by which I am prepared to be bound as a citizen and a man.  And I say upon my honor and conscience, that I see not how, with the law and constitution for your guides, you can pronounce the respondent guilty.  I declare that I have seen no case of wilful and corrupt official misconduct, set forth according to the requisitions of the constitution, and proved according to the common rules of evidence.  I see many things imprudent and ill-judged; many things that I could wish had been otherwise; but corruption and crime I do not see.

Sir, the prejudices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if any there be, which have excited or favored this prosecution will subside; but the consequence of the judgment you are about to render will outlive both them and you.  The respondent is now brought, a single, unprotected individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand against the power and authority of the State.  I know you can crush him, as he stands before you, and clothed as you are with the sovereignty of the State.  You have the power “to change his countenance and to send him away.”  Nor do I remind you, that your judgment is to be rejudged by the community; and, as you have summoned him for trial to this high tribunal, that you are soon to descend yourselves from these seats of justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world.  I would not fail so much in respect to this honorable court as to hint that it could pronounce a sentence which the community will reverse.  No, Sir, it is not the world’s revision which I would call on you to regard; but that of your own consciences, when years have gone by and you shall look back on the sentence you are about to render.  If you send away the respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet him in the world on which you cast him out.  You will be called to behold him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a living fountain of grief and agony to himself.

If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom vengeance has overtaken and justice has blasted, you will be able to look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse.  But if, on the other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if you shall see in him a man for whose condemnation any provision of the constitution has been violated or any principle of law broken down, then will he be able, humble and low as may be his condition, then will he be able to turn the current of compassion backward, and to look with pity on those who have been his judges.  If you are about to visit this respondent with a judgment which shall blast his house; if the bosoms of the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed under your infliction, I beseech you to be able to state clear and strong grounds for your proceeding.  Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will