What _should_ I say? replied Burroughs. What would you have me say?
standing up and growing very pale. What would you have me say, you
that are of counsel for the prisoner, you! the judges of the court?
You that appear to rejoice when you see the last hope of the prisoner
about to be made of no value to her, by the trick and subterfuge of the
law. Why do you not speak to her?--Why do you not advise me? You know
that I depend upon the reply--You know that I have no other hope, and
that she has no other hope, and yet you leave us both to be destroyed
by the stratagem of an adversary. How shall I proceed? Speak to me, I
entreat you! Speak to me judges! Do not leave me to grope out a path
blind-folded over a precipice--a path which it would require great
skill to tread--O, I beseech you! do not leave me thus under the awful,
the tremendous accountability, which, in my ignorance of the law, I
have been desperate enough to undertake!--Here by my side are two men
of the law--yet have you assigned her, in a matter of life and death,
no counsel. They are afraid I see--afraid not only to rise up and speak
for the wretched woman, but they are afraid even to whisper to me. And
you, ye judges! are you also on the side of the prosecutor and the
witnesses--are you all for the king?--all!--all!--not so much as one
to say a word for the poor creature, who being pursued _for_ the king,
is treated as if she were pursued _by_ the king--pursued by him for
sacrifice! What! no answer--not a word! What am I to believe? ... that
you take pride in the exercise of your terrible power? that you look
upon it as a privilege? ... that you regard me now with displeasure ...
that if you could have your own way, you would permit no interference
with your frightful prerogative?... O that I knew in what way to
approach the hearts of men! O that I knew how to proceed in this
affair! Will nobody advise me!
Sir--Sir!--allow me, said a man of the law who sat near, allow me
Sir; I can bear it no longer--it is a reproach to the very name of
law--but--but (lowering his voice) if you will suffer me to suggest
a step or two for your consideration--you have the courage and the
power--I have not--my brethren here have not--you have--and you may
perhaps be able to--hush, hush--to bring her off.
Speak out, Sir--speak out, I beseech you. What am I to do?
Lower if you please--lower--low----er--er--er--we must not be
overheard--Brother Trap’s got a quick ear. Now my notion is--allow
me--(whispering) the jury are on the watch; they have heard you with
great anxiety--and great pleasure--if you can manage to keep the hold
you have got for half an hour--hush--hush--no matter how--the poor soul
may escape yet--
I’ll address the jury--
By no manner of means! That will not be suffered--you cannot address
the jury--
Good God! what shall I do!
Thirteen-pence more--carry five--paid to watchman.
I’ll put you in the way (with a waggish leer.) Though you are
not allowed to address the jury, you are allowed to address
the court--hey?--(chucking him with his elbow)--the court you
see--hey--sh!--sh!--you understand it--hey?
No--how cool you are!
Cool--you’d be cool too, if you understood the law.
Never--never--in a case of life and death.
Life and death? poh--everything is a case of life and death,
Sir--to a man o’ the law--everything--all cases are alike,
Sir--hey--provided--a--a--
Provided what, Sir?
Where the quid is the same.
The quid?
The quid pro quo--
How can you, Sir?--your levity is a--I begin to be afraid of your
principles--what am I to do?
Do--just keep the court in play; keep the judges at work, while I run
over to the shop for an authority or two I have there which may be of
use.--You have the jury with you now--lay it on thick--you understand
the play as well as I do now--
Stop--stop--am I to say to the judges what I would say to the jury, if
I had leave?
Pre--cisely! but--but--a word in your ear--so as to be heard by the
jury.--Tut--tut--
The head-prosecutor jumped up at these words, and with a great show
of zeal prayed the judges to put a stop to the consultation, a part
of which was of a character--of a character--that is to say, of a
character--
Burroughs would have interrupted him, but he was hindered by his crafty
law-adviser, who told him to let the worthy gentleman cut his own
throat in his own way, now he was in the humor for it.
Burroughs obeyed, and after his adversary had run himself out of
breath, arose in reply, and with a gravity and a moderation that
weighed prodigiously with the court, called upon the chief-judge to
put a stop to such gladiatorial controversy--
What would you have us do? said the judge.
I would have you do nothing more than your duty--
Here the coadjutor of Burroughs, after making a sign to him to face the
jury, slid away on tip-toe.
--I would have you rebuke this temper. Ye are the judges of a great
people. I would have you act, and I would have you teach others to
act, as if you and they were playing together, in every such case--not
for your own lives--that were too much to ask of mortal man; but for
another’s life. I would have you and your officers behave here as if
the game that you play were what you all know it to be, a game of life
and death--a trial, not of attorney with attorney, nor of judge with
judge, in the warfare of skill, or wit, or trick, or stratagem, for fee
or character--but a trial whereby the life here, and the life hereafter
it may be, of a fellow-creature is in issue. Yea--more--I would have
you teach the king’s Attorney-General, the prosecutor himself, that
representative though he be of majesty, it would be more dignified and
more worthy of majesty, if he could contrive to keep his temper, when
he is defeated or thwarted in his attack on human life. We may deserve
death all of us, but we deserve not mockery; and whether we deserve
death or not, I hope we deserve, under our gracious Lord and Master, to
be put to death according to law--
That’ll do!--that’ll do!--whispered the lawyer, who had returned with
his huge folios--that’ll do my boy! looking up over his spectacles and
turning a leaf--that’ll do! give it to ’em as hot as they can sup it--I
shall be ready for you in a crack--push on, push on--what a capital
figure you’d make at the bar--don’t stop--don’t stop.
