Here Mr. Merrick attempts to set aside all of the testimony that had been offered by the government proving the guilt of the prisoner, by denouncing it as corrupt throughout, and unworthy of the slightest consideration. This would certainly be as easy a method as it would be novel to throw out testimony _en masse_ upon the mere _ipse dixit_ of counsel, and in consequence of the legal standing and weight of character claimed by them with such manifest self complacency, but when we consider the fact that upon a candid and careful scrutiny of all the testimony in the case, it could be set aside in no other way, we could not perhaps reasonably expect them to refrain from trying to get the benefit of all the method that was left them. The most important witnesses introduced by the government and those who most unequivocally proved the existence of a conspiracy and the connection of the prisoner with it, as also his participancy in its accomplishment, and also the fact that his mother belonged to it and performed a part in preparing for its accomplishment, had stood every test that ingenuity could devise to discredit their testimony. Some of them had been kept on the stand under cross examination for nearly two days, and could not be made to discredit their own testimony, either by contradictions or mode of answering. Neither had they been discredited by proving that they were utterly devoid of character for truth and veracity, and not to be believed on oath. The attempts at their contradiction by the conflicting testimony of other witnessess had all proven miserable failures, and so the counsel for the defense attempted to have their client declared innocent by scouting all of the evidence in the case and offering their own convictions of his entire innocence, and referring the jury to their weight of character and legal standing to enforce their opinions on the jury as grounds for a favorable verdict for their client. Never did able lawyers deal more unfairly with witnesses nor with evidence, nor more wantonly set at naught the established rules of evidence, not only in the respects referred to, but also in the efforts that they made to introduce testimony which they must have known to be inadmissible under the rules of evidence, as already shown in the number of exceptions which they not only took to the rulings of the court, but kept count of and paraded before the jury. Their animus toward the government was also shown in this matter of testimony, as also in other ways to be hereafter noticed. They charged the government with presenting testimony on this trial that it knew to be false, and withholding testimony from the military commission that would have proven the innocence of Mrs. Surratt. To sustain the first charge, they asserted in regard to the handkerchief found by Blinn at the Burlington depot, that it had been dropped by a government detective, and not lost by Surratt. Blinn, however, was positive in his testimony that he found