At ten o'clock on the 10th day of June, 1867, the Court said: "Gentlemen, this is the day assigned for the trial of John H. Surratt, indicted for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States. Are you ready to proceed?" To this Mr. Bradley responded, "The prisoner is ready, Sir, _and has been from the first_." In this answer we have sounded forth the key-note to the spirit and policy of the defense. That candor and honesty of purpose which always characterize a judicial frame of mind, would have found their sufficient expression in the first clause of this reply. The addition of the declaratory clause, "And has been from the first" was not mere surplusage, but had in it the distinct and manifest intent of boldly assuming in advance, and in the face of all the adverse facts, the entire innocence of the prisoner. The purpose was at this first moment of opportunity to present the prisoner to the jury and to the country as one who was only anxious for an opportunity to exculpate himself from all guilt. The reader, if he chance to be of an imaginative turn of mind, will be able when he reads this clause of the reply of the learned counsel to see the assumed air of assurance and self-importance, and to hear the arrogant and confident tone of voice with which it was uttered. But without thus giving license to our imagination, the addition of that clause to Mr. Bradley's reply, when contrasted with the efforts of the prisoner to escape and evade a trial, creates an impression of a sinister design that is calculated to throw a taint of suspicion over all which is to follow in the line of the defense. We shall have abundant occasion, as we proceed with the review of this trial, to show that the suspicion which has been thus created is fully justified.