few swift yet unemphasized sentences he had proved the existence of a
doubt in the case. He pressed home the significance of that fact with
a power that was so perfectly disciplined that it did not appear to
exert itself, yet it carried a qualm into the camp of the enemy. He
was content to indicate that the doubt was there, and with apparent
magnanimity differentiated it from that which in his view must ever
accompany circumstantial evidence. Every gesture that he used in the
demonstration of its presence, each vibration of a voice which had
become marvellously flexible, was a living witness of the dynamic
quality he had in his possession.
“He will be wise to let it go at that,” was the opinion of Mr. Weekes.
“He has done quite as well as was to have been expected. We shall just
get home, and for a beginner he will have done very nicely.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he is only just starting,” said Mr. Topott
mournfully.
“I have done now, gentlemen,” Northcote continued, “with the legal
aspect of this case. That aspect, as I have shown, makes an acquittal
necessary. But whenever we are content to base our judgment upon
technicalities, we tie our hands. We furnish room for one of those
sophistries which trained intellects, the intellects of those who are
far more learned in the law than we are, find it so easy to introduce.
There is always the danger that a body of laymen, however unimpeachable
their integrity, may be led from the plain and obvious path of their
duty by a cunning stratagem. Again, in all those matters that seek
ascertained fact for their basis, we must not forget that its supply is
partial. Science is doing stupendous things for the world, but even it
cannot yet supply mankind with anything beyond half-truths. There is no
field of man’s activities--philosophy, religion, politics, law--which
does not depend upon these. Science can furnish us with sufficient
evidence to hang a fellow creature, but the time is at hand when it
will also have furnished us with such abundant knowledge of our eternal
fallibility, that we shall cease to exact these reprisals. For are not
all reprisals, which we include under the comprehensive term ‘justice,’
the fruit of an imperfect apprehension of the nature of man? It has
been said truly that a little knowledge is dangerous, for in looking
at the history of human opinion in all the phases through which it has
passed, we see how the habit of basing our actions upon half-truths has
been the cause of the manifold wounds of the world.
“I think, gentlemen, I have said enough to indicate the dangers which
lurk in the temptation to apply in its arid literalness the letter of
the law. I am aware that such a precaution tells against the cause I
am pleading, because, as I think I have made clear to you, the letter
of the law demands the acquittal of the prisoner at the bar. But those
who seek for direction in great issues must strive to forget their
personal cause. According to the law you are pledged to obey your duty
is clear; but as every day its tendency to err becomes more visible,
I feel I must not, I feel I dare not, place too implicit a trust in
its clemency. Therefore, gentlemen, I am about to supplement this law,
I am about to reinforce it, and to reinforce you, by a reference to
that moral code which each and every one of God’s citizens carries in
his own heart, that is the only tribunal known to mankind that is not
liable to error. And I think you will agree with me that the nature of
this case allows me to partake of the inestimable boon of appealing to
it.
“When I watched you defile into this dismal room this morning, one
after another, faltering and uncertain in your steps, and bearing about
you many evidences of having been overcome by the cruel task which
had been imposed upon you by no will of your own, my heart went out
to you, and I could not help reflecting that I would rather be in my
own case, awful as it was to me, than I would be in yours. I at least
could walk upon the higher ground without misgiving. I had not been
pressed into the service of this court of justice to make obeisance to
a ruthless and obsolete formula. I was not called upon to subscribe
to a compact that was repugnant to my moral nature; I was not called
upon to enact the brutal travesty of sealing it with my lips. But, my
friends, as I marked you this morning, with a great fire burning in
my veins, I wondered by what miracle it was, I wondered by what signal
act of grace, I too did not stand among you in my capacity of a private
citizen, to bear my part in this saturnalia of justice. Who was I,
that I should not be plucked from among my family and my friends, from
my peaceful vocations and my modest toil, to do to death a woman? Who
was I, that I should be exempt from this bitter degradation which my
peers are called upon to suffer? And in thinking these thoughts, my
friends, it came upon me suddenly--call it a prophetic foresight if you
will--that one of these days I should be called to sit among you. And I
said to myself, ‘When that comes to pass, what will you do?’ I said to
myself, ‘What will you do?’
