"If your honor please, with the permission of the court, I desire to make a statement. I do so after only a short consultation with my attorneys, to whom I have only within the last half hour disclosed my determination, and against their express protest. I take this occasion to thank them for their services, fidelity and friendship. Notwithstanding the Court's finding yesterday that this trial might safely be carried on without serious injury to my health, physical or mental, I wish to assure you that my personal condition is such that I am at the present time absolutely unable to bear for two or three months daily the strain of an actual trial of this case, the constant, continual, nightly preparations therefor, the necessary consultation and conversation with my attorneys in regard thereto, to say nothing of other cares and responsibilities. "Moreover, the strain of these proceedings upon those whom I hold nearest and dearest of all on earth has been so grave and severe that as a result of these prosecutions their health has all been undermined, they are on the verge of immediate collapse and their lives are indeed now actually in the balance. "I have occupied a somewhat prominent position in this city of my birth, in which I have lived all my life, where are all my ties and interests, whence, when the time shall come, I hope to pass into the eternal sleep. I have borne an honored name. In my private and in my professional life there has been no stain. In my public affiliations, until after the municipal campaign of 1905 and the election of the present Board of Supervisors, the abhorrent charges of the press to the contrary notwithstanding, no action of mine ever gave just ground for adverse criticism or deserved censure; but the assaults of the press and its failure to credit honesty of purpose, a desire to hold together a political organization which had been built up with much effort, the means of otherwise holding them, did after the election of this Board of Supervisors in a measure influence me and the high ideals for which I had heretofore striven. "During the past few weeks I have thought deeply and often of this situation, its causes and conditions. To offer excuses now would be folly. To make an effort at some reparation for the public good is, however, more than possible; to assist in making more difficult, if not impossible, the system which dominates our public men and corrupts our politics will be a welcome task.