rtance of the
great proceeding of the character under consideration. He knew
that, no matter how guilty men might be, under the civilization of
a century, punishment was to be visited only under due process of
law. For three months or more the public time had been occupied in
hearing the accusations, trying the accused, considering the
evidence, listening to the arguments, through that protection of
the law for which lives have been sacrificed and rivers of blood
have been spilled, to secure to those charged with crime the
protection of the law. That protection of the law had been thrown
around the men on trial to see that they should have a fair
hearing, and that the jury should render a fair verdict. All
evidence that was not competent had been excluded, and, wherever a
question of doubt had arisen, His Honor, the judge, exercising his
natural instincts of mercy, had solved that doubt for the benefit
of the accused. Hearsay evidence had been excluded; the defendants
had been confronted by the witnesses who testified against them,
and all these forms of law, of civilization and justice had been
extended in the trial of men accused of charging a man behind his
back, of killing him behind his back, of killing him first and
accusing him afterward. Even such men as these, however, were
entitled to all the protection of courts of law, and to all the
safeguards which the law threw around them, because no human life
could be taken, no human liberty or freedom could be abridged by
a day or an hour, until the court of justice, the accusation
against the accused had been judicially ascertained and determined
by twelve fair-minded men beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Illustration: W. J. HYNES. ONE OF COUNSEL FOR PROSECUTION.]

With this introduction, the learned counsel proceeded to review the
case from the day of the disappearance of Dr. Cronin. He declared
that the dispatches received at Chicago, from Canada, shortly after
the disappearance of the physician, and to the effect that he was
alive and in the flesh in the dominion, demonstrated beyond a doubt
that the defense was organized before the crime was committed. It
demonstrated, moreover, the existence of a wide-spread conspiracy,
the conspiracy of intelligence and brains, as well as of experience
in