Wirt’s argument had consumed the better part of the day, but there still was a little time left before the regular hour for adjournment. Two of the lawyers for the prosecution having held the floor in succession it was again the turn of the defense. Of Colonel Burr’s lawyers none was better equipped by temperament to counterbalance William Wirt than was Benjamin Botts. He, too, could boast the vigor and abandon of youth. In fact he was the youngest of all the array of legal talent which had been attracted to the case. He was distinguished for his wit and he was a master of ridicule, for which Mr. Wirt’s florid oratory made an excellent target. As Wirt had set out after Wickham in his opening remarks, so young Botts turned his guns on Wirt. “I cannot promise you, Sir, a speech manufactured out of tropes and figures,” he began with mock apology. Then, alluding to Wirt’s reference to “an argument as naked as a sleeping Venus,” he continued: “Instead of the introduction of a sleeping Venus, with all the luxury of voluptuous and wanton nakedness to charm the reason through the refined medium of sensuality, and to convince us that the law of treason is with the Prosecution by leading our imaginations to the fascinating richness and symmetry of a heaving bosom and luscious waist, I am compelled to plod heavily and meekly on through the dull doctrines of Hale and Foster.” Mr. Botts, too, was not without skill in playing up to the gross humor of an all-male audience. “So far though from reproving the gentleman’s excitement of the boiling blood of such of us as are in the heyday of youth, without the previous caution of clearing the hall of those whose once panting desires have been chilled by age, and upon whom the forced ecstasy sat unnaturally and uneasy, I only lament my utter incapacity to elicit topics of legal science by an imitation of so novel and tempting an example. Nothing but the impossibility of success would prevent me also from grasping at the fame and glory on this grave occasion, and at this time of pleasure, of enriching the leering lasciviousness of a like bewildering thought to transport anew the old and the young.” In such manner Mr. Botts soon put the assemblage in good humor. Even the Chief Justice, who enjoyed a joke as much as the next man, must have joined in the fun. Having thus ingratiated himself with his audience by this gay introduction he proceeded to present his serious argument. His first proposition he told them would be to endeavor to establish the fact in support of the motion that the acts proved to have taken place on Blennerhassett Island were not in themselves acts of war and that no intention could make them acts of war.