Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake.  Such a secret can be safe nowhere.  The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe.  Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon; such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men.  True it is, generally speaking, that “murder will out.”  True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven by shedding man’s blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery.  Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and wilt come, sooner or later.  A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, every circumstance connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.

Meantime, the guilty soul can not keep its own secret.  It is false to itself, or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself.  It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it.  The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant.  It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man.  A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth.  The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will.  He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure.  He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts.  It has become his master.  It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence.  When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth.  It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. 
          
                                             —­Daniel Webster.

Note.—­The above extract is from Daniel Webster’s argument in the trial of John F. Knapp for the murder of Mr. White, a very wealthy and respectable citizen of Salem, Mass, Four persons were arrested as being concerned in the conspiracy; one confessed the plot and all the details of the crime, implicating the others, but he afterwards refused to testify in court.  The man who, by this confession, was the actual murderer, committed suicide, and Mr. Webster’s assistance was obtained in prosecuting the others.  John F. Knapp was convicted as principal, and the other two as accessaries in the murder.