Adams and his wife were committed to take their trials at the Sessions--in the wife's case it was purely vexatious, as there was no one bound over to prosecute her. Yet Adams, nearly blind from an inflammation of the eyes, and his wife with her child in her arms, were kept several days in attendance at Gloucester--though the same law which prevented the court proceeding in my case, prevented the court from trying the Adamses. In further aggravation of loss, £1 17s. 6d. were demanded for discharge of bail and entering new sureties--nor was time allowed to fetch the bail (after they were demanded) from Cheltenham, the clerk announcing that they would be estreated at once. Upon this I directed Mr. and Mrs. Adams to go into court and say they were prepared to take their trial _then_, and there was no occasion to estreat the property of their friends. Time was then allowed.
Mrs. Adams was never tried. Mr. Adams's trial took place at Gloucester assizes, immediately before my own.
The passage from No. 25 of the _Oracle_, for which Adams was indicted, was written by my friend Mr. Chilton, who was outraged at my imprisonment, and ran as follows:--
What else could be expected of men who deify a real or imaginary individual, a compound of ambition and folly, of mock humility and rampant tyranny; who, though called the 'Prince of Peace,' declared he came to bring a sword in the world? This hellish mission he performed to perfection, for never since his time has blood and misery ceased to flow from his dogmas and mysteries.
As I was very anxious to save Adams from consequences which he incurred through friendship to me, I advised him to let Mr. Thompson defend him. This gentleman began by sympathising with all the disgust invented by the counsel who opened the prosecution, and he ended by expressing Adams's sorrow and contrition for what he had done--a contrition which he did not feel, and would rather have undergone much imprisonment than have had it said that he did. During the whole of the trials arising out of the _Oracle_, Mr. Ralph Thomas, barrister, was the only counsel who defended us in court without sacrificing us. Taking warning by Mr. Thompson's example, I made it a rule to advise all our friends to defend themselves, and where unaccustomed to public speaking, to write a brief defence in their own language, and after some legal friend had revised it, to read it to the court. We do not want lawyers to defend our opinions, those opinions not being their own, but we want them simply to maintain our right to publish what are to us important convictions. Instead of this they commonly agree with the crown that we are criminal for having a conscience, and then, in our name, recant with 'contrition' the opinions which we go into court to maintain.