Chapter 20 - Page 2

consenting) for I had forebodings that our safety
would depend more on an appeal to the rights of hospitality, than on
any legal defence it was in our power to offer. As the brigadier
kindly volunteered to aid me for nothing, I thought proper not to
refuse his services, however.

I pass over the appearance of the court, the empanelling of the
jury, and the arraignment; for, in matters of mere legal forms,
there is no great difference between civilized countries, all of
them wearing the same semblance of justice. The first indictment,
for unhappily there were two, charged Noah with having committed an
assault, with malice prepense, on the king's dignity, with "sticks,
daggers, muskets, blunderbusses, air-guns, and other unlawful
weapons, more especially with the tongue, in that he had accused his
majesty, face to face, with having a memory, etc., etc." The other
indictment, repeating the formula of the first, charged the honest
sealer with feloniously accusing her majesty the queen, "in defiance
of the law, to the injury of good morals and the peace of society,
with having no memory, etc., etc." To both these charges the plea of
"not guilty," was entered as fast as possible, in behalf of our
client.

I ought to have said before, that both Brigadier Downright and
myself had applied to be admitted of counsel for the accused, under
an ancient law of Leaphigh, as next of kin; I as a fellow human
being, and the brigadier by adoption.

The preliminary forms observed, the attorney-general was about to go
into proof, in behalf of the crown, when my brother Downright arose
and said that he intended to save the precious time of the court, by
admitting the facts; and that it was intended to rest the defence
altogether on the law of the case. He presumed the jury were the
judges of the law as well as of the facts, according to the rule of
Leaplow, and that "he and his brother Goldencalf were quite prepared
to show that the law was altogether with us, in this affair." The
court received the admission, and the facts were submitted to the
jury, by consent, as proven; although the chief-justice took
occasion to remark, Longbeard dissenting, that, while the jury were
certainly judges of the law, in one sense, yet there was another
sense in which they were not judges of the law. The dissent of Baron
Longbeard went to maintain that while the jury were the judges of
the law in the "another sense" mentioned, they were not judges of
the law in the "one sense" named. This difficulty disposed of, Mr.
Attorney-General arose and opened for the crown.

I soon found that we had one of a very comprehensive and
philosophical turn of mind against us, in the