in all cafes, to maintain an impenetrable reserve on all business begun or concluded, that is, on the form of the indictment, the evidence in fupport of it, and the fact of its being found or rejected; except when you bring in your bills or have occafion to confult the court.

Thirdly, you implore the divine help on condition, that you prefent no perfon from hatred, malice, or ill will, nor leave any thing unprefented from fear, favour, or affection. These words are a paraphrafe on a ftronger and more elegant form preserved in the law of ETHELRED, by which the grand inqueft were compelled to fwear, that they would accufe none, whom they believed innocent, nor conceal any, whom they thought guilty. To be free from partial affections and preconceived opinions, from refentment and from regard, from all prepoffeffions that might incline you to reject bills, or to find them true, is a duty common to all who are concerned in the adminiftration of juftice; and though different motives are enumerated by way of example, yet the plain intent of the whole sentence is, that, from no motive whatsoever, neither from the darker paffions of envy or wrath, nor from the amiable affections of compaffion and benignity, fhall you bring the guiltlefs into trouble, nor screen probable guilt from a full and impartial

trial. You will remember and emulate on this occafion the fublime attributes of your guide, the Law, which cannot be more ftrongly expreffed, than in the manly diction of the highminded and eloquent ALGERNON SIDNEY: "The good of a people ought to be fixed on a more folid foundation than the fluctuating "will or fallible understanding of one or a few; "for this reafon law is established, which no paffion can disturb. It is void of defire and

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fear, of luft and anger; it is pure difpaffionate "mind; written reafon, retaining fome mea"fure of the divine perfection: it enjoins "not that, which pleases a weak, frail man, "but, without any regard to perfons, com"mands what is good, and punishes evil in all, whether noble or base, rich or poor, high or low it is deaf, inexorable, in"flexible."

The preceding member of the period containing a negative condition, you are lastly presented with it in pofitive form; that you shall present all things (not partially, but) truly as they come to your knowledge, according to the best of your understanding. Here we return to the phrase, with which we began, of a true prefentment which you are bound to make, of all things relating to the business of the feffion, as truly as you are

enabled to make it, according to fuch evidence as you have before you, and by fuch an exertion of your intellectual powers, as all fenfible men would apply to their own concerns; for fo the law interprets in your cafe the superlative beft, not meaning, as in our, (for reafons not appli cable to your) that painful and intense application of mind, with which a mathematician folves the most abftruse problem, or a judge decides the most intricate caufe. The only remaining doubt is, what the law means by a true prefentment; for what the law means, must be the rule of our interpretation, and the measure of your duty. Sir MATTHEW HALE, whom I always name with applause, was of opinion, that if probable evidence be given for the king, the grand inqueft ought to find the bill true; for it is but an accufation, that is, the denunciation of a perfon, who, as they verily believe, ought to be tried this opinion has been attacked with fome warmth; because the grand jury are fworn, it is faid, to prefent the whole truth, and, it is added erroneously, nothing but the truth, and ought, therefore, to have the fame perfuafion, that an indictment is true, with the petit jury, who take the fame oath. I conceive the opinion of that great judge to be, if we rightly understand it, confonant to law. He could not mean a remote

and light probability, or flender furmife, but used the word probable, in a strong and imphatical sense, for an approximation to the truth as far as the grand jury can fafely affert it. Probability has many fhades or degrees, from the weakest, which borders on negation, to the ftrongeft, which touches the confines of certainty; and he uses the pofitive degree intenfively, as the word diligent is used by the Roman lawyers: that you, who hear only one fide, should have the fame perfuafion with the petit jury, who hear both fides, is impoffible; and the law requires no impoffibility. Nor is the word true invariably oppofed to falfe, but often, both in popular and technical language, means correct or exact, faithful or juft: a verdict is true, when it is exactly conformable to the evidence, though many fuch verdicts have proved, in a strict and logical fenfe, unhappily falfe. To prevent miftakes the word is qualified, in the oath of petit jurors, by the phrase according to the evidence, and in yours by the words as the things fhall come to your knowledge. The law intends generally, that the guilty fhall be punished and the innocent justified, but particularly, that you, gentlemen, fhould find on good grounds a juft accufation, and that the petit jury, having heard both accufation and defence, fhould weigh the whole

evidence and give their verdict, or true faying, according to the preponderant fcale. LAMBARD applies the word verdict to an indictment, because it is true, as far as evidence on one fide can establish the truth. The refult of my reafoning is, that you should be perfuaded, as far as you have knowledge, that the accufation is juft, and the bill true in fubftance. As to mere form, it is not the intention of the law, that you fhould precisely ascertain the truth of it: for instance, the offence must be laid on a certain day before the feffion, which is one day in law; but on what particular day is of no confequence; and what the law pronounces immaterial, cannot be material in confcience of which the law, as we have established, is the guide. Again; the law fuppofes, that atrocious offenders must have abandoned the fear of GOD; yet a wretch, who had abandoned every thing else, confeffed before his execution in the north of England, that, in the very moment before he murdered a fleeping man, he meditated on the awfulness of the divine Majefty, and implored on his knees a deliverance from temptation: had fuch a mixture of religion and wickednefs been proved before the grand inqueft, they would not surely have thought themselves bound by their oath, to put a negative on the formal phrase in the indictment.