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remains of free discussion in Europe, now confined to this kingdom; addressing you, therefore, as the guardians of the most important interests of mankind,—convinced that the unfettered exercise of reason depends more on your present verdict than on any other that was ever delivered by a jury, I trust I may rely with confidence on the issue; I trust that you will consider yourselves as the advanced guard of liberty; as having this day to fight the first battle of free discussion against the most formidable enemy that it ever encountered!

9. THE INSTIGATORS OF TREASON, 1807.—William Wirt.

William Wirt, one of the brightest ornaments of the American bar, was born at Bladensburg, Maryland, November 8th, 1772. The most memorable case in which his talents as an advocate were exercised was the celebrated trial of Aaron Burr, in 1807, for treason, in which Wirt was retained as counsel for the Government. His exquisite description of the temptation of Blennerhassett by Burr is a most graceful and masterly specimen of forensic art. In 1817 Mr. Wirt was appointed Attorney General of the United States. He died February 18th, 1834.

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THE inquiry is, whether presence at the overt act be necessary to make a man a traitor? The Gentlemen say that it is necessary,he cannot be a principal in the treason, without actual presence. The framers of the Constitution, informed by the examples of Greece and Rome, and foreseeing that the liberties of this Republic might, one day or other, be seized by the daring ambition of some domestic usurper, have given peculiar importance and solemnity to the crime. of treason, by ingrafting a provision against it upon the Constitution. But they have done this in vain, if the construction contended for on the other side is to prevail. If it require actual presence at the scene of the assemblage to involve a man in the guilt of treason, how easy will it be for the principal traitor to avoid this guilt, and escape punishment forever! He may go into distant States, from one State to another. He may secretly wander, like a demon of darkness, from one end of the Continent to the other. He may enter into the confidence of the simple and unsuspecting. He may prepare the whole mechanism of the stupendous and destructive engine, put it in motion, and let the rest be done by his agents. He may then go a hundred miles from the scene of action. Let him keep himself only from the scene of the assemblage, and the immediate spot of the battle, and he is innocent in law, while those he has deluded are to suffer the death of traitors! Who is the more guilty of this treason, the poor, weak, deluded instruments, or the artful and ambitious man, who corrupted and misled them?

There is no comparison between his guilt and theirs; and yet you secure impunity to him, while they are to suffer death! Is this reason? Is this moral right? No man, of a sound mind and heart, can doubt, for a moment, between the comparative guilt of Aaron Burr, the prime mover of the whole mischief, and of the poor men on Blennerhassett's Island, who called themselves "Burr's men." In the case of murder, who is the more guilty, the ignorant, deluded perpetrator, or the abominable instigator? Sir, give to the Constitution the construction contended for on the other side, and you might as well

expunge the crime of treason from your criminal code; nay, you had better do it, for by this construction you hold out the lure of impunity to the most dangerous men in the community, men of ambition and talents, while you loose the vengeance of the law on the comparatively innocent. If treason ought to be repressed, I ask you, who is the more dangerous and the more likely to commit it, the mere instrument, who applies the force, or the daring, aspiring, elevated genius, who devises the whole plot, but acts behind the scenes?

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A PLAIN man, who knew nothing of the curious transmutations which the wit of man can work, would be very apt to wonder by what kind of legerdemain Aaron Burr had contrived to shuffle himself down to the bottom of the pack, as an accessory, and turn up poor Blennerhassett as principal, in this treason. Who, then, is Aaron Burr, and what the part which he has borne in this transaction? He is its author, its projector, its active executor. Bold, ardent, restless and aspiring, his brain conceived it, his hand brought it into action.

Who is Blennerhassett? A native of Ireland, a man of letters, who fied from the storms of his own country, to find quiet in ours. On his arrival in America, he retired, even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought quiet and solitude in the bosom of our western forests. But he brought with him taste, and science, and wealth; and "lo, the desert smiled!" Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity and innocence, shed their mingled delights around him. And, to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love, and made him the father of several children. The evidence would convince you, Sir, that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocence, and this tranquillity, this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart, - the destroyer comes. He comes to turn this paradise into a hell. Yet the flowers do not wither at his approach, and no monitory shuddering through the bosom of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is coming upon him. A stranger presents himself. It is Aaron Burr. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no designs itself, it suspects

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none in others. It wears no guards before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden, when the serpent entered its bowers!

