In compliance with that request, and with parliamentary rules, Lord
Cochrane was conveyed from the King's Bench Prison to the House of
Commons, and allowed to read a carefully-prepared statement of his
case, on the 5th of July, the day fixed for investigation of the
subject. From this statement it is not necessary to cite the clear
and conclusive recapitulation of the evidence adduced at the trial, or
refused admission therein because it was too convincing, in proof of
Lord Cochrane's innocence; but room must be found for some passages
illustrating the independent temper of the speaker and the perversions
of justice to which he fell a victim.

"I am not here, sir," he said, "to bespeak compassion or to pave the
way to pardon. Both ideas are alike repugnant to my feelings. That the
public in general have felt indignation at the sentence that has been
passed upon me does honour to their hearts, and tends still to make
my country dear to me, in spite of what I have suffered from the
malignity of persons in power. But, sir, I am not here to complain of
the hardship of my case or about the cruelty of judges, who, for
an act which was never till now ever known or thought to be a legal
offence, have laid upon me a sentence more heavy than they have
ever yet laid upon persons clearly convicted of the most horrid
of crimes--crimes of which nature herself cries aloud against the
commission. If, therefore, it was my object to complain of the cruelty
of my judges, I should bid the public look into the calendar, and see
if they could find a punishment like that inflicted on me; inflicted
by these same judges on any one of these unnatural wretches. It is
not, however, my business to complain of the cruelty of this sentence.
I am here to assert, for the third time, my innocence in the most
unqualified and solemn manner; I am here to expose the unfairness of
the proceedings against me previous to the trial, at the trial,