After this sensational evidence the other witnesses must have seemed very tame. Clark’s servant proved that his master had just received his wife’s little portion, and that Aram was perfectly cognizant thereof. Another witness deposed to seeing Houseman come out of Aram’s house about one o’clock in the morning of the 8th of February. A third deposed to the recovery of some of his own goods of which Clark had defrauded him, and which were found buried in Aram’s garden. The constable who arrested him had a few words to say, and the skull was produced in Court, when a surgical expert declared that the fractures must have been produced by blows from some blunt instrument, and could not possibly proceed from natural decay.
Aram was then called upon for his defence, and he produced a manuscript of which the following is a copy. It is, as will be perceived, a laboured and casuistical defence, not having a true ring about it, and not at all like the utterance of a perfectly innocent man.
‘My Lord,
I know not whether it is of right or through some indulgence of your Lordship that I am allowed the liberty at this Bar and at this time to attempt a defence, incapable, and uninstructed as I am to speak. Since, while I see so many eyes upon me, so numerous and awful a concourse, fixed with attention, and filled with I know not what expectancy, I labour, not with guilt, my Lord, but with perplexity. For having never seen a Court but this, being wholly unacquainted with law, the customs of the Bar, and all judiciary proceedings, I fear I shall be so little capable of speaking with propriety in this place, that it exceeds my hope, if I shall be able to speak at all.
I have heard, my Lord, the indictment read, wherein I find myself charged with the highest crime, with an enormity I am altogether incapable of, a fact to the commission of which there goes far more insensibility of heart, more profligacy of morals, than ever fell to my lot. And nothing, possibly, could have admitted a presumption of this nature, but a depravity not inferior to that imputed to me. However, as I stand indicted at your Lordship’s Bar, and have heard what is called evidence induced in support of such a charge, I very humbly solicit your Lordship’s patience, and beg the hearing of this respectable audience, while I, single and unskilful, destitute of friends, and unassisted by counsel, say something, perhaps like an argument, in my defence. I shall consume but little of your Lordship’s time; what I have to say will be short, and this brevity, probably, will be the best part of it. However, it is offered with all possible regard, and the greatest submission to your Lordship’s consideration, and that of this honourable Court.
First. My Lord, the whole tenor of my conduct in life contradicts every particular of this indictment. Yet I had never said this, did not my present circumstances extort it from me, and seem to make it necessary. Permit me here, my Lord, to call upon malignity itself, so long and cruelly busied in this prosecution, to charge upon me any immorality, of which prejudice was not the author. No, my Lord, I concerted not schemes of fraud, projected no violence, injured no man’s person or property. My days were honestly laborious, my nights intensely studious. And I humbly conceive my notice of this, especially at this time, will not be thought impertinent or unreasonable, but, at least, deserving some attention. Because, my Lord, that any person, after a temperate use of life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, and without one single deviation from sobriety, should plunge into the very depth of profligacy, precipitately, and at once, is altogether improbable and unprecedented, and absolutely inconsistent with the course of things. Mankind is never corrupted at once; villainy is always progressive, and declines from right, step after step, till every regard of probity is lost, and all moral obligation totally perishes.
Again, my Lord, a suspicion of this kind, which nothing but malevolence could entertain, and ignorance propagate, is violently opposed by my very situation at that time, with respect to health. For, but a little space before, I had been confined to my bed, and suffered under a very long and severe disorder, and was not able, for half a year together, so much as to walk. The distemper left me, indeed, yet slowly, and in part; but so macerated, so enfeebled, that I was reduced to crutches, and was so far from being well about the time I am charged with this fact, that I never to this day perfectly recovered. Could, then, a person in this condition take anything into his head so unlikely, so extravagant? I, past the vigour of my age, feeble and valetudinary, with no inducement to engage, no ability to accomplish, no weapon wherewith to perpetrate such a fact; without interest, without power, without motive, without means.
Besides, it must needs occur to everyone that an action of this atrocious nature is never heard of, but, when its springs are laid open, it appears that it was to support some indolence or supply some luxury, to satisfy some avarice or oblige some malice, to prevent some real, or some imaginary want; yet I lay not under the influence of any one of these. Surely, my Lord, I may, consistent with both truth and modesty, affirm thus much; and none who have any veracity, and knew me, will ever question this.
In the second plea, the disappearance of Clark is suggested as an argument of his being dead; but the uncertainty of such an inference from that, and the fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort, from such a circumstance, are too obvious and too notorious to require instances; yet, superseding many, permit me to produce a very recent one, and that afforded by this castle.