Striking his breast he added: 

“No one need say that the North-West is not suffering.  The Saskatchewan was especially afflicted, but what have I done to bring about practical results?  For ten years I have been aware that I had a mission to perform; now what encourages me is the fact that I still have a mission to perform.  God is with me, He is in this dock, and God is with my lawyers, the same as he was with me in the battles of the Saskatchewan.  I have not assumed my mission.  In Manitoba, to-day, I have a mission to perform.  To-day I am forgotten by the Manitobans as dead.  Did I not obtain for that province a constitutional government notwithstanding the opposition of the Ottawa authorities?  That was the cause of my banishment.”

I thank the glorious General Middleton for his testimony that I possess my mental faculties.  I felt that God was blessing me when those words were pronounced.  I was in Beauport Asylum; Dr. Roy over there knows it, but I thank the Crown for destroying his testimony.  I was in the Lunatic Asylum at Longue Pointe, near Montreal, also; and would like to see my old friends, Dr. Lachapelle and Dr. Howard, who treated me so charitably.  Even if I am to die, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I will not be regarded by all men as an insane person.

TO THE COURT.—­“Your honour and gentlemen of the jury, my reputation, my life, my liberty, are in your hands, and are at your discretion.  I am so confident in your high sense of duty that I have no anxiety as to the verdict.  My calmness does not arise from the presumption that you will acquit me.  Although you are only half a jury, only a shred of that proud old British constitution, I respect you.  I can only trust, Judge and gentlemen, that good and practical results will arise from your judgment conscientiously rendered.  I would call your attention to one or two points.  The first is that the House of Commons, Senate and Ministry, which make the laws, do not respect the interests of the North-West.  My second point is that the North-West Council has the defect of its parent.  There are practically no elections, and it is a sham legislature.”

Then, as if wandering from his subject, Riel broke forth and said: 

“I was ready at Batoche; I fired and wounded your soldiers.  Bear in mind, is my crime, committed in self-defence, so enormous?  Oh, Jesus Christ! help me, for they are trying to tear me into pieces.  Jurors, if you support the plea of insanity, otherwise acquit me all the same.  Console yourselves with the reflection that you will be doing justice to one who has suffered for fifteen years, to my family, and to the North-West.”

Riel concluded as follows, his language containing a strange admixture of the words applied to him by the medical experts, which he ingeniously turned against the Government: