The discharge, however, of a public duty, which devolves upon me as leading law officer of the Crown, forces me into a course which I cannot avoid, unless I should shrink from promoting and accomplishing the ends of public justice.

In my position, and in the discharge of my solemn duties here to-day, I can recognize no man's rank, no man's wealth, nor the prestige of any man's name.

So long as he stands at that bar, charged with great and heinous crimes, I feel it my duty to strip him of all the advantages of his birth and rank, and consider him simply a mere subject of the realm.
"In order to show you, gentlemen of the jury, the animux under which the prisoner at the bar acted, in the case before us, I must go back a little--a period of some months.

At that time a highly respectable gentleman of an ancient and honored family in this country was one evening on his way home from this town, attended, as usual, by his servant.

At a lonely place on a remote and antiquated road, which they took as a shorter way, it so happened that, in consequence of a sudden mist peculiar to those wild moors, they lost their path, and found themselves in circumstances of danger and distress.