Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/188

 176 FBDEBAL EEPORTEB. �ists who were accused of maintaining the doctrine that wlienever an end to be attained is right, any means necessary to attain it would be justifiable. They were accused of practicing such a process of reasoning as would justify every sin in the decalogue when occasion required it. They incurred the odium of nearly all Christendom in consequence. But the mode of reasoning attributed to them would seem to be impliedly, if not expressly, reproduced in the papers writ- ten by the defendant and shown in evidence : �"It would be a right and patriotic thing to unite the republican party and save the republic. Whatever means may be necessary for that object would be justifiable. The death of the president by violence is the only and there- fore the necessary means of accomplishing it, and therefore it is justifiable. Being justifiable as a political necessity, it is not murder." �Such seems to be the substance of the ideas which be puts forth to the world as his justification in these papers. If this is the whole of his position, it presents one of those vagaries of opinion for which the law has no toleration, and which furnishes no excuse whatever for crime. �This, however, is not all that the defendant now claims. �There is, undoubtedly, a form of insane delusion, consisting of a belief by a person that he is inspired by the Almighty to do sonie- thing, — to kill another, for example, — and this delusion may be so Btrong as to impel him to the commission of a crime. �The defendant, in this case, claims that he labored under such a delusion and impulse, or pressure, as he calls it, at the time of the -assassination. �The prisoner's unsworn declarations, since the assassination, on this subject, in his own favor, are, of course, not evidence, and are not to be considered by you. A man's language, wlien sincere, may be evidence of the condition of his mind when it is uttered, but it is not evidence in his favor of the facts declared by him, or as to his previous acts or condition. He can never manufacture evidence in this way in his own exoneration. �It is true that the law allows a prisoner to testify in his own be- half, and thereby makes his sworn testimony on the witness-stand legal evidence, to be received and considered by you, but it leaves the weight of that evidence to be determined by you also. �I need hardly say to you that no verdict could safely be rendered upon the evidence of the accused party only, under such circum- stances. If it were recognized, by such a verdict, that a man on trial for his life could secure an acquittai by simply testifying, him- ��� �