But I had determined to defend Noah myself (the court consenting) for I had forebodings that our safety would depend more on an appeal to the rights of hospitality, than on any legal defence it was in our power to offer.

As the brigadier kindly volunteered to aid me for nothing, I thought proper not to refuse his services, however.
I pass over the appearance of the court, the empanelling of the jury, and the arraignment; for, in matters of mere legal forms, there is no great difference between civilized countries, all of them wearing the same semblance of justice.

The first indictment, for unhappily there were two, charged Noah with having committed an assault, with malice prepense, on the king's dignity, with "sticks, daggers, muskets, blunderbusses, air-guns, and other unlawful weapons, more especially with the tongue, in that he had accused his majesty, face to face, with having a memory, etc., etc." The other indictment, repeating the formula of the first, charged the honest sealer with feloniously accusing her majesty the queen, "in defiance of the law, to the injury of good morals and the peace of society, with having no memory, etc., etc." To both these charges the plea of "not guilty," was entered as fast as possible, in behalf of our client.
I ought to have said before, that both Brigadier Downright and myself had applied to be admitted of counsel for the accused, under an ancient law of Leaphigh, as next of kin; I as a fellow human being, and the brigadier by adoption.
The preliminary forms observed, the attorney-general was about to go into proof, in behalf of the crown, when my brother Downright arose and said that he intended to save the precious time of the court, by admitting the facts; and that it was intended to rest the defence altogether on the law of the case.

He presumed the jury were the judges of the law as well as of the facts, according to the rule of Leaplow, and that "he and his brother Goldencalf were quite prepared to show that the law was altogether with us, in this affair." The court received the admission, and the facts were submitted to the jury, by consent, as proven; although the chief-justice took occasion to remark, Longbeard dissenting, that, while the jury were certainly judges of the law, in one sense, yet there was another sense in which they were not judges of the law.

The dissent of Baron Longbeard went to maintain that while the jury were the judges of the law in the "another sense" mentioned, they were not judges of the law in the "one sense" named.