,—This day I stand before you charged with high treason. The burden of the charge is heavy, yet far the more so because it hath borrowed the authority of the House of Commons. If they were not interested, I might expect a no less easy, than I do a safe, issue. But let neither my weakness plead my innocence, nor their power my guilt. If your Lordships will conceive of my defenses, as they are in themselves, without reference to either party—and I shall endeavor so to present them—I hope to go hence as clearly justified by you, as I now am in the testimony of a good conscience by myself.
My Lords, I have all along, during this charge, watched to see that poisoned arrow of Treason, which some men would fain have feathered in my heart; but, in truth, it hath not been my quickness to discover any such evil yet within my breast, though now, perhaps, by sinister information, sticking to my clothes.
They tell me of a two-fold treason, one against the statute, another by the common law; this direct, that consecutive; this individual, that accumulative; this in itself, that by way of construction.
As to this charge of treason, I must and do acknowledge, that if I had the least suspicion of my own guilt, I would save your Lordships the pains. I would cast the first stone. I would pass the first sentence of condemnation against myself. And whether it be so or not, I now refer to your Lordships' judgment and deliberation. You, and you only, under the care and protection of my gracious master, are my judges. Under favor, none of the Commons are my peers, nor can they be my judges. I shall ever celebrate the providence and wisdom of your noble ancestors, who have put the keys of life and death, so far as concerns you and your posterity, into your own hands. None but your own selves, my Lords, know the rate of your noble blood: none but yourselves must hold the balance in disputing of the same.
I shall now proceed in repeating my defenses as they are reducible to the two main points of treason. And,
I. For treason against the statute, which is the only treason in effect, there is nothing alleged for that but the fifteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-seventh articles.