GUITEAU'S TRIAL. 



397 



said : " I conceived the idea of removing the President 

 four weeka ago. Not a soul knew of my purpose. J 

 conceived the idea myself, and I kept it to myself. I 

 read the newspapers carefully, for and against the 

 Administration, and gradually the conviction dawned 

 upon me that the President's removal was a political 

 necessity, because he proved a traitor to the men who 

 made him, and thereby imperiled the life of the na- 

 tion." Again he said in this address: "Ingratitude 

 is the basest of crimes. The President, under the 

 manipulation of the Secretary of State, has been guilty 

 of the basest ingratitude to the Stalwarts.^ His ex- 

 press purpose has been to crush General Grant and 

 Senator Conkling, and thereby open the way for his 

 rcnomination in 1884. In the President's madness he 

 has wrecked the once grand Republican party, and 

 for that he dies." And again : " This is not murder ; 

 it is a political necessity. It will make my friend 

 Arthur President, and save the republic." The 

 other papers were of similar tenor. There was evi- 

 dence that, when arrested, the prisoner refused to talk, 

 but said that the papers would explain all. On the 

 night of the assassination the prisoner had said to the 

 witness Brooks that he had thought over it and prayed 

 over it for weeks ; that he was satisfied that he had to 

 do the thing, and had made up his mind and had 

 done it as a matter of duty. He had made up his 

 mind that the President and Secretary. Elaine were 

 conspirin;* against the liberties of the people, and that 

 the President must die. In addition to this, the jury 

 had the important testimony of Mr. Reynolds as to the 

 prisoner's statements, oral and written, about a fort- 

 night after the shooting. There he was found reiter- 

 ating the statements contained in his other papers, 

 and saying that the situation at Albany suggested the 

 removal of the President, and that, as the faction fight 

 became more bitter, he became more decided ; that ho 

 knew that Arthur would become President, etc. 



Judge Cox proceeded to quote from the ad- 

 dress to the American people which was writ- 

 ten and given to Mr. Reynolds : 



" I now wish to state distinctly why I attempted to 

 remove the President. I had read the papers for 

 and against the Administration very carefully for 

 two months before I conceived the idea of removing 

 him. Gradually, as the result of reading the news- 

 papers, the idea settled on me that if the President 

 were removed, it would unite the two factions of 

 the Republican party, and thereby save the Govern- 

 ment from going into the hands ot ex-rebels and their 

 Northern allies. It was my own conception, and, 

 whether right or wrong, I take the entire responsibil- 

 ity." A second paper, dated July 19th, addressed 

 to" the public, reiterated these statements, and added, 

 " I have got the inspiration worked out of me." The 

 jury had now before it everything emanating from 

 the prisoner about the time of the shooting. There 

 was nothing further from him until three months 

 afterward. And now he would pass to consider 

 the import of all this. The jury would consider, 

 first, wnether this evidence fairly represented tho 

 feelings and ideas that governed the prisoner at the 

 time of the shooting. If it did, it represented a 

 thing^ which he (Judge Cox) had not seen character- 

 ized m an v judicial utterance as an insane delusion. 

 They would consider whether it was evidence of in- 

 sanity, or whether, on tho contrary, it showed an am- 

 ple p'ower of reasoning and reflection on the argu- 

 ments and evidence for and against, resulting in the 

 opinion that the President had betrayed his party, 

 and that, if he were out of the way, it would be a ben- 

 efit to his party, and would save tho country from 

 the predominance of their political opponents. So far 

 there was nothing insane m the conclusion. It had 

 doubtless been shared by a good many heated parti- 

 sans who were sane people, but the difference was 

 that the prisoner readied the conclusion that to put 

 the President out of the way by assassination was a 



political necessity. When men reasoned, the law re- 

 quired them to reason correctly, so far as their prac- 

 tical duties were concerned. When they had the ca- 

 pacity to distinguish between right and wrong, they 

 were bound to do it. Opinions, properly so called 

 (that is, beliefs resulting from reasoning, reflection, 

 and the examination of evidence), afforded no protec- 

 tion against the penal consequences of crime. A man 

 might believe a course of action to be right, and the 

 law might forbid it as wrong. Nevertheless, he must 

 obey the law, and nothing could save him from the 

 consequences of the violation of the law except the 

 fact that he was so crazed by disease as to be unable 

 to comprehend the necessity of obedience. [The court 

 here quoted the decision of the Supreme Court in the 

 Mormon case.] In like manner, he said, a man might 

 reason himself into a conviction of the expediency and 

 necessity of protecting the character of a political as- 

 sociation, but to allow him to find shelter from pun- 

 ishment behind that belief would be simply monstrous. 

 Between one and two centuries ago there had arisen a 

 school of moralists who were accused of maintaining 

 the doctrine that, whenever the end to bo attained 

 was right, any means necessary to its attainment were 

 justifiable. Consequently, they incurred the odium 

 of nearly all Christendom. By that method of reason- 

 ing the prisoner seemed to have gotten tho idea that, 

 in order to unite the Republican party and to save the 

 republic, whatever means were necessary would bo 

 justifiable ; that the death of the President by violence 

 was only a proper and necessary means of accomplish- 

 ing it, and was therefore justifiable ; and that, oeing 

 justifiable as a political necessity, it was not murder. 

 That appeared to be the substance of the idea which 

 the prisoner had put forth to the world, and if this 

 was the whole of his position, it presented one of those 

 vagaries of opinion (even if it were sincere) for which 

 the law had no accommodation, and Avhich furnished 

 no excuse whatever for crime. There was, undoubt- 

 edly, a form of insane delusion, consisting of a belief 

 by a person that he is inspired by the Almighty to 

 do something to kill another, for example and this 

 delusion might be so strong as to impel him to the 

 commission of crime. Tlie defendant in this case 

 cjaimcd that he labored under such a delusion at the 

 time of the assassination. His unsworn declarations 

 in his own favor were not, of course, evidence, and 

 were not to be considered by the jury. A ma_n's lan- 

 g_uage, when sincere, might be evidence of his condi- 

 tion of mind, but not evidence in his favor of the facts 

 declared by him. He could never manufacture evi- 

 dence in that way in his own exoneration. The law 

 allowed a prisoner to testify in his own behalf, and 

 therefore made his sworn testimony on the witness- 

 stand legal evidence, to be received and considered, 

 and given such weight to as it deserved. No verdict, 

 however, could bo safely rendered on the sole evidence 

 of an accused party under such circumstances. Other- 

 wise, a man on trial for his life could secure his ac- 

 quittal by simply testifying that he had committed the 

 crime under a delusion or inspiration, or irresistible 

 impulse. That would be to proclaim a universal am- 

 nesty to criminals in the past, and unbounded license 

 in the future, and courts of justice might as well be 

 closed. 



lie would say a word about the characteristics of 

 that form of delusion. Tho idea of being inspired to 

 do an act might be either a sane belief or an insane 

 delusion. A great many Christian people believed 

 not only that events were providentially ordered, but 

 that they themselves received special providential 

 guidance and illumination in respect both to their in- 

 ward thoughts and their outward actions. But this 

 was a mere sane belief. On the other hand, if a man 

 sincerely, though insanely, believed that, like St. 

 Paul on his way to Damascus, lie had been smitten to 

 the earth and had seen a great light and had heard a 

 voice from heaven warning and "cominan ding him to 

 do a certain act, that would be a case of imaginary in- 

 spiration amounting to an insane delusion. The ques- 



