Mr. Botts’s supposing ended, he next described in heart-rending language the manner in which the well-meaning and patriotic Colonel had been basely betrayed and thwarted. In what some might have considered not too good taste he recalled that Christ himself had been abused, mocked, and spit upon. Why then should not a mere mortal man be in like manner abused?
The young champion next raised his lance against the President of the United States. He charged that Mr. Jefferson’s interference with the prosecution of the case was improper, illegal, and unconstitutional. He had no doubt, he said, that the President had acted from good intentions, without sufficiently reflecting on the subject, and that he was inadvertently following one of the very worst English examples in the most arbitrary reigns. He wished Mr. Jefferson could be at his side now to hear what could be said on the subject. Young Mr. Botts was sufficiently sure of his powers of persuasion to believe that under those circumstances Mr. Jefferson would be convinced that he had done wrong.
Then Mr. Botts came to his concluding peroration. “We are told,” he said, “that the virtue of the people will do everything; that the voice of the people must be heard and must decide where they are sovereign; that the voice of the people is the voice of God; and that a majority of the people must always do right....
“I hope the gentlemen ... will not refer the fate of individuals accused to the sudden and violent impulse of their feelings and passions.... There are cases where individuals have been sacrificed by the voice of the people. Socrates was made to drink the hemlock, and Aristides was banished by the people.... Admiral Byng was made to die for the same cause. Jefferson was run down in the year 1780 by the voice of the people.” Mr. Botts’s reference here was to the unpopularity of Mr. Jefferson during the Revolution when he was Governor of Virginia and the state was invaded by the British and complaints of Mr. Jefferson’s ineffectiveness in meeting the crisis raised murmurs for his impeachment.
After that Mr. Botts was back again appealing to Holy Writ to drive home his point: “Reformation and Christianity itself prove the general errors subject to pervade the people. Jesus Christ himself was crucified by the people.”
On this sacred note Mr. Botts closed his discourse. He had proved himself to be as entertaining as any of his elder brethren of the bar.
The industrious Mr. Robertson rendered yeoman service in recording the lengthy and often tedious proceedings. Even he was beginning to tire. He concluded it was not necessary to set down all that was said. Instead he contented himself with making the entry, “here some facetious and pleasant remarks passed between Mr. Botts and Mr. MacRae; which afforded amusement for the moment, but are omitted as irrelevant to the report.” Irrelevant? Who knows but that if Mr. Robertson had recorded the facetious and pleasant remarks that Mr. MacRae made in his exchange with Mr. Botts, Mr. MacRae might have been spared the ignominy of going down to posterity as a sour Scotsman.
Soon after there appeared the entry: “Here a desultory conversation ensued between Mr. Botts and Mr. Wirt in which some warm and animated observations were made respecting the evidence, and Mr. Wirt’s comments thereon.” Had Mr. Botts’s ridicule got under Mr. Wirt’s skin? At this point the Chief Justice poured oil on the troubled waters by remarking that the evidence was such that different gentlemen might draw different inferences from it.
After Botts came the District Attorney’s turn again. “I cannot,” he confessed with his customary modesty, “instruct you by my learning, amuse you by my wit, make you laugh by my drollery nor delight you with my eloquence. All I can do is to express to you in plain language the convictions perhaps of a mistaken judgment.” Here was no mock humility, but the sincere outpouring of a spirit oppressed by the knowledge that among his colleagues of the Richmond bar he was labeled as a mediocrity. Hay would have been even duller of wit than public opinion made him out to be if he had not noted the special consideration assigned to such of his contemporaries as Wickham, Botts, and Wirt. He could have consoled himself with the reflection that in such an assemblage humility was a rare and welcome virtue.
Mr. Hay had no sooner fairly begun on his discourse than he made an allusion to Justice Samuel Chase and his conduct in the Fries case in which he had strained the law to convict for the Government. The censure the judge brought on himself, observed Mr. Hay, was not on account of his opinions but for his arbitrary and irregular conduct at the trial. Chase, he reminded, attempted to wrest the decision from the jury and prejudge the case before hearing all the evidence in it. It was, said Mr. Hay, the identical thing this Court was being called on to do by the gentlemen of the defense. At this the gentlemen of the defense pricked up their ears. Mr. Hay was to hear from them later.