tance in going with him to Mr. Adair's house. He likewise said that Mrs. Rudd took the whole on herself; begged them for God's sake to have mercy on an innocent man,' and that she said no injury was intended to any person, and that all would be paid; and that she acknowledged delivering the bond to the prisoner. The counsel demanding if Mr. Drummond and Mr. Adair, after hearing what Mrs. Rudd said, had not expressed themselves as considering the prisoner as her dupe; the answer was, We both expressed ourselves to that effect. A constable had been sent for, and we discharged him.' The identity of the bond was proved by Mr. Wheatley, clerk to Messrs. Drummond.-The evidence of Mr. Robert Drummond was not, in any very essential point, different from that of his brother. He deposed that, when Mrs. Rudd had acknowledged that she forged the bond, he expressed his doubt, the hand writing being so different from that of a woman; and said nothing would convince him of it but her showing, on a piece of paper, that she could write that sort of hand. He said he did not mean to insnare her, and would immediately throw the writing into the fire. Mrs. Rudd instantly wrote 'William Adair,' or part of the name, so very like the signature of the bond, that it satisfied him, and he burnt the paper. Robert Perreau then said that he hoped that the information she had given sufficiently acquitted him: but he was told that he had better not inquire into that; and on this occasion he showed the first sign of anxiety. Sir Thomas Frankland deposed that the prisoner brought him two bonds at different times, one to Daniel Perreau for six thousand pounds, and the other to himself (Robert) for five thousand three hundred pounds: that for five thousand three hundred pounds, on which he lent him four thousand pounds, was to be repaid on the 26th of March, with the three days' grace; the other was due on the 8th of March. Mr. Wilson declared that he filled up the bond at the desire of the prisoner, and produced his instructions for so doing. He likewise acknowledged that he had filled up other bonds for the prisoner. That the handwriting at the bottom of the bond was not the handwriting of William Adair was proved by Scroope Ogilvie and James Adair, Esquires. Mr. James Adair was now questioned by counsel respecting a private interview he had with Mrs. Rudd; but the Court doubted if this might be allowed as evidence. After some observations made by the counsel for the prisoner, a letter was read, which he presumed had been sent him by William Adair, Esq. but which appeared to have been written by Mrs. Rudd; but it was scarcely intelligible. The prisoner now proceeded to make his defence in the following terms: My Lords, and gentlemen of the jury, if I had been wanting in that fortitude which is the result of innocence, or had found any hesitation in submitting my proceedings to the strictest scrutiny, I need not at this day have stood before my country, or set my life upon the issue of a legal trial. Supported by the consciousness of my integrity, I have forced that transaction to light, which might else have been suppressed, and I have voluntarily sought that imprisonment which guilt never in vites, and even innocence has been known to fly from; ardently looking forward to this hour, as the sure, though painful, means of vindicating a character, not distinguished, indeed, for its importance, but hither to maintained without a blemish. There are many respectable wit. nesses at hand (and many more, I persuade myself, would be found, if it had been necessary to summon them upon a point of such notoriety) who will inform your lordships and the Court how I have appeared to them to act, what trust has been reposed in me, and what credit I had in their opinions, for my diligence, honesty, and punctuality. In truth, my lords, I am bold to say that few men, in my line of life, have carried on their business with a fairer character; not many with better success. I have followed no pleasures, nor launched into any expenses: there is not a man living who can charge ine with neglect or dissipation. The honest profits of my trade have afforded me a comfortable support, and furnished me with the means of maintaining, in a decent sort, a worthy wife, and three promising children, upon whom I was labouring to bestow the properest education in my power in short, we were as happy as affluence and innocence could make us, till this affliction came upon us by surprise, and I was made the dupe of a transaction, from whose criminality, I call God, the searcher of all human hearts, to witness, I am now as free as I was at the day of my birth.-My lords, and gentlemen of the jury, men who are unpractised in deceit will be apt to credit others for a sincerity which they themselves possess. The most undesigning characters have at all times been the dupes of craft and subtlety. A plain story, with the indulgence of the Court, I will relate, which will furnish strong instances of credulity on one part, and at the same time will exhibit a train of such consummate artifices : on the other as are not to be equalled in the annals of iniquity, and which might have extorted an equal confidence from a much more enlightened understanding than I can claim.' Having said thus much, the unhappy man proceeded to relate a variety of circumstances relative to the imposition practised on him by Mrs. Rudd, of which the following are the most remarkable : He said that she was constantly conversing about the interest she had with Mr. W. Adair; and that Mr. Adair had, by his interest with the king, obtained the promise of a baronetage for Daniel Perreau, and was about procuring him a seat in