Your Committee observes, that this was not a paper _foreign_ to the prisoner, and sent to him as _a letter_, the receipt of which, and his conduct thereon, were to be brought home to him, to infer his guilt from his demeanor. It was an office document of his own department, concerning himself, and kept by officers of his own, and by himself transmitted, as we have said, to the Court of Directors. Its proof was in the record. The charge made against him, and his demeanor on being acquainted with it, were not in separate evidence. They all lay together, and composed a connected narrative of the business, authenticated by himself. In that case it seems to your Committee extremely irregular and preposterous to demand previous and extraneous proofs of the demeanor of the party respecting the paper, and the connection between them, as _material to the charge_ depending; for this would be to try what the effect and operation of the evidence would be on the issue of the cause, before its production. The doctrine so laid down demands that every several circumstance should in itself be conclusive, or at least should afford a violent presumption: it must, we were told, without question, be material to the charge depending. But, as we conceive, its materiality, more or less, is not in the first instance to be established. To make it admissible, it is enough to give proof, or to raise a legal inference, of its connection both with the charge depending and the person of the party charged, where it does not appear on the face of the evidence offered. Besides, by this new doctrine, the materiality required to be shown must be decided from a consideration, not of the whole circumstance, but in truth of one half of the circumstance,--of a demeanor unconnected with and unexplained by that on which it arose, though the connection between the demeanor of the party and the paper is that which must be shown to be material. Your Committee, after all they have heard, is yet to learn how the full force and effect of any demeanor, as evidence of guilt or innocence, can be known, unless it be also fully known _to what that demeanor applied_,--unless, when a person did or said anything, it be known, not generally and abstractedly, that a paper was read to him, but particularly and specifically _what were the contents of that paper_: whether they were matters lightly or weightily alleged,--within the power of the party accused to have confuted on the spot, if false,--or such as, though he might have denied, he could not instantly have disproved. The doctrine appeared and still appears to your Committee to be totally abhorrent from the genius of circumstantial evidence, and mischievously subversive of its use. We did, however, offer that extraneous proof which was demanded of us; but it was refused, as well as the office document.