ment is washed away from the minds of this ho nourable court-Under this hope and impression, I will proceed to consider as briefly as possible the third and last specification. In this the judge is charged with "debarring the prisoner from his constitutional privilege of addressing the jury (through his counsel) on the law as well as on the fact, which was to determine his guilt or innocence, and at the same time endeavouring to wrest from the jury their indisputable right to hear argument, and determine upon the question of law, as well as the question of fact, involved in the verdict which they were required to give." This charge is ab. solutely unfounded and untrue, and is, in all its parts, most completely disproved by the evidence. As to debarring counsel from being heard, I need only refer you, sir, to the testimony of Messrs. Tilghman and Meredith, who expressly swear, that judge Chase, when he threw down the paper containing the opinion the court had formed on the law, explicitly declared, that nevertheless counsel would be heard against that opinion. It is indeed true that Mr. Lewis seems throughout the business to have been under an impression that nothing would be heard in contradiction to that opinion; and that his professional rights were invaded. But this appears to be a hasty and incorrect inference or conclusion of his own from the conduct of the court. He wholly misapprehended the court, and has charged his misapprehension to their account. This is the usual effect of such precipitate proceedings. The managers have greatly relied on this circumstance; they urge that Mr. Lewis, through the whole of the affair and in all he said concerning it, took for granted and stated that he was debarred from his constitutional privilegesHe did so-but he did so under a mistake of his own, not proceeding from the court. It is not on.

ly that no other witness speaks of any such restriction, but expressly negative it and say, some of them at least, that none such was imposed; but Mr. Rawle has further informed you, that it appeared to him throughout the business that Mr. Lewis had wholly misunderstood the court and mistook their intention. But surely, sir, we are not to be condemned because we have been misunderstood; especially as the mistake seems to have been peculiar to Mr. Lewis, and no other witness fell into the same error. I rely most implicitly on Mr. Rawle's testimony, not only from the strength and correctness of his character, but from the unusual pains he took to be accurate in his knowledge of this transaction. His notes are copious, connected and satisfactory, and although he has no notes of the first day's proceeding, yet he seems to have given an uncommon and cautious attention to every circumstance to which he has testified. This gentleman negatives every idea of any restriction upon the arguments of counsel, and is supported by every witness but Mr. Lewis. If any doubt can remain upon this subject, I am happy to have it in my power to refer to a written and unchanging document-which destroys the third specification, and demonstrates not only that the counsel were not prohibited from addressing the jury both on the law and the fact, but also that the right of the jury to decide both the law and the fact was most largely and explicitly avowed and declared to them. I beg to refer this honourable court to the second exhibit filed with the respondent's answer, It contains this very opinion so scorned by the counsel of Fries, and from the pollution of which they shrunk with horror. If they had read it before it was thus indignantly condemned—if it had been understood before it was consigned to con

tempt, and denounced as a violation of every valuable and sacred right, how much confusion, how much unnecessary discontent might have been sav. ed and prevented. In this opinion then, will be found the sentiment, in these words: "It is the duty of the court in this and in all criminal cases, to state to the jury their opinion of the law arising on the facts; but the jury are to decide on the present, and on all criminal cases, both the law and the facts, on their consideration of the whole case." Was there ever a more ample and explicit avowal of the rights of juries? Is there any friend to juries so extravagant as to contend or ask for more? The acknowledgment is as full as any man can require or the law would warrant. The judge, in thus admitting and confirming the right of the jury to decide both the law and fac, admits by inevitable consequence that the jury have a right to hear counsel both upon the law and facts. That which they are to decide upon, they must have information upon; and the court which declares the jury to be the tribunal to determine the whole case, never could have said in the same breath, that they should hear no argument on the case they were thus to determine. This monstrous absurdity, of which the judge can hardly be suspected, brings it to a certain conclusion, that Mr. Lewis must have mistaken the court; and that no such res. triction was laid upon him or the jury as he has apprehended.

The charges, sir, laid in this first article of impeachment, are grounded altogether on the proceedings of what has been called the first day of Fries's trial; and most firmly believing that the whole of this proceeding on that day will bear the most scrutinizing enquiry, and stand on the strong ground of justification, I have been willing to meet the managers on that day's proceeding dis

jointed from that of the following day. But, sir, it is most evident, that this is by no means a full or a fair examination of the judge's conduct on that occasion-When he is charged with a corrupt or partial intention to injure and oppress John Fries, when he is charged with a wilful violation of the rights of the counsel and jury, the whole of the proceeding should be brought into view, before we decide upon the character of any part of it. An attention, sir, to what passed on the second day, as it is called, of Fries's trial, will most abundantly prove that judge Chase never had intended any partiality or oppression against him; and certainly that if he had any such intention, he never carried it into execution or effect. And I trust I am safe in saying that the mere intention to commit a crime however gross or outrageous, unless carried into some sort of action or effect, constitutes no crime. A man may intend to commit a larceny, assault and battery, or any other offence; but while he abstains from the act, the mere intention cannot subject him to trial or punishment. The respondent then, discovering from the conduct of Fries's counsel, and the indignant hostility they assumed, that he was greatly misunderstood; that an arrangement he had adopted for the convenience of public justice, the reasonable expedition of the approaching trial, and the real accommodation of the court, the counsel and the jury, was construed and received as an oppression upon the prisoner, an encroachment upon the privileges of counsel, and a violation of the rights of the jury, in short, as a corrupt and polluted prejudication of the cause to be tried, and that the fair and upright intentions of the court were misinterpreted by a real or pretended mistake into the vilest purposes of partiality, resolved to destroy the formidable engine they saw erecting against the

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court, and to remove at once all pretence for clamour or irritation. Granting the judge had been in error on the first day, what more could he or any man do, than to rectify the error as soon as it was discovered, and hasten to the right path before any injury could have resulted from his momentary deviation. But the honorable manager has told you he had sinned beyond the grace of repentance, and that no contrition, however sincere, could wipe away the offence. When I suffer such words as repentance and contrition to pass my lips, it is in quoting precisely the words of the manager. For my part I disclaim them. The respondent has done nothing that required the humiliation of repentance, or for which he now asks to be forgiv

en.

Let him stand on his justification or stand not at all. But, sir, a part of that justification is that the corrupt intent charged upon him is disproved by his entire willingness to permit the counsel to manage their cause in their own way, if they disapproved of his, and by his full and candid retraction of the error, if any error had been committed. By adverting to the testimony of Mr. Rawle, this honorable court will see, how greatly judge Chase was surprized to find from conversing with this witness and judge Peters, that his conduct was viewed in so strange a light by Messrs. Lewis and Dallas. On making this discovery, altho' still convinced of the propriety of the proceeding, he does not obstinately adhere to it, but resolves to remove all possible cause of complaint, by withdrawing all the papers which had given rise to this astonishing irritation and violation. The papers were accordingly resumed, every copy collected, and the counsel, the prisoner and the jury were placed in the same precise situation as if these papers had never been distributed; with the most ample acknowledgment of all their rights, and the