Mr. Wickham demanded of opposing counsel what security would be afforded by the Constitution to the best or meanest man in the country if the construction on which they insisted was correct. If it was correct then all that was wanted to fix the guilt of treason on an individual was to have an insurrection existing somewhere in the United States, no matter where. Now, he said, suppose the Government should wish to destroy any man. They find him in Georgia, and the insurrection happens in New Hampshire. This would suffice for the purpose. But if their cause was to go on the prosecution would have to contend that even less would suffice to create treason, that even an insurrection was not necessary, but that a peaceable assemblage going down the Ohio River would be sufficient for their purpose. Continuing to expound his hypothetical case Mr. Wickham suggested that under the prosecution’s construction a man might be seized and hurried by force from New Hampshire to Georgia, or to any part of the United States which his accusers might choose as best for the purpose. Obviously he had reversed the journey of his client from Alabama to Virginia. It would be in vain for him to prove that he was not present when the offense of which he was accused was committed, that he never at any period of his life had been there, that the actors and the scene were alike unknown to him. Wretches who from interest or revenge were ready to further the views of his oppressors, would present themselves and he might be convicted of levying open war against the Government with people whom he never saw and at a place where he never was! The hour was now growing late and Mr. Wickham had talked the better part of the day. His argument might have proved tedious to his audience composed entirely of men. Surely a little ribald humor was in order after all the heavy reasoning he had forced them to endure. So, casting aside his dignity, Mr. Wickham gave it to them. He noted that by an act of Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII, it was made treason for any woman the king should marry, thinking her to be a true maid, or virgin, to marry him if she were not so. Now, ventured the speaker, the paramour of such a woman (Mr. Wickham supposed her to be a maid of honor and he a lord of the bedchamber) might aid her in imposing on the king. She is tried, found guilty, and executed. How would her lover be charged? Would he be indicted by the name A. B., Gentleman, or by his title of Lord, for marrying the king, not being an unspotted virgin or, to use the language of the act, “a pure and clean maid”? “This,” concluded Mr. Wickham, “may seem to be treating the subject with more levity than I could wish to do, but the argument directly applies ... for it is as much a physical impossibility that Colonel Burr should be at Blennerhassett’s Island and in Kentucky (places several hundred miles distant) at the same time, as that an individual should be at the same time a man and a woman.”