“The witness says, when the officers entered the loft in Cato-street, they cried out, ‘Here’s a pretty nest of you,’ &c. I shall afterwards remark upon this, because I think it pregnant with importance as to the witness’s testimony, for I think he was not there at all. With the experience which you have had in courts of justice, some of you may have felt astonished that my learned friend did not proceed further into the cross-examination of this witness. Every art has its own difficulties, and my learned friend never shewed more consummate skill in his art than when he refrained from further cross-examination of this witness.
“When my learned friends, the Solicitor General and Mr. Gurney asked questions of this witness, which were the natural and regular inquiries, you heard him refuse to answer, and add, ‘No, I have something else to say before I come to that.’ When their experience and judgment suggested the proper questions, he would not let his contrived and fabricated tale be mutilated. ‘No,’ says the untractable witness, ‘I have not come to that yet.’ If my learned friend had wasted time in cross-examination, he could only have got repetitions of the same words. Such testimony is not to be overthrown by cross-examination, but by his manner before you, and by the probability of the statements he makes. But this important declaration was got from him by cross-examination.
“When my learned friend asked him, in the words quoted by the Attorney General from a great poet, whether he had given information from ‘compunctious visitings,’ he replied, that conscience alone made him disclose what he knew. He is quiet from the murder of Smithers on Wednesday night till Saturday, when he plumes his wings, and goes to the Privy-Council to disburthen his heart. I have had a good deal of experience of the evidence of such persons; and I have heard one, who was chairman of the quarter-sessions for Middlesex twenty-six years, say, that, from the moment that observation was made by an accomplice, he was not to be believed, because that was incredible. Apply that here. He sees the murderer, and goes away, unconcerned as if nothing had happened. He rests on the stings of his conscience for four days. He must think that you have no hearts yourselves—no consciousness of the operations of human feelings—if he imagines that you can believe what no schoolboy would give credit to.
“Have I used levity upon this subject? for God’s sake, absolve me from the intention! Have I treated lightly the contemplation of assassinating men possessing and deserving the highest veneration? For God’s sake, excuse the observations which the absurdity of the evidence made necessary! I cannot hear, without indignation, that the wisdom which has so long presided in one of the most important of our Courts, was thus to become a corpse; and that the valour which fought at Waterloo (for the Duke of Wellington was to have been at the dinner) was to have fallen by assassins. From these two take the measure of all.
“When the destruction of worth and wisdom, of learning and talent, is thus contemplated, the most hardened and flinty heart that ever dwelt in a human bosom recoils with horror, and melts with compassion.
“If then, I have used a light expression, impute it, gentlemen, to inadvertence of language, and not to hardness of heart, because the absurdity of the witness made the observations I offered unavoidable.
“Let us now see how far this witness is supported by other witnesses. Mary Rogers proves his statement as to the lodgings; Joseph Hall confirms him to a similar extent. Lord Harrowby and his servant confirms him so far, as to prove the intention of giving his cabinet dinner on Wednesday night. Of this there is no doubt. Hyden is proved to have spoken to his Lordship in the Park. Three witnesses are called, which was not necessary, to prove that the room in Cato-street had been taken; but the parade of confirmation in this matter is meant to cast an air of credibility over other parts of the evidence. I now advert to collateral confirmations. The sharpening of Ings’s sword, the acquaintance of Harrison with the state of the barracks, the redeeming of a blunderbuss from pawn for murder, not treason, have been all proved.
“It is true, Hyden and Dwyer are not accomplices, they are to be believed, if their testimony is credible. Hyden long ago, before his late Majesty’s death, states to Wilson, with whom alone he was acquainted, that grenades were to be thrown under the table, and that those who should escape were to be killed with the sword. But he mentions no ulterior object deserving of the name of treason. Whatever the object might be, Hyden goes first to Lord Castlereagh, who was the object of their peculiar spleen; then not finding him, to Lord Harrowby. But what the nature of their plan was you may judge from this that, Wilson would not, for the accomplishment of it, lose a shilling or half-a-crown to be gained by going with cream to a nobleman. He knew that no such thing as a revolution was to be done. This, gentlemen, is not the way that kings are destroyed, and governments overthrown.
“I do not say that the question should not enter into your consideration, but I say that you cannot find a verdict for the Attorney General, if you do not believe Adams; and I have laboured very much in vain, if you have not dismissed his evidence from your minds. Monument has not in the slightest degree confirmed Adams as to the proceedings previously to those in Cato-street; and he has no memory of having ever seen so remarkable a man as Adams at Cato-street. Monument knew nothing of the murder of Ministers, and the expectation of plunder as the consequence of its effects on others.