Defendant-Now on your oath will you swear that I resemble no other person you ever saw in your life, so that you would positively assert you could not be mistaken. Witness I do not think I ever saw any person like you. Defondant-Of what religion are you?

Witness-What religion! I don't think it necessary to

tell you.

The Recorder-You must answer the question.
Witness I belong to the Church of England.
Defendant-When did you last attend Church?

Witness--I was at Church yesterday; at Chapel at least.
Defendant: Did you ever take the Sacrament?
Witness: Never.

Defendant: Did I ever do you any injury?
Witness: Never to my knowledge.

Defendant: Did the person who sold you the book ever injure you?

Witness: Never.

Defendant: How much are you to have for this job? Witness: I don't know that I am to have any thing for it; I was sent for the book by Mr. Stafford the Chief Clerk of Bow Street, and I should have been suspended, or perhaps discharged, if I refused to do it.

Defendant: What has been your profession before this? Witness: I was a linen draper.

Defendant: Should you not like some more honourable employment than that which you now hold?

Witness: I am perfectly satisfied with my present employment.

Defendant: Oh, you are, are you?

Witness: Yes.

Defendant: Do you believe in the Holy Scriptures?
Witness: I do.

Defendant: From the beginning to the end?

Witness: Yes, all of it.

Defendant: And all with an equal degree of conviction? Witness: Yes.

The Recorder here interrupted the Defendant and said he thought that question was not necessary.

Defendant: pardon me, my Lord, if I shew these Gentlemen that the witness is an unprincipled, and worthless informer hired by his honourable masters to do this DIRTY WORK, the Jury will consider his evidence as it ought to be considered-no evidence at all.

Recorder: I cannot see what ground you have for call

ing the witness worthless or unprincipled, that is for the Jury to decide by the evidence adduced.

Defendant to Witness: Did you read this book yourself? Witness: I did not.

Defendant: You heard it read?

Witness: Yes; parts of it to day.

Defendant: Did it make any evil impression on your mind?

Witness: I cannot say, I did not hear it distinctly?

The Recorder: It is immaterial whether it did or not, the charge is, that the work has a tendency to produce bad impressions and injure the cause of religion.

The Defendant: I cannot, my Lord, sell my chance of redemption from the horrors of a prison, for the sake of a mere compliment. (to the witness.) Did you not swear a little time since, that there was no other name than "CARLILE" over the door 84, Fleet Street?

Witness: I do not recollect.

Defendant: Is there not " R. Carlile ?"
Witness: There may be.

Defendant: I thought you said you knew the nature and obligation of an oath.

Recorder: The simple difference of an initial letter can be no prevarication.

Defendant to Witness: Did you not positively asseverate on your oath, when that question was put to you, viz. whether there was any other letter, that there was not. Witness: I do not know that I did.

Defendant: You may go down.

Mr. Raven the chief Clerk to the Solicitor of the Treasury, was then put into the witness box and examined by the Defendant.

Defendant: What do you consider to be the nature and obligation of an oath?

Mr. Raven: To speak the truth, and nothing but the truth? Defendant: Who are you, Sir?

Mr. Raven: William Raven.

Defendant: Are you my ostensible prosecutor?

Mr. Raven: No, I am clerk to the Solicitor of the Trea

sury

?

Defendant: Who is the Solicitor of the Treasury?

Mr. Raven: George Maule, Esq.

Defendant: Is he my ostensible prosecutor?

Mr. Raven: Yes.

Defendant: What is your opinion of blasphemy?

Mr. Raven: I consider it is reviling our blessed Saviour, and speaking evil of the Christian religion.

Defendant: What is the Christian religion?

Mr. Raven: A belief in the doctrines of our Saviour.
Defendant: Of what religious communion are you?
Mr. Raven: The Church of England.

Defendant: Have you not heard, or do you not know, that there are innumerable sects of Christians under different denominations, who believe in tenets contrary to the Church of England?

Mr. Raven: Yes, certainly.

Defendant: Are they blasphemers?

Mr. Raven: I have nothing to do with that-I have told you my opinion.

Defendant: You may go down.