Why, what on earth can I say!
Talk--talk--talk--no matter what you say--don’t give them time to
breathe--pop a speech into ’em!
A speech!
Ay, or a sermon, or a whar-whoop, or a prayer--any thing--anything--if
you do but keep the ball up--no matter-what, if the jury can hear
you--they are all agog now--they are pricking up their ears at
you--now’s your time!
Very well----Judges!
Proceed.
Judges. I am a traveller from my youth up. I have journied over Europe;
I have journied over America--I am acquainted with every people of
both hemispheres, and yet, whithersoever I go, I am a stranger. I have
studied much--thought much--and am already a show among those who
watched over my youth. I am still young, though I appear old, much
younger than you would suppose me to be, did you not know me--
Here he turned to the lawyer--I never shall be able to get through
this; I don’t know what I am saying.--
Nor I--So much the better--don’t give up--
----A youth--a lad in comparison with you, ye judges, you that I now
undertake to reprove----a spectacle and a show among men. They follow
me every where, (I hope you’ll soon be ready) they pursue me day after
day--and week after week--and month after month--
--And year after year--by jings, that’ll do!--
--And year after year; they and their wives, and their little ones--
And their flocks and their herds, and their man-servants and their
maid-servants, whispered the lawyer.
Do be quiet, will you.--They pursue me however, not because of their
veneration or their love, but only that they may study the perpetual
changes of my countenance and hear the language of one to whom all
changes and all languages are alike, and all beneath regard. They
follow me too, not because they are able to interpret the look of my
eyes, or to understand the meaning of my voice, but chiefly because
they hear that I have been abroad in the furthermost countries of all
the earth, because they are told by grave men, who catch their breath
when they speak of me, though it be in the House of the Lord, as you
have seen this very day, that I have been familiar with mysterious
trial and savage adventure, up from the hour of my birth, when I was
dropped in the wilderness like the young of the wild-beast, by my own
mother--
I say--Brother B.--I say though--whispered the lawyer, in much
perplexity--I say though--what are you at now? _You_ are not on
trial--are you?
Yes--yes--let me alone, I beseech you....
Fire away ... fire away ... you’ve got possession of the jury, and
that’s half the battle ... fire away.
Peace ... peace, I pray you ... Judges! whenever I go abroad ...
wherever I go ... the first place into which I set my foot, is the
tribunal of death. Go where I may, I go first in search of the courts
... the courts of _justice_, I should say, to distinguish them from all
other courts--
Good!--
--And I go thither because I have an idea that nations are to be
compared with nations, not in every thing--not altogether, but only in
a few things; and because after much thought, I have persuaded myself
that matters of religion, politics and morals, are inadequate for
the chief purposes of such comparison--the comparison of people with
people, though not for the comparison of individual with individual
perhaps; and that a variety of matters which regard the administration
of law, in cases affecting either life or liberty, are in their
very nature adequate, and may be conclusive. We may compare court
with court and law with law; but how shall we compare opinion with
opinion, where there is no unchangeable record of either? goodness
with goodness--where goodness itself may be but a thing of opinion or
hearsay, incapable of proof, and therefore incapable of comparison?
Very fair--very fair--but what on earth has it to do with our case?
Wait and you shall see; I begin to see my way clear now--wherefore
judges, I hold that the liberty of a people and therefore the greatness
of a people may be safely estimated by the degree of seriousness with
which a criminal is arraigned, or tried, or judged, or punished--.
--Very true--and very well spun out, brother B.... but a non sequitur
nevertheless. That wherefore, with which you began the period was a bit
of a----
Pray--_pray_--don’t interrupt me; you will be overheard--you will put
me out.--In a word, ye Judges of Israel! I have had a notion that
arbitrary power would betray itself in every case, and every-where on
earth, by its mode of dealing with liberty and life--being, I persuade
myself, more and more summary and careless, in proportion as it is
more and more absolute of a truth, not as it is more and more absolute
by character. You had for a time, while the northern savages were at
your door, a downright military government.--You know therefore that
my words are true. Your government was called free--to have called it
arbitrary, would have offended you; yet for a season you dealt with
human life as the Turk would. You know, for you have seen the proof,
that in proportion to the growth of power in those who bear sway among
you, the forms and ceremonies which fortify and hedge in, as it were,
the life and liberty of the subject, are either disregarded or trampled
on.--
Oh ho!--I see what you are driving at now!
