Well Ended

     The trial of Czolgosz was long enough to establish in legal form the facts which were known to the world. Yet in its brevity, its dignity, and its freedom from sensational and spectacular features, it was an agreeable contrast to the trial of Guiteau, the murderer of President Garfield. If the prisoner desired to gain notoriety the incidents of the trial did not furnish it. If he is simply an anarchist, who was determined to kill a ruler, and prepared to take the consequences as a matter of course, his conduct is quite in keeping with the character. He has at least had the grace to refrain from making any further exhibition of himself, or any glorification of his cruel and treacherous crime. Counsel and judge have not wasted words, and the jury were not long in returning a verdict with which the world will agree.
     The address of the learned lawyer assigned to defend the accused is the part of the proceedings most open to criticism. This distinguished jurist seems to have thought that it was himself and his associate who were on trial. Nine-tenths of his speech is a defence of himself and an explanation that he was unwillingly counsel for the prisoner. This speech was not addressed to the jury, but to the country, and especially to the citizens of Buffalo. It would have been more in accord with the best traditions of the bar if the counsel had performed the duty assigned to him without so much self-consciousness, and without troubling himself to make the populace see that his heart was not in his work. The lawyer who defends a rich and influential criminal has more reason to apologize than the one who accepted the duty of seeing that a fair trial is given to the friendless, despised and despicable wretch at Buffalo.