The libel was put in. It denied the authenticity of the prophecies, and spoke of the Scriptures as a mass of wicked falsehoods, &c.

Mr Justice Best asked if the defendant had any thing to offer.

The defendant put in a written book, and requested that it might be read.

The defence, which was voluminous, was then read by the officer of the Court. It set out by stating, that the article in question had been copied from an American newspaper; and by adverting to the doctrine laid down by the present Lord Chief Justice, that Scripture might be analysed, provided it were done temperately and without reviling. By finding the defendant guilty of libel, the Jury would find that the Christian religion could not bear examination; and such a finding would go nearer to destroy it than all the pamphlets that ever had been, or ever could be, published against it. The Jews publicly denied the historical truth of the Old Testament; and sects of Christians too numerous to name, differed as widely from what the law called Christianity, and from each other, as they could differ from Jews or from Mahometans. The utmost latitude that discussion could assume would never do harm to truth or to honesty. The defendant then stated that she was a servant at fixed wages to her brother, and proceeded to speak of the laws of the country. The common law was common abuse

Mr Justice Best could not permit the laws of his country to be reviled in his presence. He begged that the defendant would take her manuscript and expunge such objectionable mat

ter.

The defendant.-I have no other defence.

Mr Justice Best.-I shall be happy to hear any thing which you can urge

Mr Justice Best.-There are plenty of gentlemen in Court, who I am sure will assist you.

;

A Juryman intimated that the defendant was only doing herself harm it would be better that she should take the learned Judge's advice.

The defendant repeated that she had no other defence; but left the Court.

A pause of a few minutes followed; and the defendant returned with the following words written upon her book:-" If the Court means to decide that an Englishwoman is not to state that which she thinks necessary for her defence, she must abide the consequence of that decision."

Mr Justice Best.-I have decided no such thing. I have said, and I say again, that I am ready to hear any thing you can say in your defence. I would advise you to retire again, and to consult your own feelings, rather than those of the persons by whom you are surrounded.

The Jury again interfered.

Mr Justice Best.-There is not a gentleman behind the bar, I am sure, who will not readily assist you.

The defendant chose to abide by her determination.

Mr Justice Best, in summing up

the case, told the Jury that the publication was a libel.

The Jury, without any deliberation, found a verdict of Guilty.

Court of King's Bench, Nov. 13.

Mr Cooper moved for a new trial of the above cause. He read an affidavit from the defendant, stating, that she had been prevented from reading the greater part of her defence, but for which, she was convinced that she would have obtained a verdict of ac. quittal.

Mr Justice Best stated the particulars of the case, insisting that he had not stopped the defendant. He had ad. vised her to apply to some friend to revise her defence; but she returned, saying she had no friend, although it now appeared that Mr Cooper himself, who was engaged to plead for her in another cause that very day, was in the next coffee-house.

The Judge then said:-I wish to have these facts brought fully before the Court, because it must not be said that I stopped this woman in her defence. I wished every thing to be brought forward that could properly and decently be urged on her behalf; but I thought at the moment—and I thought still more afterwards when I found she was provided with Counsel in the next cause-I thought that she elected in that case to make her own defence, because she meant to make such a defence as no gentleman at the bar could be found to make for her. She meant to defend herself against one blasphemy by uttering a hundred. That was the evident course she was pursuing. I thought it my duty to put a stop to it.

Mr Cooper said, that the learned Judge (Mr Justice Best) had certainly added several circumstances to those contained in the defendant's affidavit;

but he had stated nothing which was not concurrent with that affidavit. He (Mr Cooper) was still in a condition, therefore, he apprehended, to go on with his statement of facts; but he wished, in consequence of something which had fallen from the learned Judge, to say a few words in the way of explanation. The learned Judge (Mr Justice Best) had held the defendant evidently to have a friend in Court, because he (Mr Cooper) was employed by her in the ensuing cause. He (Mr Cooper) begged distinctly to say, that if upon the occasion in question he had been applied to by the defendant, he would not have interfered. He would not have taken any part in a cause in which he had neither been retained nor instructed. In the ensu ing cause he certainly had exerted himself for the defendant to the utmost of his powers; and he should have felt himself unworthy of his situation at the bar, if he had failed to do so. With the nature of the charge against his client he had nothing to do; all parties were taken by law to be innocent, until they were legally proved to be otherwise; he (Mr Cooper) had done his best for the defendant, as he would ever do for every person who should trust themselves to his hands; and if there were any persons so weak and so silly-like children at the play

as to mix up the actor with the cha racter in which he appeared, to such persons no feeling but contempt was due, and with no other feeling should he (Mr Cooper) ever regard them. Once more he submitted, that, the learned Judge having (no doubt from the purest motives) stopped M. A. Carlile's defence, she (M. A. Carlile) had not received the benefit of full and impartial hearing, and she was, therefore, entitled to a new trial.

The Lord Chief Justice.-Does your affidavit, Mr Cooper, state with

any particularity, what other matters (besides those read at the trial) were contained in the paper put in by the defendant? Does she set out any matters in such a way as to enable us to decide whether they are such as ought to be submitted to a Jury?

