The species, his lordship continued, had been
long extinct; but the Vraibleusians, duly reverencing the institutions
of their ancestors, had never presumed to abrogate the authority of the
Camelopard Court, or invest any other with equal privileges. Therefore,
his lordship added, in order to try you in this Court for a modern
offence of high treason, you must first be introduced by fiction of law
as a stealer of Camelopards, and then being in praesenti regio, in a
manner, we proceed to business by a special power for the absolute
offence. Popanilla was so confounded by the kindness of the judge and
the clearness of his lordship's statement that he quite lost the thread
of his peroration.
The trial proceeded. Everybody with whom Popanilla had conversed during
his visit to Vraibleusia was subpoenaed against him, and the evidence was
conclusive. Skindeep, who was brought up by a warrant from the King's
Bench, proved the fact of Popanilla's landing; and that he had given
himself out as a political exile, the victim of a tyrant, a corrupt
aristocracy, and a misguided people.
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