Editing Gregor MacGregor (section)

===1826 acquittal of fraud===
MacGregor went into hiding in the French provinces, while Lehuby fled to the southern Netherlands. Hippisley and Irving were informed on 6 September that they were being investigated for conspiracy to defraud and sell titles to land they did not own. Both insisted that they were innocent. They were taken that evening to [[La Force Prison]].{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=268–270}} 

MacGregor was arrested after three months and brought to La Force on 7 December 1825. He speculated to his confederates that the charges against them must be the result of some abrupt change of policy by France, or of some Spanish intrigue calculated to undermine Poyaisian independence. The three men remained imprisoned without trial while the French attempted to extradite Lehuby from the Netherlands.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=270–273}} Attempting to re-associate himself and Poyais with the republican movement in Latin America, MacGregor issued a French-language declaration from his prison cell on 10 January 1826, claiming that he was "contrary to human rights, held prisoner&nbsp;... for reasons of which he is not aware" and "suffering as one of the founders of independence in the New World".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=273–276}}{{#tag:ref|MacGregor expressed hope that this statement might be presented at the upcoming congress of the new republics in Panama. It concluded with an announcement that Poyais was hereby under the provisional protection of the [[Federal Republic of Central America|United Provinces of Central America]].{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=273–276}}|group="n"|name="founderofindependence"}} This attempt to convince the French that he might have some kind of diplomatic immunity did not work. The French government and police ignored the announcement.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=273–276}}

[[File:Cour intérieure de la Force en 1840.jpg|thumb|left|[[La Force Prison]] in Paris, where MacGregor was detained from December 1825 to July 1826, before his trial and acquittal|alt=A large, austere-looking stone building.]]
The three Britons were brought to trial on 6 April 1826. Lehuby, still in the Netherlands, was tried ''in absentia''. The Crown prosecution's case was seriously hampered by his absence, particularly because many key documents were with him in the Netherlands. The prosecutor alleged a complex conspiracy between MacGregor, Lehuby and their associates to profit personally from a fraudulent land concession and loan prospectus.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=277–280}} MacGregor's lawyer, a Frenchman called Merilhou, asserted that if anything untoward had occurred, the missing managing director should be held culpable; there was no proof of a conspiracy, he said, and MacGregor could have been himself defrauded by Lehuby. The prosecutor conceded that there was insufficient evidence to prove his case, complimented MacGregor for co-operating with the investigation fairly and openly, and withdrew the charges.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=277–280}} The three judges confirmed the defendants' release — "a full and perfect acquittal", Hippisley would write—but days later the French authorities succeeded in having Lehuby extradited, and the three men learned they would have to stand trial again.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=280–281}}

The fresh trial, scheduled for 20 May, was postponed when the prosecutor announced that he was not ready. The delay gave MacGregor and Merilhou time to prepare an elaborate, largely fictional 5,000-word statement purporting to describe the Scotsman's background, activities in the Americas, and total innocence of any endeavour to defraud. When the trial finally began on 10 July 1826, Merilhou was present not as MacGregor's defence counsel but as a witness for the prosecution, having been called as such because of his links with the Nouvelle Neustrie company.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=283–288}} 

Merilhou entrusted MacGregor's defence to a colleague called Berville, who read the 5,000-word submission in full before the court. "Maître Merilhou, as the author of the address the court had heard, and Maître Berville, as the actor who read the script, had done their work extremely well," Sinclair writes; Lehuby was convicted of making false representations regarding the sale of shares, and sentenced to 13 months' imprisonment, but the Cazique was found not guilty on all charges, while the imputations against Hippisley and Irving were stricken from the record.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=283–288}}