The speaker now applied the principle to the case before the court: “We suppose the prisoner, by himself and agents, to have been acting at or about the same time at Beaver, Kentucky, and Blennerhassett’s Island. We suppose that the prisoner enlisted men before he came to Beaver and at it. We suppose that afterwards his men proceeded by his orders to Blennerhassett’s Island and were there increasing their numbers by more enlistments and providing the means of transporting his troops down the river towards the scene of his expedition, while he was himself enlisting more men in Kentucky and making arrangements preparatory to his meeting and assuming the command of the whole at the mouth of the Cumberland; and that in fact, pursuant to this plan of operations, he did meet and take the command of all the conspirators at the latter place.” Were there precedents in the law to sustain this argument? Mr. MacRae cited the case mentioned in Hale’s _Pleas of the Crown_ of the Lord Dacre and divers others who came to steal deer in the park of one Pelham. Rayden, one of the company, killed the keeper of the park, the Lord Dacre and the rest of the company being in other parts of the park. Yet it was held that it was murder in them all and they died for it. And, said Mr. MacRae, there was American authority, too. He cited Dallas’s _Reports_ and the case of the United States against Mitchell in the Whiskey Rebellion in which Judge Patterson’s charge to the jury showed that a man did not have to be present at the overt act. Mr. MacRae then took his fling at the Chief Justice’s opinion in the Bollman and Swartwout case. So the defense considered that it was not a regular, solemn opinion? That it was not delivered on a point depending before the judges, but extrajudicial and therefore not authority? Why, declared Mr. MacRae, the language was so explicit and pointed that it could not possibly be misunderstood! “I consider it as completely proved by the opinion,” he continued, “... that if an unlawful assemblage of men meet together for a treasonable purpose, it is not necessary that arms should be in the hands of those who are concerned, in order to make them traitors. I have imagined that their meeting together in this manner (in military array) would be sufficient to show that their purpose was treasonable.” The speaker considered also that the reason of East on the subject was conclusive where, among other things, he held that “any assembly of persons met for a treasonable purpose, armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, is _bellum levatum_, though not _percussum_!” On that note MacRae ended his argument. “_Bellum levatum_, though not _percussum_”--that theme with variations was to get exhaustive treatment from the next speaker. But the court had heard enough for one day.