This position was boldly taken by them in their arguments, as we shall hereafter see, in the face not only of the evidence on which she was declared guilty by the Commission, but also in the face of that presented on this trial, which much more clearly and fully established her guilt. I have thus been careful to show from the record that I am justified in the strictures I am making on the course of the defense. I would be sorry to do any injustice to these men if they were here to answer for themselves, much more so now that the two senior members, Mr. Bradley and Mr. Merrick, are numbered with the dead. My charitable conclusion in their behalf is that their political opposition to the government so prejudiced their minds that they could not bring themselves into a judicial frame for the trial of this case. Their religious sympathies with Mrs. Surratt, and their ready acceptance of the assertion of Father Walter that she was "as innocent as the newborn babe," so influenced their minds that they would reject as false any testimony whatever that went to establish her guilt. Their sympathies then would naturally lead them to conduct the defense of her son in the same spirit of determination to hold him innocent in spite of all adverse testimony. The prisoner found his counsel in a state of mind to readily accept the ingenuous fabrication which he had had two years to get into form, as also no doubt the able assistance of the Reverend Fathers who so sedulously watched for his return to Canada after the murder of the President, and who at once took him under their protection on his return to Montreal, and kept him secreted for five months, until they could get him landed in the Pope's dominions; and then when he was brought back and put upon his trial, stood by him from day to day with unfaltering fidelity, until he was set at liberty. The story which Surratt gives in his Rockville, Md., lecture, which bears throughout the marks of the "fine Italian hand" of the Jesuit, and which is contradicted in all of its most important points by the whole run of the testimony in the two trials, had no doubt been accepted by his counsel as true, and hence they would hear no testimony that conflicted with it; but were ready to accept any evidence whatever, without regard to the character of the witnesses, that corroborated it. This, in the opinion of the author, is the most charitable construction that can be put upon their conduct in the management of their case. Their eyes were blinded by their all controlling prejudices, and bitter opposition to the course of the government in sending Surratt's co-conspirators before a military commission for trial. We shall now proceed to give the evidence of their feelings toward the government in this matter. They could apparently find no words bitter enough to express their abhorrence of the trial by a commission.