parliament. That Mr. Adair had proinised to open a bank, and take the brothers Perreau into partnership with him: that the prisoner received many letters signed William Adair, which he had no doubt came from that gentleman, in which were promises of giving them a considerable part of his fortune during his life; and that he was to allow Daniel Perreau two thousand four hundred pounds a year for his household expenses, and six hundred pounds a year for Mrs. Rudd's pin-money. That Mr. Daniel Perreau purchased a house in Harley Street for four thousand pounds, which money Mr. William Adair was to give them. That, when Daniel Perreau was pressed by the person he bought the house of for the money, the prisoner understood that they applied to Mr. William Adair, and that his auswer was, that he had lent the king seventy thousand pounds, and had purchased a house in Pall Mall at seven thousand pounds, in which to carry on the banking business, and therefore could not spare the four thousand pounds at that time. The prisoner now related a variety of circumstances which would tempt an ingenuous mind to suppose him innocent, and that the guilt of the transaction rested with Mrs. Rudd. The unfortunate man then proceeded in his defence in the following terms: My lords, and gentlemen of the jury, I have now faithfully laid before you such circumstances as have occurred to my memory, as necessary for your information, in order as they happened during my acquaintance with Mrs. Rudd, under the character of my brother's wife. Many have been the sufferers by artifices and impostors, but never man appeared, I believe, in this or any other tribunal, upon whom so many engines were set at work to interest his credulity. It will not escape the notice of this splendid Court that my compassion was first engaged by the story of Mrs. Rudd's sufferings, before my belief was invited to her representations. Let me have credit with you for yielding up by pity in the first instance, and you cannot wonder I did not withhold my credulity afterwards. It is in this natural, this necessary consequence, I rest my defence. I was led from error to error by such insensible degrees, that every step I took strengthened my infatuation. When Mr. Drummond first hesiteted at the handwriting at the foot of the bond, if it did not so alarm ine as to shake my belief in this artful woman, let it be considered that I had been prevailed upon to negotiate other bonds of hers, depositing them in the hands of bankers who had never spied any defect, or raised the least objection. These bonds have been regularly and punctually paid in due time. The letters sent to me, as if from William Adair, critically agreed with the handwriting of the bond. Mr. Adair did not keep money at Mr. Drummond's; opportunities of comparing his handwriting for many years had not occurred; and the hesitation upon his part appeared to me no more than the exceptions and minute precautions of a banker, which could not so suddenly overturn the explicit belief that I had annexed to all that was told me in Harley Street. Can any greater proof be given than my own proposal to Mr. Drummond of leaving the bond in his hands till he had satisfied his credulity? Can your lordships, or gentlemen of the jury, for a moment suspect that any man would be guilty of such a crime whose proceedings were so fair and open? That single circumstance, I am satisfied, will afford my total exculpation. The resort to Mr. Adair was as easy to Mr. Drummond as to the books in his own compting-house: it does not come within the bounds of common sense, much less does it fall within the possibility of guilt, that any man living should voluntarily, with hi eyes open, take a step so directl and absolutely centering in bis ce tain destruction. But this circum stance, strong as it is, is not all my case. I bless God, the protector of innocence, that, in my defence, proofs arise upon proofs: the least of them, I trust, will be thought incompatible with guilt. It should seem impossible that a guilty person would propose to Mr. Drum mond to retain the bond for the satisfaction of his scruples; but that the same person should, after so long a time for consideration had passed after my leaving the bond, which was full twenty-four hours, openly, and in the face of day, enter the shop of Mr. Drummond, and demand if he had satisfied all his scruples, unless a man from mere desperation had been weary of his life, and sought a dissolution; this, I humbly apprehend, would be au absolute impossibility: but, my lords, and gentlemen of the jury, I had neither in my breast the principle of guilt, nor had I that desperate loathing of existence as should bring a shameful condemnation on my head. It is true I have invited this trial; but it is equally true I have done it in the consciousness of my integrity, because I could not otherwise go through the remainder of my days with comfort and satisfaction, unless I had the verdict of my countrymen for my acquittal, and rested my innocence upon the purest testimony I could have on this side the grave. It is plain I had an opportunity of with drawing myself. How many men are there, with the clearest intentions, yet, from the apprehension of being made the talk of the public, and, above all, the dread of imprisonment, and the terror of a trial, would have thought themselves happy to have caught at any opportunity of saving themselves froin such a series of distress? Greater confidence can no man be in of the integrity of his case, and the justice of his country. When it was found necessary to the designs of Mrs. Rudd that I and my family should be made the dupes of her connexions with the house of Adair, it may