nce assumes its most malignant
character--it is cold blooded fraud, and nothing else. It is then
susceptible of but one possible aggravation, and that is, if the
conspirators shall have endeavoured to poison the sources of official
intelligence, and to have made the officers of government the tools and
instruments of effectuating their fraud--Gentlemen, this offence, thus
aggravated, I charge upon the several Defendants upon this Record, and I
undertake to prove every one of them to be guilty.

Gentlemen, when I undertake to prove them to be guilty, you will not
expect that I shall give you proof by _direct evidence_, because, in the
nature of things, _direct evidence_ is absolutely impossible--they who
conspire do not admit into the chamber in which they form their plan,
any persons but those who participate in it; and, therefore, except
where they are betrayed by accomplices, in no such case can positive and
direct evidence be given. If there are any who imagine, that positive
and direct evidence is absolutely necessary to conviction, they are much
mistaken; it is a mistake, I believe, very common with those who commit
offences: they fancy that they are secure because they are not seen at
the moment; but you may prove their guilt as conclusively, perhaps even
more satisfactorily, by _circumstantial evidence_, as by any _direct
evidence_ that can possibly be given.

If direct and positive evidence were requisite to convict persons of
crimes, what security should we have for our lives against the _murderer
by poison_?--no man sees him mix the deadly draught, avowing his
purpose. No, he mixes it in secret, and administers it to his
unconscious victim as the draught of health; but yet he may be reached
by _circumstances_--he may be proved to have bought, or to have made the
poison; to have rinsed the bottle at a suspicious moment; to have given
false and contradictory accounts; and to have a deep interest in the
attainment of the object. What security should we have for our
habitations against the _midnight burglar_, who breaks into your house
and steals your property, without disturbing your rest or that of your
family, but whom you reach by proving him, shortly afterwards, in the
possession of your plate? What security should we have against the
_incendiary_, who is never seen in the act by any human eye, but whose
guilt, by a combination of circumstances over which he may have had no
controul, or part of which he may