LETTER

TO SIR SAMUEL SHEPHERD, KNT. HIS MAJESTY'S ATTORNEY-GENERAL UPON THE SUBJECT OF HIS PROSECUTIONS OF RICHARD CARLILE, FOR PUBLISHING PAINE'S AGE OF REASON. LONDON. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET.

CONTENTS

LETTER TO SIR SAMUEL SHEPHERD, KNT.

LETTER TO MR. CARLILE,

LETTER TO SIR SAMUEL SHEPHERD, KNT.

Sir,

As you have commenced the prosecution of Carlile, a printer, for publishing an edition of Paine's Age of Reason, in conjunction with the self-styled Society for the Suppression of Vice, I take the liberty to submit to your consideration a few remarks, upon the nature and tendency of this purposed suit. Since prosecutions of this kind are not novel, and as it may be fairly conjectured that you will follow the ordinary routine of men in your office in these causes, and moreover as the accused will be subjected to the usual disadvantage of meeting three pleadings to the one which will be allowed him, besides the probable interruptions from the Judge on the bench, I think it needful and reasonable to anticipate and meet beforehand those hacknied arguments, which it seems to me most probable that you will advance in the court on the days of trial.

That the accuser should be permitted to plead three times to the once with which the accused is but imperfectly indulged, though it may be law, is most flagrant injustice. But, perhaps, you may not be quite satisfied with my arithmetic, and may ask me, how I make out my three pleadings to one. It were much to the honour of this country, and its laws, if I should be mistaken in my calculation, but I fear to be put to the blush as an Englishman, (if you serjeants at law are not,) by my computation, being found to be but too true.

In the first place, you open the case. This you do not reckon pleading: but as you are allowed to say whatever you think proper, it becomes as truly a pleading in reality as your latter speech, which alone you call by that name. The second is what is styled so on both sides. And this would be injustice, if I stopped here; but having engaged to reckon up three pleadings, I fix upon the most unfit person that could be named; that is, my Lord Judge, to plead on the third occasion.

This speech of the Judge, you crown-lawyers term summing up the evidence; but I believe you can never adduce one solitary instance in a crown prosecution, in which the Judge has not acted completely the part of a retained counsel for the crown.

That my Lord Judge should be unable to divest himself of the habit of pleading as an advocate, since he has formerly followed that employment, though far from equitable or decorous, is still very natural, like as the mail-coach horse which has aforetime been a hunter,

     "When hounds and horns the forest rend,"

pricks up his ears, and longs to join in the pursuit. But the Judge also discharges a still more exceptionable office, that of interrupter on the part of the crown.

He is apt to lug in his observation, that what the accused is saying in his own defence is irrelevant<