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The prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpractised heart of the unfortunate Blennerhassett, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart, and the objects of its affection. By degrees, he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage; a daring and desperate thirst for glory; an ardor, panting for all the storm, and bustle, and hurricane of life. In a short time, the whole man is changed, and every object of his former delight relinquished. No more he enjoys the tranquil scene: it has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown aside. His shrubbery blooms and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks the rich melody of music; it longs for the trumpet's clangor, and the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him; and the angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with ecstasy so unspeakable, is now unfelt and unseen. Greater objects have taken possession of his soul. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, and stars, and garters, and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at the names of great heroes and conquerors, - of Cromwell, and Cæsar, and Bonaparte. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and, in a few months, we find the tender and beautiful partner of his bosom, whom he lately "permitted not the winds of " summer" to visit too roughly,". we find her shivering, at midnight, on the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell.

Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness, thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace, thus confounded in the toils which were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another, this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, this man is to be called the principal offender; while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason?

Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd; so shocking to the soul; so revolting to reason!

11. REPLY TO MR. WICKHAM IN BURR'S TRIAL, 1807.- William Wirt.

IN proceeding to answer the argument of the Gentleman, I will. treat him with candor. If I misrepresent him, it will not be intentionally. I will not follow the example which he has set me, on a very recent occasion. I will endeavor to meet the Gentleman's prop

ositions in their full force, and to answer them fairly. I will not, as I am advancing towards them, with my mind's eye measure the height, breadth, and power of the proposition; if I find it beyond my strength, halve it; if still beyond my strength, quarter it; if still necessary, subdivide it into eighths; and when, by this process, I have reduced it to the proper standard, take one of these sections and toss it with an air of elephantine strength and superiority. If I find myself capable of conducting, by a fair course of reasoning, any one of his propositions to an absurd conclusion, I will not begin by stating that absurd conclusion as the proposition itself which I am going to encounter. I will not, in commenting on the Gentleman's authorities, thank the Gentleman, with sarcastic politeness, for introducing them, declare that they conclude directly against him, read just so much of the authority as serves the purpose of that declaration, omitting that which contains the true point of the case, which makes against me; nor, if forced by a direct call to read that part also, will I content myself by running over it as rapidly and inarticulately as I can, throw down the book with a theatrical air, and exclaim, Just as I said!" when I know it is just as I had not said.

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I know that, by adopting these arts, I might raise a laugh at the Gentleman's expense; but I should be very little pleased with myself, if I were capable of enjoying a laugh procured by such means. know, too that, by adopting such arts, there will always be those standing around us, who have not comprehended the whole merits of the legal discussion, with whom I might shake the character of the Gentleman's science and judgment as a lawyer. I hope I shall never be capable of such a wish; and I had hoped that the Gentleman himself felt so strongly that proud, that high, aspiring, and ennobling magnanimity, which I had been told conscious talents rarely fail to inspire, that he would have disdained a poor and flecting triumph, gained by means like these.

12. GUILT CANNOT KEEP ITS OWN SECRET. — Daniel Webster, on the trial of J. F. Knapp, 1830, for murder.

AN aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mero pay. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work. He explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; - no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe!

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Ah! Gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe.

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speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from Heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions, from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles, with still greater violence, to burst forth. It must be confessed; it will be confessed; - there is no refuge from confession but suicide- and suicide is confession!

13. MORAL POWER THE MOST FORMIDABLE. —Judge McLean, 1838, on enterprises from the U. States against the British possessions in Canada.

Ir there be any one line of policy in which all political parties agree, it is, that we should keep aloof from the agitations of other Governments; that we shall not intermingle our national concerns with theirs; and much more, that our citizens shall abstain from acts which lead the subjects of other Governments to violence and bloodshed. These violators of the Law show themselves to be enemies of their country, by trampling under foot its laws, compromising its honor, and involving it in the most serious embarrassment with a foreign and friendly Nation. It is, indeed, lamentable to reflect, that such men, under such circumstances, may hazard the peace of the country. If they were to come out in array against their own Government, the consequence to it would be far less serious. In such an effort, they could not involve it in much bloodshed, or in a heavy expenditure, nor

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