law and all government. Your honor has put it "The government," as though we were conspirators against this particular government. The very fact that hundreds of authorities can be quoted on both sides and on a dozen sides of any particular question, is because of the impossibility of any one man prescribing laws to fit any other man or number of men.
I believe there is a law, and I don’t know that there is any authority which can be quoted against it, that before a man can go into a house of a citizen, be must have the authority of the law, and show that he is an officer of the law and in pursuit of a lawful purpose. If any man calling himself a policeman may go and search a house and say, "I am an officer of the law. I want to search your house," the law requires, if I understand it, that before anyone can search a house he shall have a search warrant. In every instance that any house has been searched in the prosecution of this case, there has been no search warrant presented. Now, if men can violate the law who are its sworn supporters, and who get their living by the pursuit of the law, do you think it naturally tends to produce respect for the law on the part of those on whom they prey, when they violate the law? If you say that very often justice could not under circumstances and emergencies be carried out if every technicality of the law were obeyed, does it not show the impossibility then of applying the law justly and rightly to every case? Now, I think that it is the natural tendency to beget disrespect for the law when those who are its representatives show so little respect for it. And I wish to say that I was arrested without a warrant. Another violation of law ; I was taken out upon the sidewalk, while three men went through my house, turned it upside down, as the leader has admitted here, although they found nothing that indicated that I was a dangerous character—not even an empty cartridge of a revolver. They not only did this, but my wife tells me that about ten men went back there again, and, without presenting any search warrant, went through the house—her husband and protector in jail. Your honor, I merely state these things to show that men hired by the law to defend it are the very ones who throw discredit upon it. Any one could have gone there at any time, searched that house, and robbed it of everything there was in it, and have just as much justification in going in as any of these men had. I wish to call your attention for a little while—it is going back to the question I spoke of before, but I think it is necessary in my own defense—one of this class of persons who have been in the habit of going into houses without authority of law, testified at the coroner's inquest, and he testified upon this case in court, that he had said in the coroner’s jury room that he had heard me say, "Here come the bloodhounds; you do your duty and I will do mine.” I would submit to your honor that it would be a very good thing for you to ask one of the counsel on either side of this case to allow you to look at the report of the coroner's jury, and see whether that man lied here or not. I have no fear of the result of that investigation.
An interview has been held with Mr. Grinnell, and published in one of the papers of this city since his return from his vacation, in which Mr. Grinnell is reported to have said—but perhaps the reporter lied; I should not wonder if he had, they have done it before, and it would not be surprising—"Why, these men have no principles. They did not defend themselves with
