of the public mind has required, that a witness who had been thus convicted, should be impeached by his general bad reputation in regard to truth and veracity. That proceeding has been adopted in this case in regard to Phelps. But who is Henry Phelps? He is the prosecutor on whose naked oath fifty citizens were arrested, and upon whose oath, chiefly, if not altogether, the indictment in this case was found. Upon his oath, sustained by his confederate Lake, this prosecution is suspended. He was born in Bloomfield, Ontario County, N. Y., in 1841, a son of respectable parents, who lived in easy circumstances. He removed with them to Wheatland, Monroe County, during his childhood. He received an education, which, although not a liberal one, surpassed what was ordinarily obtained in country schools and academies, and which qualified a vigorous and shrewd mind sufficiently for any kind of business, in any department of private or of public life. He came to Michigan with his parents, and settled in Highland, Oakland County, in 1835. He pursued no regular occupation there, but was forward and active. He conducted litigation in justices' courts, and was at that time called, (according to the testimony of one of his friends,) "a fine fellow." He was elected town clerk, and commissioned as captain in the dragoons of the militia. But nothing that he began was ever finished, nothing that he planted ever ripened. Political preferment ceased, when rumors of falsehoods and frauds gained circulation. The dragoons who enlisted under his command never equipped, and they were ultimately disbanded. After five years thus spent, he went to Michigan Centre, where Abel F. Fitch resided, and there Phelps bought a distillery and its stock, with drafts on a person in New York, who could never be found. After six months the distillery reverted, with losses, (never yet reimbursed,) to its former owner, and Phelps immediately thereafter became a merchant at Milford, near Highland, his former residence. A month or six weeks passed away, and the stock of goods was suddenly and mysteriously surrendered to the merchants at Buffalo, from whom it had been purchased, and Phelps resumed his business as an advocate in justices' courts. He married about this time, and the counsel who defend him here say he has children. His affidavits were questioned, his arts in conducting trials suspected, his reputation waned, and after three or four years he was convicted of the infamous crime which has been mentioned. He was subject to

He feigned them during his

occasional epileptic convulsions. trial, and affected sickness to avoid judgment, but without success. He feigned illness to excuse himself from labor in the prison. Suspected and closely watched there, he failed to propitiate the police until the sixth month in the fifth year of his term had elapsed, and then he was pardoned. On coming out of prison he gathered his family in his ancient home; but habits of regular industry and domestic occupation disgusted him. He invited his associate Lake, who had just been discharged from prison, to join him, but at first without success. After the lapse of about a year, he hired himself to the District Attorney of the United States, in the occupation of what is called a stool pigeon, that is, one who for hire joins and leads villains in crime to betray them to justice; or, as it was described by the counsel for the prosecution, the business of "a rogue set to catch rogues." While in that capacity, he renewed the acquaintance which before his imprisonment he had maintained with Gay, and in the very first interview opened to him the plot, if he is to be believed, to screen a culprit from punishment, by a false charge of the crime of burning a depot, upon an unoffending person. Having drawn Gay into that scheme, he offered himself to the railroad company to be enrolled, and was accepted, at a regular salary of forty dollars a month, as a member of their band of spies and informers. His engagement was to furnish sufficient evidence to bring Abel F. Fitch and his supposed associates to trial, for some felony against the railroad, out of Jackson County. He is cunning, plausible, bold and per. severing. There he sits. Men imagine that they see his history written in his form and features. They say that he looks lean and malicious,

"hollow as a ghost,

As dim and meagre as an ague's fits."

They say, (superstitiously, perhaps,) that

"So he'll die,

And rising so again,

His mother, when she shall meet him in the court of Heaven,

She shall not know him."

He is impeached by one hundred and twenty-one witnesses, all of whom say his reputation for truth and veracity is bad, many say very bad, all say it is so bad they would not give him credit on oath. He has lived in Sylvan, since he came out of prison. Syl

van, Grass Lake and Sharon are contiguous. These three towns send one hundred and eleven of the witnesses. Twenty-five omitted to state the distances of their homes from Phelps' residence. The average distance of the remaining eighty-six is two miles and a third. One of these, an honest and sensible German, persisted in declaring that his reason for discrediting Phelps was, that his heart told him not to believe a man who had been in state prison. All the others testified from a knowledge of Phelps' reputation, before he went to prison, or before or after this prosecution began; twenty-seven of reputation since he came from the prison, and before as well as after the prosecution commenced; eight spoke of his character before he went to prison, and not afterwards; six, of his character while in the state prison, and seventy-seven of his fame, all the way through from 1840 until now. Enough then of Henry Phelps.

"Room for the Leper! Room!"

