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altogether, as lay down a principle which limits the conse quences of adultery to what it may be convenient for the adulterer to pay. By the adoption of such a principle, or by any mitigation of severity, arising even from an insufficient reprobation of it, you unbar the sanctuary of domestic happiness, and establish a sort of license for debauchery, to be sued out like other licenses, at its price;-a man has only to put money into his pocket, according to his degree and fortune, and he may then debauch the wife or daughter of his best friend, at the expense he chooses to go to.-He has only to say to himself what Iago says to Rodrigo in the play

"Put money in thy purse-go to-put money in thy purse."

Persons of immense fortunes might, in this way, deprive the best men in the country of their domestic satisfactions, with what to them might be considered as impunity. The most abandoned profligate might say to himself, or to other profligates, "I have suffered judgment by default-let them send down their Deputy Sheriff to the King's-Arms Tavern; I shall be concealed from the eye of the public-I have drawn upon my banker for the utmost damages, and I have as much more to spare to-morrow, if I can find another woman whom I would choose to enjoy at such a price." In this manner I have seen a rich delinquent, too lightly fined by courts of criminal justice, throw down his bank-notes to the officers, and retire with a deportment, not of contrition, but contempt.

For these reasons, Gentlemen, I expect from you to day the full measure of damages demanded by the plaintiff. Having given such a verdict, you will retire with a monitor within, confirming that you have done right-you will retire in sight of an approving public, and an approving Heaven. Depend upon it, the world cannot be held together without morals; nor can morals maintain their station in the human heart without religion, which is the corner-stone of the fabric of human virtue.

We have lately had a most striking proof of this sublime and consoling truth, in one result, at least, of the revolution which has astonished and shaken the earth. Though a false philosophy was permitted for a season to raise up her vain fantastic front, and to trample down the Christian establishments and institutions, yet, on a sudden, God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." The altars of religion were restored; not purged indeed of human errors and superstitions, not reformed in the just sense of reformation, yet the Christian religion is still re-established; leading on to farther reformation;

fulfilling the hope, that the doctrines and practice of Christianity shall overspread the face of the earth.

Gentlemen, as to us, we have nothing to wait for ;—we have long been in the centre of light-we have a true religion and a free government, and you are the pillars and SUPPORTERS OF

BOTH.

I have nothing further to add, except that, since the defendant committed the injury complained of, he has sold his estate, and is preparing to remove into some other country. Be it so. -Let him remove; but you will have to pronounce the penalty of his return. It is for you to declare whether such a person is worthy to be a member of our community. But if the feebleness of your jurisdiction, or a commiseration which destroys the exercise of it, shall shelter such a criminal from the consequences of his crimes, individual security is gone, and the rights of the public are unprotected. Whether this be our condition or not, I shall know by your verdict.

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MR. ERSKINE'S SPEECH,

FOR THE DEFENDANT IN THE CASE OF HOWARD vs. BINGHAM.

GENTLEMEN OF the Jury,

My learned friend, as counsel for the plaintiff, has bespoke an address from me, as counsel for the defendant, which you must not, I assure you, expect to hear. He has thought it right (partly in courtesy to me, as I am willing to believe,) and in part for the purposes of his cause, that you should suppose you are to be addressed with eloquence which I never possessed, and which if I did, I should be incapable at this moment of exerting; because the most eloquent man, in order to exert his eloquence, must have his mind free from embarrassment on the occasion on which he is to speak:-I am not in that condition. My learned friend has expressed himself as the friend of the plaintiff's family:-He does not regard that family more than I do; and I stand in the same predicament towards my own honorable client and his relations; I know him and them, and because I know them, I regard them also: my embarrassment, however, only arises at being obliged to discuss this question in a public court of justice, because, could it have been the subject of private reference, I should have felt none at all in being called upon to settle it.

Gentlemen, my embarrassment is abundantly increased, when I see present a noble person, high, very high in rank in this kingdom, but not higher in rank than he is in my estimation:I speak of the noble Duke of Norfolk, who most undoubtedly must feel not a little, at being obliged to come here as a witness for the defendant, in the cause of a plaintiff so nearly allied to himself: I am persuaded no man can have so little sensibility, as not to feel that a person in my situation, must be greatly embarrassed in discussing a question of this nature before such an audience, and between such parties as I have described.

