uch regard for justice, and too
much respect for my own character, to attempt either; and were I to make
such attempt, I am sure that in this court nothing can be carried
against the law, and that gentlemen, intelligent and just as you are,
are not, by any power, to be hurried beyond the evidence. Though I could
well have wished to shun this occasion, I have not felt at liberty to
withhold my professional assistance, when it is supposed that I may be
in some degree useful in investigating and discovering the truth
respecting this most extraordinary murder. It has seemed to be a duty
incumbent on me, as on every other citizen, to do my best and my utmost
to bring to light the perpetrators of this crime. Against the prisoner
at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I
would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect
to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep
guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how great soever it may be,
which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all
who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing, this deed of
midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous
crime at the bar of public justice.

Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case. In some respects, it has
hardly a precedent anywhere; certainly none in our New England history.
This bloody drama exhibited no suddenly excited, ungovernable rage. The
actors in it were not surprised by any lion-like temptation springing
upon their virtue, and overcoming it, before resistance could begin. Nor
did they do the deed to glut savage vengeance, or satiate long-settled
and deadly hate. It was a cool, calculating, money-making murder. It was
all "hire and salary, not revenge." It was the weighing of money against
life; the counting out of so many pieces of silver against so many
ounces of blood.

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 mere pay. Truly,
here is a new lesson for painters and poets. Whoever shall hereafter
draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been
exhibited, where such example was last to have been looked for, in the
very bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim
visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with
settled hate, and the bloodshot eye emitting livid fires of mal