Curtis, as I have mentioned, declined all means of defence; he thought, or affected to think, that every member of the bar was open to Government corruption, and that as the whole was an organized plot for his destruction, resistance was perfectly vain and useless. When asked, therefore, to whom he had intrusted his case, he advanced to the front of the dock, and said: “Gentlemen of the jury, the disagreeable duties you are sworn to discharge shall not be protracted by anything on my part. Whatever falsehoods the counsel for the Crown may advance, and the witnesses swear to, shall meet neither denial nor refutation from me. The Castle scoundrels shall play the whole game themselves, and whenever you agree 'what 's to pay,' I 'll settle the score without flinching.”
This extraordinary address, uttered in a tone of half-savage jocularity, excited a strange mixture of emotion in those who heard it, which ultimately ended in half-subdued laughter throughout the court, repressing which at once, the judge gravely reprimanded the prisoner for the aspersions he had thrown on the administration of justice, and appointed one of the most distinguished members of the bar to conduct his defence.
It was late in the day when the Crown counsel rose to open his case. His address was calm and dispassionate. It was divested of what might seem to be any ungenerous allusion to the peculiar character or temperament of the accused, but it promised an amount of circumstantial evidence which, were the credit of the witnesses to stand unimpeached, would be almost impossible to reconcile with anything short of the guilt of the prisoner in the dock.
“We shall show you, gentlemen of the jury,” said he, “first of all that there was a manifest motive for this crime,—at least, what to a man of the prisoner's temper and passions might adequately represent a motive. We shall produce evidence before you to prove his arrival secretly in Dublin, where he lodged in an obscure and little-frequented locality, avoiding all occasion of recognition, and passing under an assumed name. We shall show you that on each evening he was accustomed to visit an acquaintance—a solicitor, whom we shall produce on the table—whose house is situated at the very opposite end of the city; returning from which, it was his habit to pass through Stephen's Green, and that he took this path on the night of the murder, having parted from his friend a little before midnight. We shall next show you that the traces of the footsteps correspond exactly with his boots, even to certain peculiarities in their make. And, lastly, we shall prove his immediate and secret departure from the capital on this very night in question; his retirement to a distant part of the country, where he remained till within a few days previous to his arrest.
“Such are the brief outlines of a case, the details of which will comprise a vast number of circumstances,—slight, perhaps, and trivial individually, but which, taken collectively, and considered in regard to their bearing on the matter before us, will make up a mass of evidence that the most sceptical cannot reject.
“Although it may not be usual to advert to the line of conduct which the prisoner has adopted, in refusing to name a counsel for his defence, I cannot avoid warning the jury that such a course may bear an interpretation very remote from that which at first sight it seems to convey. He would wish you to accept this position as the strongest evidence of innocence; as if, relying on the justice of his cause, he requires neither guidance nor counsel!
“It will be for you, gentlemen, to determine if the evidence placed before you admit of such a construction; or whether, on the contrary, it be not of such a nature that would foil the skill of the craftiest advocate to shake, and be more effectually rebutted by a general and vague denial, than by any systematic endeavors to impeach.
“You are not, therefore, to accept this rejection of aid as by any means a proof of conscious innocence. Far from it. The more correct reading might show it to be the crafty policy of a man who throughout his whole life has been as remarkable for self-reliance as for secrecy; who, confiding in his own skill to direct him in the most difficult circumstances, places far more reliance on his personal adroitness than upon the most practised advocacy; and whose depreciatory estimate of mankind is but the gloomy reflection of a burdened conscience.”
It was so late when the counsel had concluded that the court adjourned its proceedings till the following morning; and the vast assembly which thronged the building dispersed, deeply impressed with the weighty charge against the prisoner, and with far less of sympathy than is usually accorded to those who stand in like predicament.