in the trial. The Whig lawyers
seemed to be interested; the Tories put up their lip.
    »Whatever may be our difference of opinion,« resumed the lawyer, whose
business it was to carry his whole audience with him if possible, »concerning
the peculiar tenets of these people« (here Deans groaned deeply), »it is
impossible to deny them the praise of sound, and even rigid morals, or the merit
of training up their children in the fear of God; and yet it was the daughter of
such a person whom a jury would shortly be called upon, in the absence of
evidence, and upon mere presumptions, to convict of a crime more properly
belonging to a heathen, or a savage, than to a Christian and civilised country.
It was true,« he admitted, »that the excellent nurture and early instruction
which the poor girl had received, had not been sufficient to preserve her from
guilt and error. She had fallen a sacrifice to an inconsiderate affection for a
young man of prepossessing manners, as he had been informed, but of a very
dangerous and desperate character. She was seduced under promise of marriage - a
promise, which the fellow might have, perhaps, done her justice by keeping, had
he not at that time been called upon by the law to atone for a crime, violent
and desperate in itself, but which became the preface to another eventful
history, every step of which was marked by blood and guilt, and the final
termination of which had not even yet arrived. He believed that no one would
hear him without surprise, when he stated that the father of this infant now
amissing, and said by the learned Advocate to have been murdered, was no other
than the notorious George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the hero of the
memorable escape from the Tolbooth Church, and, as no one knew better than his
learned friend the Advocate, the principal actor in the Porteous conspiracy« -
    »I am sorry to interrupt a counsel in such a case as the present,« said the
presiding Judge; »but I must remind the learned gentleman that he is travelling
out of the case before us.«
    The counsel bowed and resumed. »He only judged it necessary,« he said, »to
mention the name and situation of Robertson, because the circumstance in which
that character was placed, went a great way in accounting for the silence on
which his Majesty's counsel had laid so much weight, as affording proof that his
client proposed to allow no fair play for its life to the helpless being whom