The libel was then read over, after which the prisoner addressed the Jury to the following effect:

Gentlemen of the Jury,-Under any other circumstances than those for which I am arraigned before you, did I stand here under different charges from those stated in the indictment, perhaps I might feel something like a want of assurance to address you. As it is, emboldened by a feeling of conscious innocence, I stand here to defend myself from a false and most unwarrantable aspersion af my character. I am charged with being a wicked, malicious, and evil disposed person. It is with all the dignity which an honest man must feel, that I stand forward to rebut these charges: for I consider it is the duty of every one who possesses a regard for his character, to use all his efforts in order to free himself from any calumny tending to injure him in the estimation of society, and it behoves him in that particular to adhere as closely as possible to the truth, especially when the appeal is made to an impartial and an enlightened Jury of his countrymen. Deeply impressed, as I am, Gentlemen, with the importance of the subject which you are about to try, it cannot be wondered at that I should wish to convey to your minds a similar feeling.' I assure you it is not my intention to offer any thing calculated to give offence. You are my judges, as well as my jurors, for you sit there as censors of my conduct; and it may be to me a difference of life or death, for an imprisonment of some years the worst of all deaths. Therefore, if it were for nothing else, my safety would induce me to look upon you with a kind of awful respect; and though the cause which has brought me here banish every thing like fear from my bosom,

I am not insensible to the difference between pleasure and pain-between freedom and imprisonment; for while I would contemn the bad man's frown, I am not insensible to the good man's approbation. If, Gentlemen, any of you should have entered that box actuated by any prejudice regarding previous convictions, I beseech you, I implore you, cast it from you, as an opportunity now offers wherein you may secure to yourselves immortal honour. The current of public opinion is already extremely adverse to these prosecutions, and I have just and ample grounds for hoping, that this may be the last case of the kind; but you, by your verdict this day, may give the finishing stroke to the already tottering fabric of persecutions for matters of opinion. As I wish not to occupy more of your time than is necessary, I shall be as brief as possible. To shew, Gentlemen, that there were always (even in the most barbarous times) some good men in the world who were adverse to such persecutions, I shall take the the liberty of reading a few extracts from the ancient fathers of the Church, and the primitive Christians, in order that my prosecutors may see how necessary it is to desist from such measures.

St. Athanasius says, book 1st, "It is an execrable heresy, to endeavour to compel by force, by blows and imprisonment, those who cannot be convinced by reason."

"If," says he in another place, "they persecute, this alone is a sufficient proof, that they are not actuated by piety, or by the fear of God. It is a characteristic of piety, not to constrain, but to persuade, in imitation of our Saviour, who left every one the liberty of following him as they chose. As to the Devil, as he hath not the truth on his side, he hath recourse to axes and hatchets"

Lactantius says, book 3rd, "Constrained religion is no religion. We should persuade not compel; religion does not take upon itself to command."

Salvianus says, "These men are in error, but they do not know it. In our society they are considered as mistaken, but in their own they are right. They consider themselves so orthodox, that they call us heretics. What they are with regard to us, we are with regard to them. They are in error, but conscientiously so; what will be their fate hereafter, God alone knoweth; in the meantime he tolerateth them." St Augustine says, "Let those evilly intreat you, who are ignorant how much labour it requireth to find the truth, and how difficult it is to preserve one's self from error! Let those

evilly intreat you, who are ignorant with what difficulty the eye of the inner man is healed, so that he can behold his sun. Let those evilly intreat you who are ignorant with what sighs and groans it must be effected, that you can in the slightest degree understand the Deity! Finally, let those evilly intreat you who are not deceived by those same errors by which you are yourselves deceived!" St. Hilarius says, "You make use of constraint in a cause which only requireth reason. Ye employ force where there is only a want of intellect." The Constitutions of St. Clemens Romanus say, "The Saviour hath permitted men the use of their will, not punishing them with a temporal death, but summoning them to give an account of their actions in another world.". The fathers of the Council of Toledo "Never

say,

do any act of violence towards any one to bring him to the faith; for God hath pity on whom he will; and whom he will he hardeneth."

Such, Gentlemen of the Jury, were the opinions of many of the ancient Christians, and whole volumes might be filled with similar quotations which Christian persecutors are apt to forget. It will, no doubt, be said, that we are not punished for our religious opinions; but our disbelief of all is the great mischief. But still, Gentlemen, it is an opinion, although we do not attach any thing with it, connected with religion; and still, until there is a mutual toleration on all matters of opinion, we shall be hostilely divided, so as to form something like a sect.

And, now, Gentlemen of the Jury, for what I have further to offer in my defence, I am indebted to the kind suggestions of a regular and canonically ordained clergyman of the established church, a member of the University of Cambridge, and an able writer on the evidences of the Christian religion. This reverend and learned gentleman instructs me to remonstrate to you, that the evidences of that religion, of which he has been many years the sincere and conscientious advocate, receive a fatal blow by means of these prosecutions, and are indeed entirely given up, by all who think the interference of human laws and penalties necessary to their defence. This wrong, this blasphemy against Christianity, not we, but our persecutors have committed; and it is a blasphemy more grievous and more criminal than any that it could be in our power to commit: because it is on their part a sin against light and knowledge-a sin against the positive precepts of that Blessed One, whom we not knowing, therefore only disbelieve; but whom they, professing to be