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TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER. 275
Afternoon Session.--Saturday, March 30.
On the coming-in of the Court at half-past three, the Attorney General
resumed his argument, and continued as follows:--
I hope, Gentlemen of the Jury, I shall very soon relieve you and
myself from the examination of this painful case. I am aware that,I
have already occupied more of your time than the case may seem to
have required, and I thank you for your patient attention. But there
is a duty resting on me which I cannot evade, though its performance
should exhaust your patience and my own strength.
I proceed now to consider, in connection with the remarks submitted
to you this morning, the proposition that Dr. Webster has falsified in
his various representations; and you will judge how consistent those
representations are, when you come to consider the statements he made
to Mr. James H. Blake, to Mr. Littlefield, and to Dr. Francis Parkman,
on Sunday, in connection with the statement to Mr. Thompson, his own
witness. Mr. Thompson has admitted that he gave the statement,
under his own hand, to Mr. Andrews, to the effect that Dr. Webster
told him there were two persons present when he paid the money; and
he now states that he thinks he told him there were two persons pres-
ent, though he is not quite certain whether this was the statement, or
that there were two persons present the moment before, one of whom
was the janitor, and who had then left. Now, neither of these state-
ments was true.
Then the statement he made to Mr. S. Parkman Blake, about his
intrusting the mortgage to Dr. Parkman, to carry it over to Cambridge
to cancel it, is untrue. Dr. Parkman, as I have already attempted to
show, would never have cancelled that mortgage, involving as it did
the interests of other parties. Then, take all the circumstances under
which he states that Dr. Parkman received that money and went out
from that building with the bills in his hands. You will judge upon
the evidence whether his representations in these particulars are true.
I now come to a more serious matter still. I say to you, that, from
the evidence in this case, the defendant told the toll-gatherer that he
had paid Dr. Parkman in the money which he received from the medical
students, when he had not paid him from that money. I say to you
further, from the evidence here and from the absence of evidence, that
he never paid Dr. Parkman that money at all.
.Take the deposits in the Charles River Bank, and the manner in
which they were drawn out,. and compare them at your leisure with
the account which Mr. Pettee rendered here, as the collecting agent
of Dr. Webster, of the times he paid him the money.
It now appears that the whole number of students was 107. Mr.
Pettee has accounted for 99; Mr. Littlefield, for two. Where could he
have obtained the money to pay Dr. Parkman? Not from the sale of
the tickets, the proceeds of which he had-in his embarrassed circum-
stances, arising out of an improvident mode of living, which, of itself,
is dishonesty-devoted to other objects. A man who knowingly lives
beyond his means, and leaves those who trust him to suffer from his
improvidence, is a dishonest man.
Take these representations, and take the evidence before you, and
then ask from what source he derived that money, and you will compre-
hend the great, overshadowing falsehood which pervades and penetrates
this whole case. This prisoner and his counsel have never been unmindful
of the great importance of showing where he got the money to pay
that $483.64 to Dr. Parkman. Let me say, that for four months he has
had at his command the entire treasury of this Commonwealth, to sum-
mon here every witness from whom he had ever received a dollar.
Mr. Merrick.-How can that be?-four months!
Attorney General.-You will observe the coroner's inquest was held
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