“Had you heard these words from any irresponsible persons, instead of having heard them from an official charged with a public duty; had you heard them from a man given to irresponsible talk, instead of in this court of justice and solemnity; had the occasion on which they were uttered been some trivial discussion about an insignificant topic, instead of where the discussion is one of life or death--these words might not have filled you with amazement, but this was a statement made by the district attorney.
“To show the falsity of that, it will be necessary to call upon all the energy in my power to reach a conclusion. And to reverse, at least in a general way, the same points of the evidence which you have heard for so many days I shall make no attempt to inflame your passion, no appeal to make your feelings warp your judgment.
“I shall rely on no such unstable thing as the supposed unwritten law. I will base the fate of this defendant on the law of this state--the law of the books, the written law.
“In the performance of my task it will become my duty to speak of the dead. I shall not be unmindful of the injunctions of the departed. Only that which is good should be spoken, but I cannot forget the circumstances under which the protection of the living demand that the truth shall be told, no matter how it blights the memory of the dead or how painful to the survivors.
“Under that law we find ample protection for his rights and life and to that law I shall resort as to the horns of the altar, for his safety. In the performance of my task it will be my imperative duty--unshunable duty--to speak of the dead.
“I shall not be unmindful of him and shall speak in no other terms--if possible--than those of praise. I shall not forget that for the protection of the living the truth must be told, no matter how painful to the dead or those who survive him.
“Of those survivors I can speak in no other terms than those of the most profound sympathy. For the widow who mourns and the son who survives I have no words than those of sympathy. Gladly would I remove from them, were it in my power, the cloud which must henceforth accompany their life, and gladly would I remove from the young man the sentence that the sins of the father must be visited upon their children to the second and third generations.