life, and attached, it seems, to each other as
friends, one of whose lives has been already sacrificed to a punctilio,
and the other is about to prove the vengeance of the offended laws; and
yet both may claim our commiseration at least, as men acting in
ignorance of each other's national prejudices, and unhappily misguided
rather than voluntarily erring from the path of right conduct.

"In the original cause of the misunderstanding, we must in justice give
the right to the prisoner at the bar. He had acquired possession of the
enclosure, by a legal contract with the proprietor, and yet, when
accosted with galling reproaches he offered to yield up half his
acquisition, and his amicable proposal was rejected with scorn. Then
follows the scene at Mr. Heskett the publican's, and you will observe
how the stranger was treated by the deceased, and I am sorry to observe,
by those around, who seem to have urged him in a manner which was
aggravating in the highest degree.

"Gentlemen of the jury, it was with some impatience that I heard my
learned brother, who opened the case for the crown, give an unfavourable
turn to the prisoner's conduct on this occasion. He said the prisoner
was afraid to encounter his antagonist in fair fight, or to submit to
the laws of the ring; and that therefore, like a cowardly Italian, he
had recourse to his fatal stiletto, to murder the man whom he dared not
meet in manly encounter. I observed the prisoner shrink from this part
of the accusation with the abhorrence natural to a brave man; and as I
would wish to make my words impressive, when I point his real crime, I
must secure his opinion of my impartiality, by rebutting every thing
that seems to me a false accusation. There can be no doubt that the
prisoner is a man of resolution--too much resolution; I wish to heaven
that he had less, or rather that he had had a better education to
regulate it.

* * * * *

"But, gentlemen of the jury, the pinch of the case lies in the interval