Argument of William H. Seward, in defence of Abel F. Fitch and others, under an indictment for arson, delivered at Detroit, on the 12th, 13th and 15th days of September, 1851.: Phonographically reported by T. C. Leland.

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It will my duty labor in the next plane to show that the witnesses by whom the ad.
missions thus uncorroborated are!proved, are unworthy of credit by reason of their
depravity. Who are those witnesses. GEORGE W. GAY, HENRY PHELrS, and
HEIiAN LAKE. I call Gay a witness for although in name he was once a defendant, yet he was dead before this trial began, and, being dead he was no longer a
defendant Before the corpus delicti was proved; before a plot or a conspiracy botweern him and the defendants was proved, if any has been proved at all, his unswor-n declarations made when living were received in evidence in this trial on the
miserable pretence of a promise, given by the Counsel for the People, that they
would afterwards bring these declarations home to the defendants. I call the
attention of Courts and Lawyers, whoever and wherever they may be, to whom
these proceedings shall in anyvwise become known, to the consideration of this extraordinary proceeding. I beg leave to remark concerning it. First that the admissions
should have been postponed until after the fulfilment of the promise. Second, that
if the declarations of G:ey had been brought home to the defendants and confirmed
by them as promtised, that then the declarations of the defendants so confirming
would have constituted the evidence which ought to have been submitted, and that
those confirmations would have rendered the admission of these hearsay declarations
of Gay unnecessary and superfluous..
But the declarations are nevertheless here, and so practically Gay, the Principal, al.
though never sworn, and although he is dead, stands before the Court a witness to
prove the corpus delicti as well as to charge the defendants with being accessories to
his own crime. The question now is upon his credibility.
A few preliminary explanations of principles before I discuss the witnesses Phelps
and Lake. Conviction of an infamous crime is, by the commou law, a disqualifies.
tion. No person, so convicted, can testify at all. A pardon restores competency,
but leaves the credit of the witness to the discretion of the jury, under the circumstances of the case. The laws of Michig(an allow a convict felon to be a witness,
butrefer the question of credibilitv to the jury in the same way. The principle of
these laws is thus explained by authority: Under the general head ot exclusion,
becausw of insensibility to the obligations of an oath may be ranked the case ofpersons
infamous-that is to say, persons who, whatever many be their professed religious
belief, have been guilty of those heinous crimes which man are not generally found
to commit unless when so depraved as to be not found worthy credit. The basis
of the, rule seems to be that such person is morally too' corrupt to testify that he is
so reckess of the distinction between truth and falsehood, and so insensible to the
restrning force of an oath as to render it extremely improbable that he will speaksl
the truth at all. Of such a person Mr. Baron Gilbert remarked that "the credit of
Mis oath is overbalanced by the stain of his iniquity." You see then that it is not bad
character nor conviction of crime that constitutes the cause of disc.redit, but it is the
deprt'ty ofmund of which bad character or conviction is the evidence.
Who was George W. Gay? A man of fifty years or upwards, who had bees
conieted of more than twenty crimes, ranging from petit larceny to murder, who
had been more than once a tenant of State Prisons in several Stas, a man who liyed in daily association with culprits, and who at the time-kept ashou.se of ill-fame, and
thus subsisted by the debasement of one sex, while he harbored the most depraved of
the Qher. He, eagerly accepted of Phelps' proposition to burn the new depot in Detoit, and to charge the'commission -of the crime upon his recreant associate Boyce
and to suborn witnesses to fasten it upon him, and thereby procure the discharge of
Van- Sickle, while he would at the same time secure, as he alleged, a double reward of
$*200fromsupposed enemies of the Rail Road Co., for burning the depot,s and $100 0
from the Railroad Company, for false information concerning-the incendiary Need
I aay more to show that-Gay's character was so irnfamous as to deprive his unsworn,
uncorrobora testimony of all claims to credit?
Henry: Phelps was convicted and underwent nearly in its whole extent the pealty of the -crime of stealing horses. He say 8 he was unjustly convicted. That
was his plea:on trial, but it was proved to be false. -