. . .Country has not yet found guilty of any Crime: No History can produce a greater Instance of it than is before us in the present Story; and I shall think the Obligation sacred that restrains my Hand upon every other Occasion: But here the Life of a Person, certainly innocent, is concern'd on the one Part; and not so much as the Life, even should the worst be proved, and the Laws put in their fullest Execution, of one, as certainly a Cause of the greatest Distress, and almost of Death to that Innocent, on the other. As this is the Case in the present Enquiry, the Particularity of the Circumstance may dispense with what would be faulty on a different Occasion.

I must the more think the doing of this necessary, and therefore justifiable, as mean Sophistry, and the Parade of Argument, have been employed on the other Side; and the Attempt of vindicating the Accuser, though but a secondary Consideration, has, with some Persons, altho' I hope with none of Consequence, p. . . Read More