Who [he asked] is Blennerhassett? A native of Ireland, a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country to find quiet in ours.... Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio he rears upon it a palace and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. [Then] in the midst of all this peace, this innocent simplicity, this pure banquet of the heart, the destroyer comes ... to change this paradise into a hell.... By degrees he infuses [into the heart of Blennerhassett] the poison of his own ambition.... In a short time the whole man is changed, and every object of his former delight is relinquished.... His books are abandoned.... His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and in a few months we find the beautiful and tender partner of his bosom, whom he lately 'permitted not the winds of summer to visit too roughly,' we find her shivering at midnight on the winter banks of the Ohio and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell. Yet this unfortunate man, thus ruined, and undone and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, this man is to be called the principal offender, while he by whom he was thus plunged in misery is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd! But there was one human heart, one human understanding--and that, in ordinary circumstances, a very good one--which was quite willing to shoulder just such a monstrous perversion, or at least its equivalent, and that heart was John Marshall's. The discussion of the motion to arrest the evidence continued ten days, most of the time being occupied by Burr's attorneys. ¹ Finally, on the last day of the month, the Chief Justice handed down an opinion accepting practically the whole contention of Burr's attorneys, but offering a totally new set of reasons for it. On the main question at issue, namely, whether under the Constitution all involved in a treasonable enterprise are principals, Marshall pretended not to pass; but in fact he rejected the essential feature of the Common Law doctrine, namely, the necessary legal presence at the scene of action of all parties to the conspiracy. The crux of his argument he embodied in the following statement: "If in one case the presence of the individual make the guilt of the [treasonable] assemblage his guilt, and in the other case, the procurement by the individual make the guilt of the [treasonable] assemblage, his guilt, then presence and procurement are equally component parts of the overt act, and equally require two witnesses." Unfortunately for this argument, the Constitution does not require that the "component parts" of the overt act be proved by two witnesses, but only that the overt act--the corpus delicti--be so proved; and for the simple reason that,