--For my own part, I love to see the foreheads of them who are
appointed to sit in the high-places and give judgment forever upon the
property or character, life or liberty of their fellow man.--
Property or character--life or liberty--of a fellow man! Very
fair--very fair indeed.
--Expressive at least of decent sorrow, if not of profound awe. I
would have them look as if they were afraid--as if they trembled under
the weight of their tremendous authority; as if they were deeply
and clearly and reverentially sensible of what they have undertaken
to do--which is, to deal with the creatures of God, as God himself
professes to deal with them--according to their transgressions--to do
a part of his duty with his own Image--to shelter the oppressed and
to stay the oppressor, not only now and for a time, but hereafter and
forever--
Don’t stop to breathe now; I shall be at your back in a jiffy--
I would that every man who has to do with the administration of law,
wherever that law is to touch the life or liberty of another; and
whoever he may be, from the highest judge in the highest court of all
the earth, down to the humblest ministerial officer--I would that he
should feel, or at least appear to feel, that for a time he is the
delegate of Jehovah--I do not stop to say how, nor to ask why. That
is for others to say.--I would have the judges remarkable for their
gravity, not for their austerity; for their seriousness and for their
severe simplicity, not for a theatrical carriage. I would have the bar,
as you call it, above the trick and subterfuge of the law--incapable of
doing what I see them do every day of my life; and I would have the
bench as you call it, incapable of suffering what I see them not only
suffer, but take pleasure in, every day of my life----are you ready?
Persevere--persevere--you may say what you please now, said the lawyer,
shuffling his papers about with both hands, chuckling in his sleeve,
and whispering without appearing to whisper.--Have your own way now ...
they like to hear the lawyers and the judges, and the law cut up; it’s
a new thing to hear in such a place ... fire away, fire away ... you
see how they enjoy it ... you’ve got us on the hip now ... fire away.
If a criminal be arraigned on a charge that may affect his life or
character, limb or property, or if a witness be to be sworn, or the
oath administered, ... I care not how ... I care not why ... if you
will have oaths ... ye should order silence to be proclaimed by the
sound of trumpet.
--Pho! pho!
I would have a great bell, one so large that it might be heard far
and wide over the whole town--I would have this tolled on the day of
condemnation, if that condemnation were to death. And if it must be--if
you will have it so--if you will that a man be put to death by the rope
or the axe, on the scaffold or over an open grave--as the poor soldier
dies--I would have him perish at night--in the dead of midnight--and
all the town should wake up at the tolling of that heavy bell, or
at the roar of cannon, with a knowledge that a fellow-creature had
that instant passed away from the earth forever--just gone--that very
instant--before the Everlasting Judge of the quick and the dead--that
while they were holding their breath and before they could breathe
again--he would receive the sentence from which there would be no
appeal throughout all the countless ages of eternity.
Very fair--very fair--I see the foreman of the jury shudder--keep him
to it--
I love theory, but I love practice better--
Zounds! what a plunge!
--Bear with me, I beseech you. I had come to a conclusion years and
years ago, before I went away into the far parts of the earth, Judges
and Elders, that where human life is thought much of, there liberty
is; and that just in proportion to the value of human life are the
number and variety, the greatness and the strength of the safe-guards
forms and ceremonies, which go to make it secure, if not altogether
inaccessible.
Very fair--stick to the foreman--keep your eye on his face--don’t take
it off, and you’ll be sure of the jury.
I can hardly see his face now--
So much the better--we’ll have candles for them yet; and if we do, my
boy, the game is our own ... fire away; my authorities are almost ready
now--fire away.
--I journeyed the world over, but I found little to prove that human
life was of much value anywhere--anywhere I should say, except among
the barbarians and the savages. My heart was troubled with fear. I
knew not whither to go, nor where to look. Should I pursue my way
further into the cities of Europe, or go back into the wilderness of
America?--At last I heard of a nation--bear with me judges--where all
men were supposed by the law to be innocent, until they were _proved_
to be guilty, where the very judges were said to be of counsel for
the accused, where the verdict of at least twelve, and in some cases
of twenty-four men--their unanimous verdict too, was required for the
condemnation of such accused; where if a man were charged with a crime,
he was not even permitted to accuse himself or to acknowledge the
truth, till he had been put upon his guard by the judges--who would
even allow him, nay press him to withdraw an avowal, though it were
made by him with serious deliberation; where the laws were so tender of
human life to say all in a word, and so remarkable for humanity as to
be a perpetual theme for declamation. I heard all this.... I had much
reason to believe it ... for everybody that I knew believed it.... I
grew instantly weary of home....
Lights there! lights....
--I could not sleep for the desire I had to see that country.
You’d better stop awhile, Mr. Burroughs, whispered the lawyer.
--And I lost no time in going to it.
Pull up where you are ... but keep your face toward the jury.