The letter from Palmer at Belfast, is that no more than flimsy stuff?

The fabricated letters from Knapp to the committee and to Mr. White, are they nothing but stuff?

The circumstance, that the house-keeper was away at the time the murder was committed, as it was agreed she would be, is that, too, a useless piece of the same stuff?

The facts, that the key of the chamber door was taken out and secreted; that the window was unbarred and unbolted; are these to be so slightly and so easily disposed of?

It is necessary, Gentlemen, to settle now, at the commencement, the great question of a conspiracy.  If there was none, or the defendant was not a party, then there is no evidence here to convict him.  If there was a conspiracy, and he is proved to have been a party, then these two facts have a strong bearing on others, and all the great points of inquiry.  The defendant’s counsel take no distinct ground, as I have already said, on this point, either to admit or to deny.  They choose to confine themselves to a hypothetical mode of speech.  They say, supposing there was a conspiracy, non sequitur that the prisoner is guilty as principal.  Be it so.  But still, if there was a conspiracy, and if he was a conspirator, and helped to plan the murder, this may shed much light on the evidence which goes to charge him with the execution of that plan.

We mean to make out the conspiracy; and that the defendant was a party to it; and then to draw all just inferences from these facts.

Let me ask your attention, then, in the first place, to those appearances, on the morning after the murder, which have a tendency to show that it was done in pursuance of a preconcerted plan of operation.  What are they?  A man was found murdered in his bed.  No stranger had done the deed, no one unacquainted with the house had done it.  It was apparent that somebody within had opened, and that somebody without had entered.  There had obviously and certainly been concert and co-operation.  The inmates of the house were not alarmed when the murder was perpetrated.  The assassin had entered without any riot or any violence.  He had found the way prepared before him.  The house had been previously opened.  The window was unbarred from within, and its fastening unscrewed.  There was a lock on the door of the chamber in which Mr. White slept, but the key was gone.  It had been taken away and secreted.  The footsteps of the murderer were visible, out-doors, tending toward the window.  The plank by which he entered the window still remained.  The road he pursued had been thus prepared for him.  The victim was slain, and the murderer had escaped.  Every thing indicated that somebody within had co-operated with somebody without.  Every thing proclaimed that some of the inmates, or somebody having access to the house, had had a hand in the murder.  On the face of the circumstances, it was apparent, therefore, that this was a premeditated, concerted murder; that there had been a conspiracy to commit it.  Who, then, were the conspirators?  If not now found out, we are still groping in the dark, and the whole tragedy is still a mystery.