derable doubt.

Butler's speech in his defence lasted six hours, and was a creditable
performance. Its arrangement is somewhat confused and repetitious, some
points are over-elaborated, but on the whole he deals very successfully
with most of the evidence given against him and exposes the
unquestionable weakness of the Crown case. At the outset he declared
that he had taken his innocence for his defence. "I was not willing,"
he said, "to leave my life in the hands of a stranger. I was willing to
incur all the disadvantages which the knowledge of the law might bring
upon me. I was willing, also, to enter on this case without
any experience whatever of that peculiarly acquired art of
cross-examination. I fear I have done wrong. If I had had the assistance
of able counsel, much more light would have been thrown on this case
than has been." As we have seen, Butler enjoyed throughout his trial the
informal assistance of three of the most able counsel in New Zealand, so
that this heroic attitude of conscious innocence braving all dangers
loses most of its force. Without such assistance his danger might have
been very real.

A great deal of the evidence as to his conduct and demeanour at the time
of the murder Butler met by acknowledging that it was he who had broken
into Mr. Stamper's house on the Saturday morning, burgled it and set it
on fire. His consciousness of guilt in this respect was, he said, quite
sufficient to account for anything strange or furtive in his manner
at that time. He was already known to the police; meeting Bain on the
Saturday night, he felt more than ever sure that he was susspected{sic}
of the robbery at Mr. Stamper's; he therefore decided to leave Dunedin
as soon as possible. That night, he said, he spent wandering about the
streets half drunk, taking occasional shelter from the pouring rain,
until six o'clock on the Sunday morning, when he went to the Scotia
Hotel. A more detailed account of his movements on the night of the
Dewars' murder he did not, or would not, give.

When he comes to the facts of the murder and his theories as to the
nature and motive of the crime--theories which he developed at rather
unnecessary length for the purpose of his own defence--his speech is
interesting. It will be recollected that on the discovery of the murder,
a knife was found on the grass outside the house. This knife was not
the property of the Dewars. In Butler's speech he emphasised the opinion
that thi