Gentlemen, this prisoner has requested me to be his counsel; and I, perhaps unwisely, have acceded to his request. I have taken an oath to be true to him. This has imposed certain responsibilities upon me, which, before Heaven, I may not escape. In this I find my strength. With the fierce excitement, which blazed forth in this District when the prisoners of the “Pearl” were first arrested, still hot around me; with the generally adverse feelings which I suppose you entertain towards the side of the cause which I have espoused, and therefore against its advocate; with these thronged spectators, who show, at every turn and incident of the trial, what their feelings are towards the prisoner and his defenders, I should not be able to stand here one moment, were it not for the supporting, uplifting sentiment, glowing through every fibre of my frame, that I am here in the performance of a high and holy duty. In all else I may be weak; in this I am strong.[4] So you, gentlemen, sit there to perform a duty. Swearing upon the Holy Evangelists, you have invoked the vengeance of Heaven upon your souls, if, consciously and wittingly, you swerve a hair’s breadth from the line of rectitude; if you allow any partiality in favor of a cherished institution, or any prejudice against the prisoner, to close your eyes or blind your minds to any fact of evidence or rule of law which may be adduced in his behalf. I might even add a consideration of a lighter nature leading to the same result. Your fortune and mine, for some days to come, I suppose to be settled. I know not how protracted this trial may be, but, gentlemen, we are in it, for longer or shorter, for better or worse; and while we are in it, we shall be obliged to come together from day to day, and live in each other’s presence and company. Now, I trust you have too much philosophy about you to make bad worse. And so of myself. Were we fellow-travellers in the same stage-coach or steamboat, and were doomed to be so for a week or a fortnight, it would be most unwise to add to our inevitable discomforts that of striving to annoy each other; so, when packed together in this room, which seems to have been constructed for creatures that do not breathe, and with the thermometer above ninety degrees, I trust any icy feelings we may have had towards each other will speedily melt away. In a word, I heartily concur, and I trust you will do the same, in the opinion of the old man who declared, according to the anecdote, that after the experience of a long life, he had found it best to submit to what he could not possibly help.