ABSTRACT
May it please your Lordship, and you Gentlemen of the Jury, it is a painful circumstance to any person of feeling, who has attended this Court on this sessions, to think of the number of culprits, that are brought here for such a variety of crimes: in the morning we heard of burglaries, of highway robberies, of pocket picking; we are now about to prove a crime … of a very different, and of a most enormous nature: a crime which has been held by the laws of all civilized countries, justly deserving to be punished with the most extreme rigour. But it would ill become me, Gentlemen of the Jury …. and also be utterly inconsistent with my feelings as a man, to attempt any appeal to yours; I shall therefore barely mention the facts … [which] will be proved in evidence before you, for it is from them alone you must decide.