Gentlemen, my learned friend desired you would take care not to suffer argument, or observation, or eloquence, to be called into the field, to detach your attention from the evidence in the cause, upon which alone you ought to decide; I wish my learned friend, at the moment he gave you that caution, had not himself given testimony of a fact, to which he stood the solitary witness: I wish he had not introduced his own evidence,

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without the ordinary ceremony of being sworn.-I will not follow his example.-I will not tell you, what I know from the conversation of my client, nor give evidence of what I know myself:-my learned friend tells you, that nothing can exceed the agony of mind his client has suffered, and that no words can describe his adoration of the lady he has lost: these most material points of the cause rest, however, altogether on the single, unsupported, unsworn evidence of the COUNSEL for the plaintiff.-NO RELATION has been called upon to confirm them, though we are told, that the whole house of Fauconberg, Bellasye, and Norfolk, are in the avenues of the court, ready, it seems, to be called at my discretion:-and yet my learned friend is himself the only witness; though the facts, (and most material facts, indeed, they would have been) might have been proved by so many illustrious persons.

Now, to show you how little disposed I am to work upon you by anything, but by proof; to convince you, how little desirous I am to practise the arts of speech as my only artillery in this cause; I will begin with a few plain dates, and, as you have pens in your hands, I will thank you to write them down.

I shall begin with stating to you, what my cause is, and shall then prove it; not by myself; but by witnesses.

The parties were married on the 24th of April, 1789.-The child that has been spoken of, and in terms which gave me great satisfaction, as the admitted son of the plaintiff, blessed with the affection of his parent, and whom the noble person to whom he may become heir, can look upon without any unpleasant reflection: that child was born on the 12th of August, 1791; take that date, and my learned friend's admission, that this child must have been the child of Mr. Howard; an admission which could not have been rationally or consistently made, but upon the implied admission, that no illicit connexion had existed previously, by which its existence might have been referred to the defendant. On this subject, therefore, the plaintiff must be silent; he cannot say the parental mind has been wrung:-he cannot say hereafter, NO SON OF MINE SUCCEEDING;" he can say none of these things.-This child was born on the 12th of August 1791, and as Mr. Howard is admitted to be the author of its existence (which he must have been, if at all, in 1790,) I have a right to say, that, during all that interval, this gentleman could not have had the least reasonable cause of complaint against Mr. Bingham; his jealousy must, of course, have begun after that period; for, had there been grounds for it before, there could be no sense in the admission of his counsel, nor any

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foundation for that parental consolation which was brought forward in the very front of the cause.

The next dry date is, therefore, the 24th of July, 1793; and I put it to his lordship, that there is no manner of evidence which can be pressed into this cause previous to that time. Let me next disembarrass the cause from another assertion of my learned friend, namely, that a divorce cannot take place before the birth of this child; and that, if the child happens to be a son, which is one contingency; and if the child so born does. not die, which is another contingency; and if the noble Duke dies without issue, which is a third contingency, then this child might inherit the honors of the house of Norfolk: that I deny.

My recent experience tells me the contrary. In a case where Mr. Stewart, a gentleman in Ireland, stood in a similar predicament, the Lords and Commons of England not only passed an Act of Divorce between him and his lady, but, on finding there was no access on the part of the husband, and that the child was not his, they bastardized the issue.

What then remains in this cause?-Gentlemen, there remains only this-In what manner, when you have heard my evidence (for this is a cause, which, like all others, must stand upon evidence,) the plaintiff shall be able to prove what I have the noble judge's authority for saying, he must prove, viz. the loss of the comfort and society of his wife, by the seduction of the defendant.-THAT is the very gist of the action.-The loss of her affection, and of domestic happiness, are the only lega foundations of his complaint.

Now, before anything can be lost, it must have existed;—before anything can be taken away from a man, he must have had it ;-before the seduction of a woman's affections from her husband can take place, he must have possessed her affections.

Gentlemen, my friend, Mr. Mingay, acknowledges this to be the law, and he shapes his case accordingly: he represents his client, a branch of a most illustrious house, as casting the eyes of affection upon a disengaged woman, and of rank equal to, or, at least, suitable to his own; he states a marriage of mutual affection, and endeavors to show, that this young couple, with all the ardor of love, flew into each other's embraces: he shows a child, the fruit of that affection, and finishes with introducing the seductive adulterer coming to disturb all this happiness, and to destroy the blessings which he describes: he exhibits the defendant, coming with all the rashness and impetuosity of youth, careless of the consequences, and thinking of nothing but how he could indulge his own lustful appetite, at the expense of another man's honor; while the unhappy husband is represented, as watching with anxiety over his beloved wife, anxious to se

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