Mr Cooper.-No, my lord; nor, as I apprehend, is it necessary that she should do so. The defence, as I take it, must be presumed to be correct until the contrary is shewn. It will be answered, no doubt, that as far as the reading of the defence has already gone, objectionable matters have been found; but I say that a far greater portion of that part so read was found to be without objection; so that as far as regards the probability of the nature of the remaining part, the weight of evidence is considerably in my favour. The Court (Mr Cooper continued) would remember, no doubt, the recent case of "The King v. Davison." In that case, when the defendant indulged himself in improper expressions, the remedy resorted to had been a fine. Davison had been fined, but his defence had not been stopped altogether; and if the same course had been taken in the present case, it would have been a practice far more favourable to the defendant, and more congenial (Mr Cooper submitted) to principles of justice.

Mr Justice Bayley.-Does that course, Mr Cooper, afford an adequate remedy? Mischief may be produced to the minds of an audience by the utterance of seditious and blasphemous principles, which no subsequent infliction upon the utterer can remedy.

Mr Cooper observed, that by that holding, no defendant would be enabled to read an address, or barrister to deliver one, without being subject to a command from the Judge to revise

it. The Lord Chief Justice.-No such consequence can follow. If you look

at the whole case, you will perceive that none such can.

Mr Cooper believed that he had the whole case upon his affidavit. The Lord Chief Justice.-The whole does not appear upon the affidavit.

Mr Justice Bayley.—I am now about to suppose an impossible case-a case at least which I believe to be impossi ble. I will suppose a gentleman at the bar to have written a speech which he intends to deliver. It turns out, after he has advanced some way in his discourse, that there arises one very objectionable passage. A judge would perceive that the counsel uttered such passage not in the heat and flow of oratory, but coolly, deliberately, and in a prepared and written argument. Then would not a judge, in such a case, be well warranted to presume, at least, the possibility of the recurrence of similar matters in the ensuing part of the speech? And would it not become his duty to require a pledge from the speaker that no such further offensive matters should occur?

MrCooper apprehended that a judge in such a case could only caution counsel not to indulge in similar strictures. The speaker must go on at his peril. In the present case, however, the defendant had been precluded from going on at all. She was sent out of Čourt to revise her defence, and she found nothing to revise.

Mr Justice Bayley.-Does she state that in her affidavit ?

Mr Cooper. She does, my lord. Mr Justice Bayley.-Did she communicate to the Judge, upon her return into Court, that there were no further offensive passages in her paper?

Mr Cooper. I was not in Court, my lord, at the time.

The Lord Chief Justice.-Does she venture to say in her affidavit, that she told the learned Judge, that if he would suffer her defence to be proceeded in,

he should find no more offensive passages contained in it?

Mr Cooper. She says, my lord, that there was nothing which she thought offensive. I trust that will be sufficient.

The Lord Chief Justice-It is not sufficient; she may think blasphemy not offensive.

Mr Cooper. Still, my lord, she can only depend upon her own opinion. How, otherwise, is she to know what will be objectionable?

The Lord Chief Justice requested that Mr Cooper would go on; the Court had not lost all common understanding.

Mr Cooper had no doubt that their lordships possessed, not merely common, but very extraordinary understanding. To return, however, to the case before the Court-the learned Judge had said to the defendant at the trial," Any gentleman at the Bar will assist you in reducing your de fence." No gentleman at the bar, however, had offered his assistance, and such he (Mr Cooper) feared was the proscribed state of the defendant, and persons in her situation, that no gentleman at the bar was very likely, upon such an occasion, to volunteer his services.

Mr Justice Best.-Sir, you take a very incorrect estimate of the bar.

Mr Cooper trusted that he did not. Mr Justice Best was sure that he did. The Lord Chief Justice was of the same opinion.

Mr Platt thought himself bound to state, that he had personally gone out of Court, and offered assistance to the defendant, and that his offer had been refused.

Mr Cooper was very glad to find himself mistaken. The offer did infinite honour to the gentleman who had made it. He again submitted, that there ought to be a new trial.

Mr Justice Bayley.Does the de

fendant swear that the defence was prepared by herself?

Mr Cooper. No, my lord. The Lord Chief Justice.-No, nor that she even knew its contents.

Mr Cooper thought that she must be presumed to have known its contents.

The Lord Chief Justice.-Perhaps it would be more charitable to presume the other way.

Mr Cooper concluded by recapitulating the points upon which his motion was grounded.

The Lord Chief Justice.—The' struggle in the present case, like that which has occurred in some former cases, is this that persons charged with blasphemous libels may, in the face and presence of a Court of Justice, utter, or cause to be uttered, just so much matter of the same offensive description as any officious friend will take the trouble to put together. The attempt is, in other words, to make a public court of law a public theatre for the promulgation of blasphemy. The defendant upon the present indictment desires to read that which it would be disgraceful to any judge to sit to hear. The learned Judge desires the defendant to withdraw and to revise her paper, in order that her defence may proceed in the only way in which it can be permitted to proceed. The defendant then does withdraw with a friend whom she has in Court; and, on her return, she does not say that the remainder of her paper contains nothing of the kind before objected to; but she says, "This is my defence; I am an Englishwoman," &c., which is virtually as much as telling the Judge-"I will not say what the contents of my paper are; but be they what they may, I insist upon their being read." It would be a great disgrace to the law, and to those who ad. minister it, if there was such a power left to a defendant. In the present