What furnished the clearest proof, gentlemen, that Guiteau's opinion concerning the expediency of killing the President resulted not from an insane delusion but from his own reasoning is contained in a paper which he had himself drawn up to justify the murder. It is an address to the American people, published on June 16, in which he says: "I conceived the idea of removing the President four weeks ago; not a soul knew my purpose. I conceived the idea myself and kept it to myself. I read the newspapers carefully, for and against the Administration, and gradually the conviction dawned on me that the President's removal was a political necessity, because he proved a traitor to the men that made him, and thereby imperilled the life of the Republic." Again he says: "Ingratitude is the basest of crimes. That the President under the manipulation of the Secretary of State has been guilty of the basest ingratitude to the Stalwarts, admits of no denial. The express purpose of the President has been to crush Senator Grant and Senator Conkling, and thereby open the way for his renomination in 1884. In the President's madness he has wrecked the once grand old Republican Party, and _for this he dies_.--This is not murder. It is a political necessity. It will make my friend, Arthur, President, and save the Republic," etc. When instructing the jury, Judge Cox told them clearly that, if they found, from all the testimony presented, that the culprit had been led to commit the murder by an insane delusion, they were to acquit him; but that reasoning one's self into an opinion or conviction was not acting upon an insane delusion. "When men reason," he said, "the law requires them to reason correctly, as far as their practical duties are concerned. When they have the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, they are bound to do it. Opinions, properly so called, that is, beliefs resulting from reasoning, reflection, or examination of evidence, afford no protection against the penal consequences of crime." On this precise point of the question then the verdict was to depend.