Star.
London, England, 1822-10-24 00:00:00

The Loin Cuter Jurnailaht—.B4 t trot afraid,'
Gentlemen of the Jury, of being affected in the mind
of posterity by what die defeademibei
The defendant.—But, my Led, will .you not hear
me? If your Lordship would thtlfhlW to MVP more
patience, we should much goonst eon* to a point—
indeed, we should my Lord.
This last expression coined some Wetter, which
induced the LORD Cam Justice •to remark, that
there were several persons in Court Who had no apo-
logy for interrupting the proceedings, and he should
punish those who behaved so indecently.
The defendant.--Well, my Lord, I shall now re-
fer to the Bible. I have already adverted to what
Paul said to King Agrippa, and now call your atten-
tion to Nicodemus, and implore the Jury 'to judge in
righteousness--" in righteousness should'st thou judge
thy neighbour." He proceeded then to repeat that
the Attorney-General's eslificio prosecution had
ruined him in his affairs—be had lost his capital and
his trade by it, though he was here proud to have an
opportunity of justifying himself. He held in his
hand another book, written by a Reverend Divine,
for the purpose, as its title stated, of " distinguishing
truth from falsehood." It contained exactly his own
'sentiments upon the subject of religious controversy ;
indeed, so much so, that if he had attempted to pub-
lish his own opinions, he would only have been guilty
of a plagiarism upon this very book. He would give
a great deal to make his prosecutors read it. What
'a compliment they paid Christianity when they in-
stituted the present prosecution. In the first place,
the attempt to ruin him would give complete circu-
lation to the libel itself—that would inevitably follow
from the proceedings of this day. His prosecutors
were wrong. and why? Because they were weak,
in the faith ; they did not place the confidence which
as Christians they were bound to place in the Dairy.
He who made the universe, and made all men, knew
how to correct all evil without the aid of man.
How dared they to profane GOD by undertaking his
work.? They who did so were no Christians—
they were themselves the real blasphemers; they
said agricultural plenty was the cause of the suffer-
ings of the country—that was to say, that what the
beneficence of GOD had done for the poor was an evil.
" 0, what a use the S9licitor-General would have
made of such a theme," said Waddington, " if, in-
stead of being my prosecutor. he had been my de-
fender. Then, indeed, he would have ably advocated
iny cause, if I could have put money into the vora-
cious mouths of the law." He then returned again
to Whiston's book—[A Juror remarke,„that he was
only injuring his own cause by doing so.J—The de-
fendant resumed, and said that the Jury might do
with him as they liked: he should not trouble them
with any evidence; for, in fact, the prosecutors had
done nothing in the way of proof against him. If he
was to be convicted because a book was given out in
a room which he was obliged to let in his house, then
, the sooner the Jury went home and looked after their
own houses, the better. If any one of them was, as
he had been, compelled to let a room to a lodger, to
help him to pay, his rent and taxes, and keep his fa-
mily out of a workhouse, and to be held responsible
for what was done in that room, the sooner he turned
the lodger out the. better; for he might depend upon
it, that he would find it easier to let the rent re-

main unpaid, and send his family to the workhouse,
than expose himself to an ex qffacio prosecution.—
If they knew the sort of place into which he had been
sent in Newgate, they would have felt for his suffer-
ings; for they would not have turned a brute animal
into such confinement. See how he had been treated
there.—(Here the defendant read from a Newspaper
an account of his being tossed in a blanket as" Little
Waddington," by some of the prisoners, in a wanton
frolic.)—lt was true he was little, but that was no
crime; he had not made himself; he had no right to
have his back severely hurt by being tossed in a
blanket because be was little. Mr. alderman Wood
and other Gentlemen had inquired into the outrage,
and one convict was ordered to be sent quickly into
his sentence of transportation, for being a patty in it.
That he (defendant) did not wish, for the man had a
family, and he wished nobody to suffer upon his ac-
count. He should not trespass further on the Jury,
bat would leave the case to them as•it stood, without
any proof by the prosecutors. He was sorry he was
interrupted in his defence ; for the books (Whiston's)
were, he said, really worth reading :—however, he
should publish his defence and justification in another
form, and the Public would judge of it.
He then sat down, and put his books into a large
writing-desk, which he had placed on the floor of the
'Cow t; at the same time giving a significant nod to
the Solicitor-General, and saying to him—" You
shan't reply, for I am calling no witnesses."
The LORD CHIEFJUSTICE briefly recapitulated the
evidence to the Jury, and left it to them to consider
whether there was evidence of publication on the part
of the defendant. It was quite unnecessary to prove
that he sold the book with his own hands : if he were
in a manner indirectly assisting in the sale, that would I
'be sufficient evidence against him.
One of the Jurors asked, whether a book denying
the Divinity of our SAVIOUR was or_was not a libel
in the eyes of the law ?—he wished this information
for the satisfaction of his conscience.
The Lotto Cuts/JUSTUS/I.—There canbe no doubt,
Gentlemen, that any book denying the Divinity. of
CHRIST is a libel, fer Christianity is a part of the
law of the land:, that is denying it in the words of
this book, calling CHRIST an .impostor, an immoral
min, &c. there can be no doubt that such a book is a
libel.—The Airy, after a minute's consideration, re-
turned a verdict of Guilty.
Little Waddington, who bad left the Court afew
minutes before, was in the act of returning, when he
was informed by a friend of the verdict : he imam
diately took. to his heels and ran up King-street,
leaving his deskand papers upon the shoulders of a
friend to beer the burden of Whiston't cowl-comp,