hose years, when the hey-day of the blood
might well be expected to have gone by, and that, while he preached
morality, he would find no constitutional impediment to prevent his
practising it. I am persuaded, gentlemen, that, if a cause of the
present nature had been brought before you, in which the defendant had
been a young unmarried man, you would have made some allowance for the
infatuation of his youthful passions; but when, as in the present
instance, we find experienced age; the well-informed man; the
promulger of that divine law, which denounces everlasting punishment
to the adulterer, is brought before you, charged, although a married
man, with this offence, I feel I must, indeed, commit an act of
injustice to you all, if I did not declare, that, in such a case, I am
convinced your feeling's cannot be otherwise than aroused to visit
such a criminal with your vengeance.

"My instructions suggest to me more than I will utter; yet, I must
confess, that I have been struck with the sacred profession of the
defendant, and the pertinacity with which it appears he committed the
offence against my client, for which you are now called upon to award
him the only remuneration the law allows; I cannot refrain from
asserting my belief, that the defendant's feelings must have been
strangely perverted; he, doubtless, made his full calculation upon his
outward profession, and his inward inclinations, and, I believe, I do
him no more than justice, when I put into his mouth, and suppose by
him uttered in his private moments, the expression used by an arch
hypocrite of former days:

"I sigh, and with a piece of scripture,
Tell them God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odds and ends stol'n forth of Holy Writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

"I regret, very much regret, gentlemen of the jury, I am thus obliged
as a faithful advocate before you; but I have still another feature
to disclose, and here I must declare, that it has astonished me more
than I shall attempt to describe. I alluded before, gentlemen, to
the circumstance of the defendant's being a married man. Yes! he
has a wife living in Freetown, whom (from fear she should take a
right from his substance) he has turned out upon the world! to the
generosity--the kindness--of the stranger! surely we may infer that he
may be left at home with