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That there might be no doubt of the jury's meaning, I, as counsel for the defendant, reminded them, that he had not only traversed the entire information by the ordinary plea of "Not Guilty," but had also pleaded, in justification of the libel, certain facts, viz., that the government libelled was not the Queen's lawful Government, but the "accroached and usurped" government of one Dr. Bridges; that the libellous matter was true; and that the publication thereof was for the common good.
I then asked them—
"Gentlemen, do you find for the defendant on both these issues?"
And their foreman answered—
"We do!"
They were a special jury of merchants and bankers. I was afterwards assured by one of them, M. Vaucher, the French Consul, that,—far from being prejudiced in the defendant's favour, his bias, if he had one, was to spare so great a reproach to Her Majesty's Government, as such a verdict on such an issue could not fail to cast; but that the facts were too much for him.
To my application for costs against the Crown, the Chief Justice answered most readily—
"You shall certainly have them!"
Nor was this the only disgrace sustained by the Government that day.
On the face of the voluminous and conflicting depositions of the crown witnesses, in the court of the magistrate who had committed the case for trial, wholesale perjury was manifest; insomuch that my friend, Mr. Green, the acting attorney-general, in