well be believed that nothing but the strongest interdictions could prevent my endeavours to obtain an interview. In fact, this point was laboured with consummate artifice; and nothing less than ruin to my brother and his affairs was denounced upon my breaking this injunction. It was part of the same error to believe her in this also. A respectable witness has told you and I do not controvert his evidence that my confidence in her assertion, and in the testimonials that she exhibited under the hand, as I believed, of Mr. Adair, were : such, in my mistaken judgment, as to be equal to the evidence of my own senses, pressed by the forms of business to say to Mr. Drummond that I had seen Mr. Adair myself; but I neither went to Mr. Adair, nor disclosed those pressing motives which prevented me. No less free to confess my faults than I am confident to assert my innocence, I seek no palliation for this circumstance, except my temptation and my failings; and I trust it will rather be a matter of surprise, that, in the course of a negotiation, through the whole of which I was acted upon by the most artful of impostors, this only deviation was to be found and yet this very circumstance carries with it a clearer conviction of my being the dupe of Mrs. Rudd's intrigues than any I have to offer in my defence; and if my subsequent proceedings, and the alacrity I showed in going with Mr. Drummond to Mr. Adair, together with my conduct before this gentleman, is, as I apprehend it is, absolutely irreconcileable with a consciousness of guilt, the circumstances above mentioned will serve to show with what a degree of credulity the artifices of Mrs. Rudd had furnished me. Upon the whole, if, in the above detail. no circum stances are discovered in which an innocent man, under the like delu. sion with myself, might not have acted as I have acted, and, at the same time, if there be very many particulars in which no guilty man would have conducted himself as I have conducted myself, I should be wanting in respect to your lordships and the jury if I doubted the justice of their verdict, and, which is inseparable from it, my honorable acquittal. The prisoner now proceeded to call his witnesses, the substance of whose evidence we shall give in the most concise manner. George Kinder deposed that Mrs. Perreau (the only name by which he knew Mrs. Rudd) told him that she was a near relation of Mr. James Adair; that he looked upon her as his child, had promised to make her fortune, and with that view had recommended her to Mr. William Adair, a near relation and intimate friend of his, who had promised to set her husband and the prisoner up in the banking business.' He likewise deposed that the said Mr. Daniel Perreau was to be made a baronet, and described how she would act when she became a lady. This witness deposed that Mrs. Rudd often pretended that Mr. William Adair had called to see her, but that he never had seen that gentleman on any visit. John Moody, a livery-servant of Daniel Perreau, deposed that his nistress wrote two very different hands; in one of which she wrote letters to his master, as from Mr. William Adair, and in the other the ordinary business of the family: that the letters written in the name of William Adair were pretended to have been left in his master's absence; that his mistress ordered him to give them to his master, and pretend that Mr. Adair had been with his mistress for a longer or shorter time, as circumstances required. This witness likewise proved that the hand at the bottom of the bond and that of his mistress's fictitious writing were precisely the same; that she used different pens, ink, and paper, in writing her common and fictitious letters; and that she sometimes gave the witness half a crown when he had delivered a letter to ner satisfaction. He said he had seen her go two or three times to Mr. J. Adair's, but never to William's; and that Mr. J. Adair once visited his mistress on her lying in. Susannah Perreau (the prisoner's sister) deposed to her having seen a note delivered to Daniel Perreau, by Mrs. Rudd, for nineteen thousang pounds, drawn as by William Adair on Mr. Croft, the banker, in favour of Daniel Perreau. Elizabeth Perkins swore that, a week before the forgery was discovered, her mistress gave her a letter to bring back to her in a quarter of an hour, and say it was brought by Mr. Coverley, who had been servant to Daniel Perreau: that she gave her mistress this letter, and her master instantly broke the seal. Daniel Perreau declared that the purport of this letter was 'that Mr. Adair desired her to apply to his brother, the prisoner, to procure him five thousand pounds upon his (Adair's) bond, in the same manner as he had done before; that Mr. Adair was unwilling to have it appear that the money was raised for him, and therefore desired to have the bond lodged with some confidential friend, that would not require an assignment of it; that his brother, on being made acquainted with his request, showed a vast deal of reluctancy, and said it was a very unpleasant work; but undertook it with a view of obliging Mr. William Adair.' The counsel for the prosecution demanding if he did not disclaim all knowledge of the affair before Mr. Adair,' he said he denied ever having seen the bond before, nor had he a perfect knowledge of it till he saw it in the hands of Mr. Adair. David Cassady, who assisted Mr. R. Perreau as an apothecary, deposed that he lived much within the profits of his profession, aud that it was reported he was going into the banking business. John Leigh, clerk to Sir John Fielding, swore to the prisoner's coming voluntarily to the office, and giving information that a forgery |