Then Mr. Botts came to his concluding peroration. “We are told,” he said, “that the virtue of the people will do everything; that the voice of the people must be heard and must decide where they are sovereign; that the voice of the people is the voice of God; and that a majority of the people must always do right.... “I hope the gentlemen ... will not refer the fate of individuals accused to the sudden and violent impulse of their feelings and passions.... There are cases where individuals have been sacrificed by the voice of the people. Socrates was made to drink the hemlock, and Aristides was banished by the people.... Admiral Byng was made to die for the same cause. Jefferson was run down in the year 1780 by the voice of the people.” Mr. Botts’s reference here was to the unpopularity of Mr. Jefferson during the Revolution when he was Governor of Virginia and the state was invaded by the British and complaints of Mr. Jefferson’s ineffectiveness in meeting the crisis raised murmurs for his impeachment. After that Mr. Botts was back again appealing to Holy Writ to drive home his point: “Reformation and Christianity itself prove the general errors subject to pervade the people. Jesus Christ himself was crucified by the people.” On this sacred note Mr. Botts closed his discourse. He had proved himself to be as entertaining as any of his elder brethren of the bar. The industrious Mr. Robertson rendered yeoman service in recording the lengthy and often tedious proceedings. Even he was beginning to tire. He concluded it was not necessary to set down all that was said. Instead he contented himself with making the entry, “here some facetious and pleasant remarks passed between Mr. Botts and Mr. MacRae; which afforded amusement for the moment, but are omitted as irrelevant to the report.” Irrelevant? Who knows but that if Mr. Robertson had recorded the facetious and pleasant remarks that Mr. MacRae made in his exchange with Mr. Botts, Mr. MacRae might have been spared the ignominy of going down to posterity as a sour Scotsman. Soon after there appeared the entry: “Here a desultory conversation ensued between Mr. Botts and Mr. Wirt in which some warm and animated observations were made respecting the evidence, and Mr. Wirt’s comments thereon.” Had Mr. Botts’s ridicule got under Mr. Wirt’s skin? At this point the Chief Justice poured oil on the troubled waters by remarking that the evidence was such that different gentlemen might draw different inferences from it.