 that his escape is any confirmation of his guilt? Who
ever thinks, when he is apprehended for trial, of his innocence or guilt as
being at all material to the issue? Who ever was fool enough to volunteer a
trial, where those who are to decide think more of the horror of the thing of
which he is accused than whether he were the person that did it, and where the
nature of our motives is to be collected from a set of ignorant witnesses that
no wise man would trust for a fair representation of the most indifferent action
of his life?
    The poor lad's story is a long one, and I will not trouble you with it now.
But from that story it is as clear as the day, that, because he wished to leave
the service of his master, because he had been perhaps a little too inquisitive
in his master's concerns, and because, as I suspect, he had been trusted with
some important secrets, his master conceived an antipathy against him. This
antipathy gradually proceeded to such a length, as to induce the master to forge
this vile accusation. He seems willing to hang the lad out of the way, rather
than suffer him to go where he pleases or get beyond the reach of his power.
Williams has told me the story with such ingenuousness that I am as sure that he
is guiltless of what they lay to his charge as that I am so myself. Nevertheless
the man's servants who were called in to hear the accusation, and his relation,
who as justice of the peace made out the mittimus, and who had the folly to
think he could be impartial, gave it on his side with one voice, and thus
afforded Williams a sample of what he had to expect in the sequel.
    Larkins, who when he received this paper had no previous knowledge of
particulars, was for taking advantage of it for the purpose of earning the
hundred guineas. Are you of that mind, now you have heard them? Will you for so
paltry a consideration deliver up the lamb into the jaws of the wolf? Will you
abet the purposes of this sanguinary rascal who, not contented with driving his
late dependent from house and home, depriving him of character and all the
ordinary means of subsistence, and leaving him almost without a refuge, still
thirsts for his blood? If no other person have the courage to set limits to the
tyranny of courts of justice, shall not we? Shall we, who earn our livelihood by
generous daring, be indebted for a penny to the vile artifices of the informer?
