Gentlemen, the very circumstances under which we meet in this case are of a character to excite mingled feelings of encouragement and alarm. Those whose duty it is to watch over the safety of the Queen’s subjects felt so much apprehension lest the course of justice should be disturbed by the popular prejudice which had been excited against the prisoner, so much alarmed that an unjust verdict might in the midst of that popular prejudice pass against him, that a resolution was taken, not only by the Queen’s Government and the Legislature, upon the motion of the noble and learned judge, who presides here, in the House of Lords, that an Act of Parliament should be passed to prevent the possibility of the ordinary forms of law being, in the case of William Palmer, made the instrument of popular vengeance. The Crown, under the advice of its responsible Ministers, resolved also that this prosecution should not be left in private hands, but that its own law officer, my learned friend the Attorney-General, should take upon himself the responsibility of conducting it properly, at once sternly in his duty to the public and fairly to the prisoner at the bar; and my learned friend, when that duty was entrusted to him, did what I must say will, in my opinion, for ever redound to his honour--he insisted that in a case in which so much prejudice had been excited all the evidence which it was intended on the part of the Crown to press against the prisoner should, as soon as he received it, be communicated to the prisoner’s counsel; everything, I must say and tell my unhappy client, everything which the constituted authorities of this land, everything which the Legislature and the law officers of the Crown could do to secure a fair and impartial trial in this case, has been done, and the whole responsibility, if unhappily injustice should on either side be done, now weighs with terrible pressure upon my lord and upon you.
Gentlemen, one great misfortune has befallen the accused--a most able man who had been selected by him as his counsel many weeks ago has been, unfortunately, by illness prevented from discharging that duty to him. I have endeavoured, to the utmost of my ability, to supply his place; I cannot deny that I am awed--that I am moved--by the task I have undertaken; but the circumstances to which I have already adverted, the national effort, so to speak, through the Government of the country, to ensure a fair trial is a great cause of encouragement, and I am not dismayed. I have this further cause for not being altogether overcome by the duty which I have of defending the prisoner and of discussing the mass of evidence which has been laid before you, that though, of course, like everybody else, I knew generally and loosely, very loosely indeed, the history of these transactions at Rugeley, I had formed, when the papers came into my hands, no opinion upon them, no opinion upon the guilt or the innocence of the prisoner at the bar, and my mind was perfectly free to form what I trust will be declared by you a right judgment in this case. I commence his defence, I say it in all sincerity, with an entire conviction of his innocence. I believe that there never was a truer word pronounced than the words which he pronounced when he said “Not guilty” to this charge. If I fail in establishing that to your satisfaction I shall be under a great misgiving that my failure was more attributable to my own ability to do justice to this case than to any weakness in the case itself; and I will give you this proof of the sincerity with which I declare upon this evidence my conviction of his innocence, that I will meet the case of the prosecution foot to foot at every stage. I will grapple with every difficulty which has been suggested by my able friend the Attorney-General. You shall see that I avoid no point because I fail to approach it, and if you find that I do thus deal fairly with you from the beginning, and it is my duty to do so, I hope I may be sure, indeed I know I may be sure, of a willing and considerate attention to an address which must, I fear, be long, but in which there shall be no observations, no tone, and no topic of discussion which do not properly belong to the case.