The " suppressed testimony " on the strength of which
Mr. Johnson's Cabinet accused Mr. Jefferson Davis, Mr. Jacob Thompson, Mr. Sanders, and the rest, of complicity in the assassination plot has crept into print, and, if the witnesses were truslevJrthy, would clearly establish that complicity. If not, which seems most likely, it is a tissue of the basest and• most shocking. lies ever invented by way of false accusation. It is scarcely possible to trust men who by their own accounts were acting deliberately the part of spies on their accomplices. The only point in favour of Messrs. Conover, Merritt, and Montgomery, the three witnesses, is that the Court was cleared when the evidence of each was given, that none of them knew what that of the other had been, and that the different testimonies support each other very closely. It is added that "the witnesses were entirely unknown to each other before called to the stand," but this of course rests on their own statement, and not on inde- pendent evidence. It is one amongst many suspicious circumstances that Mr. Conover, after giving his evidence, professed to go to Canada, intending to return, and has utterly disappeared. The ."-e.vice-, even though all perjured, if believed to be honest by the Government, not only warranted but required President John- son's proclamation and offered reward.
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