verdict in a matter
which should have better been tried by a higher than earthly court.

Gentlemen of the jury, when on September 14 last during a vision I
looked into the dying eyes of the late President McKinley, when a voice
called me to avenge his death, I was convinced that my life was coming
soon to an end, and I was at once happy to know that my real mission on
this earth was to die for my country and the cause of Republicanism.

Gentlemen of the jury, you see that I have appeared here today without
the assistance of a counsellor at law, without any assistance save that
of God the Almighty, who is ever with him who is deserted, because I am
not here to defend myself nor my actions. I am here today to defend the
spirit of forefathers with words what I have defended with the weapon
in my hand, that is the tradition of the four unwritten laws of this
country. Tradition is above written statute, amended and ineffective.
Tradition is sacred and inviolable, irrevocable. Tradition makes us a
distinct nation. Order of tradition. The law I have violated for which
you will punish me is not in any statute book. Gentlemen of the jury,
the shot at Milwaukee, which created an echo in all parts of the world,
was not a shot fired at the citizen Roosevelt, not a shot at an
ex-President, not a shot at the candidate of a so-called Progressive
party, not a shot to influence the pending election, not a shot to gain
for me notoriety. No, it was simply to once and forever establish the
fact that any man who hereafter aspires to a third presidential term,
will do so at the risk of his life. If I cannot defend tradition I
cannot defend the country in case of war. You may as well send every
patriot to prison. It was to establish a precedent for the third term
tradition, which for the first time in the history of the United States
one man dared to challenge and to violate.

Gentlemen of the jury, the third term tradition is the most sacred,
because it has been established by the greatest champion of liberty in
all ages past and to come by our first President, George Washington,
when he modestly declined a third term nomination by saying that two
terms are enough for the best of Presidents. The two great American
political parties have since guarded this tradition most jealously,
have regarded it as a safeguard against the ambitions of probable
adventurers. The great Republican party, the party of an Abe Lincoln,
the party of the new U.