Mr. Ingersoll. Now, if the Court please, I am not arguing—
The Court. [Interposing.] I will leave you to the jury.
Mr. Ingersoll. Your Honor knows that I have always shown great modesty about trying to do anything against any decision.
The Court. I do not dispute that.
Mr. Ingersoll. Now, the next question, gentlemen, is what is meant by corroboration? If you tell a man that he is not a great painter, he does not get angry. He says he does not pretend to paint, or is not a great sculptor. But if you tell him he has no logic, he loses his temper. Yet logic is perhaps the rarest quality of the human mind. There are thousands of painters and sculptors where there is one logician. A man swears, for instance, that he went down to a man's house in the morning at six o'clock, and that Mr. Thomas was standing just in front of the house, and when he went in the dog tried to bite him, and that after he got in he had such and such conversation. Now, there are thousands of people who have brains of that quality that they think the fact that he did go there at six o'clock in the morning, and did see Mr. Thomas standing out in front of the house, and especially the fact that the dog did try to bite him, is a corroboration of the conversation that took place in the house. There are just such people. In this case, for instance, in Mr. Brady's matter, they say that the fact of Walsh being in his house is important. Suppose that he was, what of it? Is that corroboration? Corroboration must be on the very point in dispute. It must be the very hinge of the question. Then it is corroboration, if the question is what did the man say. It is not corroboration to prove that the man was there unless the man swears that he was not there. Then the inference is drawn that if he would lie about being there he might lie about what he said.
Now, understand me. They will say, for instance, "Here is an affidavit, and these blanks have been filled up. Rerdell says they were filled up, and he says they were filled up after they were sworn to." Now, the fact that the affidavit is there and that the blanks are filled up is not corroboration, because the point to be corroborated is that it was done after it was sworn to. And so the existence of the affidavit, while it is necessary, is no corroboration; the filling up of the blank is no corroboration; its being on file is no corroboration. Why? The point to be corroborated is not that the blanks were filled, but that they were filled after the paper had been sworn to! That is the point. And when they begin to talk to you about corroboration I want you to have it in your minds all the time that to be corroborated about an immaterial matter is nothing; it has nothing to do with the question; but there must be corroboration on the very heart of the point at issue!
There is another thing, gentlemen. It does not make any difference what I say about this man, or that man, or the other man, unless there is reason in what I say. If I tell you that the evidence of a witness is not worthy of belief, I must tell you why. I must give you the reason. If I simply say the witness is a perjurer, that shows that I either underrate your sense, or have none of my own, because that is not calculated to convince any human mind one way or the other. You are not to take my statement; you are to take the evidence, and such reasons as I give, and only such as appeal to your good sense. If I say, "You must not believe that man," I must give you the reason why. If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.
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?