The speaker then proceeded to deal facetiously with Wickham’s erudition. The latter, he reminded, had invited them to consider the subject abstractly. But would there not be danger in that? While they were mooting points, pursuing ingenious hypotheses, chasing elementary principles over the wide extended plains and Alpine heights of abstracted law, was there not danger that they would lose sight of the great question before the Court? The motion before the Court, Mr. Wirt agreed, was a bold and original stroke in the noble science of defense. It marked the genius and hand of a master. For, said he, it gave the prisoner every possible advantage. Yet at the same time it cut off from the prosecution all the evidence which went to connect the prisoner with the assemblage on the island, to explain the destination and objects of the assemblage, and to stamp beyond controversy the character of treason upon it. If, asked Mr. Wirt, the views of the prisoner were, as they had been so often represented by one of his counsel, highly honorable to himself and glorious to his country, why not permit the evidence to disclose those views? “No, Sir,” he protested, “it is not squeamish modesty. It is no fastidious delicacy that prompts these repeated efforts to keep back the evidence. It is apprehension! It is alarm! It is fear, or rather the certainty, that the evidence whenever it shall come forward will fix the charge.” And now Mr. Wirt, with the instinct of a good showman, was reminded that he was speaking to an audience of men and must season his discourse with a little spice. “I will not,” he asserted, “follow the example which he [Mr. Wickham] has set me on a very recent occasion.... I will not, like him, in reply to an argument as naked as a sleeping Venus--but certainly not half so beautiful--complain of the painful necessity I am under, in the weakness and decrepitude of logical vigor, of lifting first this flounce and then that furbelow, before I can reach the wished for point of attack.” Mr. Wirt’s metaphor must at least have provoked smiles from the audience, if not downright laughter. On the contrary, said Mr. Wirt, he would endeavor to meet the gentleman’s propositions in their full force and to answer them fairly. He would not, as Mr. Wickham had done, as he was advancing toward them with his mind’s eye, measure the height, breadth and power of the proposition; if he found it beyond his strength, halve it; if it still was beyond his strength, quarter it; if still necessary, subdivide it into eighths; and when, by this process, he had reduced it to the proper standard, take one of those sections and toss it with an air of elephantine strength and superiority.