"I have heard, my Lord, the indictment read, wherein I find myself
charged with the highest of human crimes. You will grant me then your
patience, if I, single and unskilful, destitute of friends, and
unassisted by counsel, attempt something perhaps like argument in my
defence. What I have to say will be but short, and that brevity may be
the best part of it.

"My Lord, the tenor of my life contradicts this indictment. Who can look
back over what is known of my former years, and charge me with one vice--
one offence? No! I concerted not schemes of fraud--projected no violence-
-injured no man's property or person. My days were honestly laborious--my
nights intensely studious. This egotism is not presumptuous--is not
unreasonable. What man, after a temperate use of life, a series of
thinking and acting regularly, without one single deviation from a sober
and even tenor of conduct, ever plunged into the depth of crime
precipitately, and at once? Mankind are not instantaneously corrupted.
Villainy is always progressive. We decline from right--not suddenly, but
step after step.

"If my life in general contradicts the indictment, my health at that time
in particular contradicts it yet more. A little time before, I had been
confined to my bed, I had suffered under a long and severe disorder. The
distemper left me but slowly, and in part. So far from being well at the
time I am charged with this fact, I never, to this day, perfectly
recovered. Could a person in this condition execute violence against
another?--I, feeble and valetudinary, with no inducement to engage--no
ability to accomplish--no weapon wherewith to perpetrate such a fact;--
without interest, without power, without motives, without means!

"My Lord, Clarke disappeared: true; but is that a proof of his death? The