The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

And there is another thing. An attorney has a certain privilege; he is protected by the court. He is given almost absolute liberty of speech, and it is a privilege that he never should abuse. He should remember if he attacks a defendant, that the defendant cannot open his mouth. He should remember that it does not take as much courage to attack, as it does not to attack. He should remember, too, that by the use of epithets, by abuse, that he is appealing to the lowest and basest part of every juror's head and heart. It is on a low level. It is a fight with the club of a barbarian instead of with an intellectual cimeter. There is no logic in abuse. There is no argument in epithet. Remember that. The weight and worth of an argument is the effect it has upon an unprejudiced mind, and that is all it is worth. Therefore I do not want you, gentlemen, to be carried away by any assault that may be made—I do not say that any will be made—but any that may be made, that is not absolutely justified by the evidence.

There has been one little thing said during this trial; that is, about the testimony of defendants. I believe Mr. Bliss takes the ground that you cannot believe a defendant; that defendants cannot be believed unless they are corroborated. Mr. Bliss has the kindness to put the defendants in this case on an equality with his witness Rerdell. Gentlemen, you cannot believe any witness unless his evidence is reasonable. Every witness has to be corroborated by the naturalness of his story. Every witness is to be corroborated by his manner upon the stand and by the thousand little indications that catch the eye of a juror or of a judge or of an attorney. Congress has passed a law allowing defendants to swear when they are put upon trial. Will you tell me that that law is a net, a snare, and a delusion, and the moment a defendant takes the stand the prosecution is to say, "Of course he will lie"? Why do they say that? Because he is a defendant, and you cannot believe a word that he says; he is swearing in his own behalf. There is that same low, slimy view of human nature again, that a defendant who swears in his own behalf must swear falsely. I do not take that view. The defendant has the same right upon the stand that anybody else has, and if his character is not good his character can be attacked; it can be impeached by the prosecution precisely as you would impeach the reputation of any other witness. If he tells a story which is reasonable you will believe it, and you will believe it notwithstanding he is a defendant and notwithstanding he has an interest in the verdict. In old times they would not allow a man to swear at all if he had the interest of a cent in any civil suit. They would not allow him to testify when he was on trial for his own liberty and his own life. That was barbarism. The enemy—the man who hated him—he could tell his story, but the man attacked, the man defending his own liberty and his own life, his mouth was closed and sealed. We have gotten over that barbarism in nearly all the States of this Union, and now we say, "Let every man tell his story; don't allow any avenue to truth to be closed; let us hear all sides, and whatever is reasonable take as the truth, and what is unreasonable throw away." And, gentlemen, let me say here that it is not your business to go to work picking a witness's testimony all apart and saying, "Well, I guess there is a little scrap now that there is some truth in," or "here is a line, and I guess that is so, but the next eleven lines I do not believe; the next sentence, I think, will do." That is not the way to do. If a witness is of that character you must throw his entire evidence to the winds, for it is tainted and the fountains of justice should not be tainted with such evidence, and a verdict should not be touched and corrupted with such testimony. You will take the evidence of these defendants as you would take that of any other man, and it is for you to say whether that evidence is true. It is for you to say that.

If corroboration was so necessary why were not their witnesses corroborated? Why didn't they call Mr. Bosler to corroborate their witness?

Now, one of the defendants in this case is Mr. John R. Miner, and I want you to think of the terrible things they have against him. One of the charges made against him is that he wrote a petition and wrote in six names attached to it. His explanation is, that if he did anything of that kind it was because he received a petition which was so worn that it could not be presented, and he copied it, and that the six names were found on that petition. There was no other way on earth for him to get those names, and we find them on the same route in, I believe, seven other petitions which were filed; we find that those very names are on the other petitions, and I think Mr. Hall's name—the one the most trouble was made about—was on three or four petitions of the other kind.

Mr. Carpenter. He admitted that he wrote them.

Mr. Ingersoll. Yes; Hall admitted that he wrote them. But I believe this petition was never filed in the department.

I think Mr. Woodward said he found it among the papers at some other place.

There is a petition called the Utah petition that has some names in Utah. I think Mr. Woodward swore that he tound it in room No. 22 or 23.

Mr. Merrick. In the case itself, in the department.

Mr. Ingersoll. Yes; but it has no file mark. Mr. Woodward says he does not now remember how it got in there. As I was about to remark, there was a petition called the Utah petition with some names of persons living off the route, I believe—two or three sheets. The petition itself was genuine, and was indorsed, I believe, by Senators Slater and Grover and by Congressman Whiteaker. Now, then, how did these names come in there? The petition is ample without those names; large enough. I will tell you what I think. I think that it is a part of another petition, and that it was the result of an accident. I think it was done in the Post-Office Department, not intentionally, but as an accident. The evidence is that they kept three routes in one pigeonhole, and that the papers sometimes got mixed; that is Mr. Brewer's testimony. A very strange thing happened to that petition. While it was before this jury it came apart again. And if some clerk not absolutely familiar with the papers had taken it up, he would have been just as liable to put it on the wrong petition as on the right one. My plan is to account for a thing in some way consistent with evidence, if I naturally can. I do not go out of my way hunting for evidence of crime. And when there was a petition, large enough, with a plenty of genuine names on it, I cannot imagine anybody would go and get names from any other petition and paste them on to that. But being in this same country, and the testimony being that they had three of these routes in one pigeon-hole, my idea is that the papers got mixed and mingled sometimes, and I say the probability is that it was an accident. That is the best way to account for it. If Miner had known that that petition was there that he had made, would he have allowed it to stay there? Why would he want to do such a thing if he was in a conspiracy with Brady? Why would he have to resort to perjury and interlineation in order to get Brady to make orders that he, Brady, had conspired to make? Absurdity cannot go beyond that. Here is the doctrine: "I have conspired with the Second Assistant Postmaster-General. He will do anything for me that I want. Now, I will go and forge some petitions." That seems to me perfectly idiotic. This petition was indorsed by Senators Grover and Slater and Congressman Whiteaker.