Counsel for the prosecution on the other hand maintained that it was unusual, irregular, and improper thus to restrict the testimony. The whole evidence, they contended, should be submitted to the jury whose province it was to decide whether there had been war or not. Judge Marshall interposed to say there was no doubt the Court must hear the objections to the admissibility of evidence. Mr. Wickham urged the gentlemen of the prosecution to introduce if they could any more testimony they might have pertaining to what they deemed to be the overt acts. Mr. Hay objected to this course of procedure. But, he agreed, if the gentlemen of the defense were determined to make their motion they might proceed. That motion, proffered by Mr. Wickham, was that until an overt act had been proved all other evidence was collateral, and therefore irrelevant and inadmissible. Since apparently the Government’s witnesses to the alleged overt acts on Blennerhassett Island on the night of December 10, 1806, had been exhausted, if the motion of the defense were sustained no more witnesses could be heard. The practical effect of this would be that, of some 140 witnesses assembled by the Government, only the handful who had already appeared on the witness stand would be permitted to give their testimony. If the Chief Justice were to rule in favor of the motion of the defense it was tantamount to his taking from the jury the privilege of deciding what testimony was relevant and arrogating it to himself. Therefore if the motion were sustained and, subsequently, Colonel Burr acquitted, it took no exceptional prescience to foresee that the enemies of Judge Marshall could charge that Burr’s acquittal resulted from the fact that the Chief Justice had suppressed the Government’s evidence. In refusing to commit Burr for treason the Chief Justice had then declared that the Government had not produced sufficient evidence. So the Government had gone out into the highways and byways and come up with more than a hundred witnesses, which in all conscience should have been enough to convict Aaron Burr of anything. And now, if the Chief Justice granted the defense’s motion, he would put himself on record as refusing to admit the testimony of the witnesses that the Government had so zealously gathered together in Richmond. No question about it--the Chief Justice found himself in a tight spot. _Chapter_ XV It is not every day that a lawyer has a Vice-President of the United States as his client. And subsequent history has shown that it is exceptional indeed for a lawyer to have the privilege and honor of exercising his talents to save a Vice-President of the United States from the gallows. As John Wickham rose to defend his motion, with his shrewd sense of values, he could not have failed to be aware that this was the greatest moment in his career.