"Your Honour, and gentlemen of the jury--It would be an
easy matter for me to-day, to play the _role_ of a lunatic,
because the circumstances are such as to excite any
ordinary man subject to natural excitement after what
has transpired to-day. The natural excitement, or may
I add anxiety, which my trial causes me is enough to
justify me in acting in the manner of a demented man;
but I hope, with the help of God, that I will maintain
a calm exterior and act with the decorum that suits this
honourable Court. You have, no doubt, seen by the papers
produced by the Crown, that I was not a man disposed to
think of God at the beginning. Gentlemen, I don't want
to play the part of a lunatic.
"Oh, my God, help me through the grace and divine influence
of Jesus. Oh, my God bless me, bless this Court, bless
this jury, and bless my good lawyers, who at great
sacrifice have came nearly 700 leagues to defend me.
Bless the lawyers for the Crown, for they have done what
they considered their duty. God grant that fairness be
shown. Oh, Jesus, change the curiosity of the ladies and
others here to sanctity. The day of my birth I was
helpless, and my mother was helpless. Somebody helped
her. I lived, and although a man I am as helpless to-day
as I was a babe on my mother's breast. But the North-West
is also my mother: although the North-West is sick and
confined, there is some one to take care of her. I am
sure that my mother will not kill me after forty-years
life. My mother cannot take my life. She will be indulgent
and will forget.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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