Few words will suffice for Heman Lake. His part is subordinate. He is only a shadow of Phelps. His testimony an echo. His history, therefore, need not be recited at length. On arriving at manhood, he learned something of engineering, and did nobody knows what till his depraved proclivities bore him into the state prison. There he was a friend and an enemy of Phelps by turns. In the summer of 1849, Lake declined Phelps' invitation to join him, but in the winter following, he accepted his proposition, to work, at he knew not what, for the railroad company, under his direction. He is a "gay Lothario," and having been introduced into Gay's house as a spy for the railroad company, he atones for the unkindness of betraying Gay, by taking the vacant place in the bed of his wife immediately after the husband's arrest, a place which he retains with touching fidelity, when by Gay's death in prison, that wife becomes a widow. Provided with free tickets for himself and paramour, Lake openly traverses the state with her in the railroad cars-while your wives and daughters, pay full charges on the great public thoroughfare. He is well looking, and his fingers and bosom are adorned with rings and golden charms, tokens of manifold and meretricious favor. But he is a man of feeble mind, and executes only indifferently well the plots of Phelps. He testifies from a diary, in which even the facts observed by himself are recorded by his master. In short

he is an illustration of the truth that "a pretty fellow is but half a man."

These are the three chief witnesses of the prosecution-Gay, Phelps, and Lake. It is easily seen, that the plot before us is the work of Phelps alone, conceived and contrived for his own gain, and to gratify his own revenge; that the agents of the railroad company, misled and deceived, have furnished him redundant means and subordinates of his own choice. Gay, while living, if not an instrument, was a dupe. Lake is manifestly an instrument in Phelps' hands.

But, gentlemen, the malice of Phelps cannot be understood without knowing the character and circumstances of him who was the object of his revenge. Abel F. Fitch was a native of Connecticut, aged, when he appeared before you, forty-three years. He had a strong mind and considerable education. He came to Michigan in 1837, and, with a fortune belonging to himself and wife, which was small in Connecticut, he was a rich man in the oak openings of Michigan. No man, not even one among all that cloud of accusers which gathered around him here, ever charged him with insincerity or falsehood. He whom you saw brought here as a felon on the 19th of April, was on the 7th of that month, elected, and without a dissenting ballot, as I have been told, justice of the peace and supervisor of his town. He was gentle, just, and humane, the friend and patron of the poor, and their gratitude crowned him with unequalled popularity. You have seen the house of Henry Phelps in Sylvan. You remember how dark and desolate it was-its low, naked walls, its windows glazed with clapboards, its scanty furniture, its doors closed and suspiciously fastened, its master and mistress abroad all over the state, looking up long lost relations, while a malefactor was pursuing his dangerous vocation there, unseen. You remember the half-thatched barn, that was empty of every thing but refuse hay to conceal unlawful things in the manger. You remember the fuel gathered from the waste timber of the railroad, although the dwelling was almost in the midst of the forest. How truly all this illustrates the darkness of the spirit that inhabited there. You have seen, also, the dwelling of Abel F. Fitch, at Michigan Centre, shaded with trees planted by his own hands. It is neat, spacious and elegant. You remember the prairie rose clustering over its piazzas and verandahs. Though

the owner of the mansion was childless, yet its chambers were wont to ring with the merry voices of children. Books, pictures, and musical instruments meet you on every side. The garden exhibits the flowers of every month from early spring till the returning frosts. Ample orchards yield the choicest fruits; a park filled with deer, and a lake in which the wild birds forget their native home, increase the attractions of the domain. That domain extends over five hundred acres; and when you saw it, was covered with wheat ready for the harvest, and cattle, which proved not only the care but the enlightened taste and public spirit of a country gentleman. Was this the home of an incendiary, a conspirator, a felon? Were not these felicities of fortune enough to excite the malice of an enemy to the exaltation of revenge?

Gentlemen, I trust that I have proved that the conspiracy alleged in this case, presents an immaterial issue, and is false in fact; that the case rests on evidence of admissions only, proved by three witnesses, Gay, Phelps, and Lake; that the evidences of those admissions are false, because the facts supposed to be confessed are impossible, while the admissions are unworthy of credit, because they are unsupported by circumstantial evidence, and the witnesses who present them are unworthy of belief, and their testimony is contradictory, and is in conflict with facts incontestibly established. If these positions are true, it follows that this prosecution is the result of a conspiracy against the defendants. You have evidence of that conspiracy in the malicious threats of Wescott and Phelps; in an allusion by Phelps, showing an understanding with Wescott; in a negotiation between Phelps and Gay to predicate a plot on the casual burning of the depot in Detroit, on the 19th of November last, a plot for the ruin of innocent men; in the fraudulent manufacture of those harmless but fearful tokens, contrived to obtain credit for the narrative of Phelps; in the fraudulent transfer of those tokens, by those who fabricated them, to the possession of Gay and of Filley; and in the cunningly devised narrative of Phelps and Lake. But I will not follow that subject further. It belongs to another prosecution-a different tribunal-perhaps, to a distant jurisdiction. It is enough for our present purpose that the defendants are not guilty.

Gentlemen, in the middle of the fourth month, we draw near to the end of what has seemed to be an endless labor. While we have been here events have transpired, which have roused national