been returned by the Coroner’s inquisition, Captain Macnamara was taken into custody, and on the 22d of the same month, tried at the Old Bailey. His defence, which he read himself to the court, is so eloquent an appeal to the feelings and passions of a jury, that we cannot resist in this place, giving it to our readers at length.
“Gentlemen of the Jury,– I appear before you with the consolation that my character has already been delivered, by the verdict of a grand jury, from the shocking imputation of murder; and that, although the evidence against me was laid before them, without any explanation or evidence of the accusations which brought me into my present unhappy situation, they made their own impression, and no charge of criminal homicide was found against me. I was delivered at once from the whole effect of the indictment. I therefore now stand before you upon the inquisition only taken before the coroner, upon the view of the body, under circumstances extremely affecting to the minds of those who were to deliberate on the transaction, and without the opportunity which the benignity of the law affords me at this moment, of repelling that inference of even sudden resentment against the deceased, which is the foundation of this inquest of Manslaughter.
“The origin of the difference, as you see it in the evidence, was insignificant; the heat of two persons, each defending an animal under his protection, was natural, and could not have led to any serious consequences. It was not the deceased’s defending his own dog, or his threatening to destroy mine, that led to the fatal catastrophe. It was the defiance alone which most unhappily accompanied what was said; words receive their interpretation from the avowed intention of the speaker. The offence was forced upon me by the declaration that he invited me to be offended, and challenged me to vindicate the offence by calling upon him for satisfaction. ‘If you are offended at what has passed, you know where to find me.’ These words, unfortunately repeated and reiterated, have, over and over again, been considered, by criminal courts of justice, as sufficient to support an indictment for a challenge. These judgments of courts are founded upon the universal understandings and feelings of mankind; and common candour must admit, that an officer, however desirous to avoid a quarrel, cannot refuse to understand what even the grave judges of the law must interpret as a provocation and a defiance. I declare, therefore, most solemnly, that I went into the field from no resentment against the deceased; nothing, indeed, but insanity, could have led me to expose my own life to such imminent peril under the impulse of passion, from so inadequate a cause as the evidence before you exhibits, when separated from the defiance which was the fatal source of mischief; and I could well have overlooked that too, if the world, in its present state, could have overlooked it also. I went into the field, therefore, with no determination or desire to take the life of my opponent, or to expose my own. I went there in hopes of re-