July 15.

This Pamphlet was printed and ready for publication some weeks since; but the Editor thought proper to keep it back until the trial of John Church, which came on at the Middlesex Sessions on Monday the 12th of July 1813; when he was acquitted. Indeed the Editor never imagined that any other verdict than one of acquittal, would have been given on that particular prosecution. If the Reader looks back to pages 25 and 26, he will find in the account there given of the proceedings at Union Hall, that this prosecution was ORDERED by the Magistrates of that Office, and did not originate with the prosecutor, William Webster, on whom the abominable attempt was alleged to have been made eleven years ago; that the very mention of the attempt was a mere incidental circumstance arising out of another proceeding then before the Magistrates; and that the latter, upon hearing it, dismissed the first complaint, and obliged Wm. Webster to become (what he never until then intended to be) a prosecutor against Church. Let the Reader also take notice of the following sentence in the report in page 26: “The Magistrate observed, that from the length of time which had elapsed since the offence had been committed, he thought a Jury would not feel justified in finding him guilty.” This William Webster, therefore, considered, in all respects, as an unwilling prosecutor, who was supported only by one counsel of young standing, [38a] and had to struggle against two of the most able advocates [38b] in the criminal courts. The Editor (for he was not present at the trial) understands that Webster gave his evidence with embarrassment and trepidation, and he suffered himself to fall into some inconsistencies. With this solitary and confused evidence, and after a lapse—after a silence of ELEVEN YEARS, was it possible to suppose that a Jury would have found any man guilty? It must here be observed that the decision on this solitary complaint of eleven years standing, does not in the slightest degree affect any of the numerous accusation at a more recent date, which have been made against John Church.