ischief; and if any one was responsible for any evil effects, supposing
any to accrue, it was Mr. King who had shown it, and left it exposed
openly in a shop. But he argued that the loan of the paper to King was
simple possession--he had afterwards taken it back from the shop, and no
evil had been done or intended.

The intent, he said, must be gathered from the circumstance of the
publication, and not alone from the libel charged; and he then commented
upon the manner in which this paper was taken by Mr. King, and upon his
character as a substantial, respectable man, who had just given the
prisoner a warning, to show that no presumption could arise of an intent
as charged in the indictment. The words "read and circulate," upon which
so much stress had been laid, showed no evidence of an intent to publish
the pamphlets here, for they were put on two years before in Peekskill;
and even the having them brought here was no act of the prisoner's, nor
does it appear that he knew they were in the box.

He went at length into an examination of the evidence tending to show
Crandall's good character, and the accidents which brought him here and
induced him to make it his permanent residence. The trouble and
excitement, he said, had not been owing to the prisoner or to any act of
his, but was entirely owing to the misapplied zeal of the officers, and
to their indiscretion and stupidity. He said he had gone over all the
evidence of publication, and it was certain that no other publication
had been made by him, for the District Attorney would have brought proof
of it; if one had been dropped ten fathoms deep, into the vilest well,
some one would have been found to fish it up.

He traced the course of the prisoner from his boyhood to college, and to
the study of his profession--from that to his settlement at Peekskill;
and urged upon the jury the consideration of his uniformly sustained
character, and of his blameless life. He followed him with Mr. Austin's
family to this city, and afterwards shewed his course to New York, when
the important bundle of abolition tracts was palmed upon him; and then
followed him here with those papers, which he did not even open, and
of which he could not have known the contents, till he was informed by
Mrs. Austin. He had shewn that no Anti-Slavery Society existed where he
came from, and that he had never been a member of any such society. He
had also shewn his acts, in connection with his good char