ng any motive, is shown to have had any intercourse with Richard
Crowninshield, Jr., but Joseph Knapp, and this principally through the
agency of the prisoner at the bar? It is the infirmity, the distressing
difficulty of the prisoner's case, that his counsel cannot and dare not
admit what they yet cannot disprove, and what all must believe. He who
believes, on this evidence, that Richard Crowninshield, Jr. was the
immediate murderer, cannot doubt that both the Knapps were conspirators
in that murder. The counsel, therefore, are wrong, I think, in saying
they might safely admit this. The admission of so important and so
connected a fact would render it impossible to contend further against
the proof of the entire conspiracy, as we state it.

What, then, was this conspiracy? J.J. Knapp, Jr., desirous of destroying
the will, and of taking the life of the deceased, hired a ruffian, who,
with the aid of other ruffians, was to enter the house, and murder him
in his bed.

As far back as January this conspiracy began. Endicott testifies to a
conversation with J.J. Knapp at that time, in which Knapp told him that
Captain White had made a will, and given the principal part of his
property to Stephen White. When asked how he knew, he said, "Black and
white don't lie." When asked if the will was not locked up, he said,
"There is such a thing as two keys to the same lock." And speaking of
the then late illness of Captain White, he said, that Stephen White
would not have been sent for if _he_ had been there.

Hence it appears, that as early as January Knapp had a knowledge of the
will, and that he had access to it by means of false keys. This
knowledge of the will, and an intent to destroy it, appear also from
Palmer's testimony, a fact disclosed to him by the other conspirators.
He says that he was informed of this by the Crowninshields on the 2d of
April. But then it is said, that Palmer is not to be credited; that by
his own confession he is a felon; that he has been in the State prison
in Maine; and, above all, that he was intimately associated with these
conspirators themselves. Let us admit these facts. Let us admit him to
be as bad as they would represent him to be; still, in law, he is a
competent witness. How else are the secret designs of the wicked to be
proved, but by their wicked companions, to whom they have disclosed
them? The government does not select its witnesses. The conspirators
themselves have chosen Palmer.