The Trial at Buffalo

     WITH due respect for the state of public opinion, does it not look just a little as if the defense of Czolgosz is a good deal of a pretence [sic]? It has an air of perfunctoriness that is not pleasing. The form of a defence is in evidence, but the spirit seems lacking. The defendant has his rights, technically, but one wonders whether the spirit of the law is being followed to the extent that everything possible under the law is being done for him. Not that the infamous Czolgosz matters, but some day some innocent man may suffer through the precedent set by the assassin’s trial. Unless the MIRROR is wrong in its apprehension of the spirit of the law of this land, the wretch at Buffalo is being tried in such a way as to make the machinery of his defence a prac[t]ical contribution to his conviction. There is more than a little danger to popular rights in the proceedings at Buffalo, and when the silence sealed on all men’s lips in this case by the horror of the defendant’s deed shall have been broken, we shall have eminent lawyers saying just what this paper intimates here, to-day.