"There are one or two other things that I must notice before I come to the main question. One of these is in regard to the attacks which were made by counsel yesterday upon the learned District Attorney and myself. Have you seen anything in the conduct of the District Attorney in this case that was improper? Have you seen anything but an earnest desire to discharge his duty? If I understood the counsel aright yesterday, he said that if he should stand in the place and should have done as the District Attorney had, he would expect the women, as they passed him, to gather their skirts and pull them aside, lest they be contaminated by the touch. I did not at that time know why there was so much bitterness of feeling thus expressed, but I have been shown since last night this record called the 'Rebellion Record,' and I find in it that on the 5th of January, 1861, Edward C. Carrington, now District Attorney, issued to the public a stirring letter calling out the militia of this District for the purpose of aiding in the protection of the government of the United States; calling upon them to rally; and they did rally at his call. The fact of this native born citizen of Virginia, one of your own number and living in your midst, having thus early and practically taken the side in favor of the government, when even his own State had deserted him, of course would be likely to call down the greatest bitterness and hatred against this loyal and noble citizen on the part of a certain class. We have been told, gentlemen, by the counsel upon the other side, that the Judge Advocate General had done a great many wrong things in his life. We have been told that the military commission which Mr. Johnson had established, and he alone, had done wrong things in their prosecution; and we have been told, likewise, that the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that this commission was illegal. Now you would hardly expect an eminent lawyer to make such a statement unless he believed it. But he is wholly mistaken. No court in the United States has declared this commission to have been illegal. There is no such decision on record--not any. "Some of these very persons are now in confinement, and if the Supreme Court of the United States had declared the commission that tried them illegal, why should they now, in a time of profound peace, be kept in prison? If such were the case would not an application have been immediately made by my learned brother for a writ of _habeas corpus_ to release them? But nothing of the kind is done. And why? Because no such decision has ever been pronounced. No court has, and in my judgment no court will, pronounce this commission, thus formed by the President of the United States, to have been illegal."