“At first I could make no answer. I was stupefied by the thought my too
active imagination had conjured up. And then at last I said to myself,
‘I shall ask for guidance in this matter; I shall ask for guidance from
that tribunal which lies within my own nature.’ And, my friends, there
and then I turned to it, as though this thing had come of a verity to
pass, for the sight of you all seated there in your despair had borne
upon me so heavily that your situation had become my own.
“Now the answer that tribunal vouchsafed to me was this: ‘Consider
what your pastors and masters would do were they placed in your case.
Consider what would be the attitude of those great minds that still
burn like candles in the night of the time, whose radiance has warmed
your veins, whose immortality has enriched your own personal nature.
Consider what would be the conduct of those representative spirits of
whom you proud Englishmen of the twentieth century are the heirs.’
“And then a strange thing happened. No sooner had this answer been
written on the tablets of my brain, than this gaslit room grew dimmer
than it already was, and there seemed to arise a kind of commotion
among you gentlemen of the jury. And when at last I found the courage
to lift my eyes outwards from my thoughts, and they looked towards you,
I saw with a thrill of surprise, as if by the agency of magic, that
each one of your faces had been blotted out. Each was shrouded in an
intense darkness. But while I continued to gaze upon the place that had
contained you, almost with a feeling of horror, a shadowy haze seemed
to play over it, and a number of strange faces peopled the gloom. They
were more than twelve in number; they were more than twenty; they
were more than a hundred. For the most part they were those of men
old and austere. Each face seemed to be that of a person of infinite
power and dominion, of one accustomed to walk alone. Each was marked
by a kind of superhuman composure, as though having spent its youth in
every phase of stress, it had emerged at last upon the summits of the
mountains, where the air is rarefied, and where it is possible to hold
a personal intercourse with Truth. Some of the faces were grave, some a
little sinister, but the eyes of each had a forward, upward look which
conferred an expression upon them of entrancing beauty.
“Stealthily, rapidly, but with a superhuman composure these noble
shadows ranged themselves in the jury-box, in the room of you
gentlemen who had vacated it. And when I had overcome my stupefaction
sufficiently to look upon these new jurors more closely, I was struck
with amazement at the curious familiarity of those faces of theirs.
They were those of persons that I had seemed to have known all my life.
“There and then a shiver of recognition crept through my veins. I
knew them; I revered them, I had spent many hours in their company.
The first face I had recognized was that of an old man, urbane and
ironical, a citizen of the world; it was the face of Plato. Beside
him was a man, older, less urbane, more ironical; it was the face of
Socrates. Thinkers, warriors, saints, and innovators began to teem
before my gaze. There was St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi,
Shakespeare and Goethe, Leonardo and Dante, Washington and Cromwell,
Kant and Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Giordano Bruno, Voltaire. I thought
I discerned the faces of at least two women among this assembly;
one was that of Joan of Arc, the other that of Mary the Magdalene.
There appeared to be hosts of others of all times and countries which
sprang into being as I gazed, but though I recognized them then, I
cannot pause to enumerate them now. For this gathering was strangely
representative, and the living were not excluded--I saw a great
Russian, a great Englishman, and a great Frenchman of our own day--but
I must resist the temptation to give the names of all I beheld.
“No sooner had the scope and representativeness of this gathering
declared itself and it had ranged itself miraculously within a
little room, than a kind of commotion overspread it. They seemed to
be discussing some difficult point among themselves. However, this
action of theirs had no time to engage my anxiety, for I understood
immediately that they were seeking a foreman to their jury. Now you
would suppose that among a concourse of all who had attained an
immortal preëminence in mental and moral activity, to choose a leader
from amongst them would be impossible. But this was not so. Their
discussion was over almost before it began. They had no difficulty
whatever in nominating one among their number to speak for them all.
“It was with an indescribable curiosity that I observed a slight,
strangely garbed figure emerge from their midst. And when he came to
assume his place at the head of his immortal companions, which you,
sir, are occupying now, I was devoured by an overpowering eagerness to
look upon his face. And by this time so immensely powerful had been
the impact of this jury upon my imagination, that it had obtained an
actual existence and proceeded in sober verity to conduct the business
of the court. And I was sensible that the painful curiosity with which
I awaited the foreman’s revelation of his identity was shared by all
who were present. All were craning with parted lips to look upon his
face. And when at last he lifted his head, and his pale and luminous
features shone out of the gloom and overspread this assembly, a kind of
half-stifled sob of surprise, a sort of shudder of recognition, passed
over the crowded court. The face was that of the man called Jesus of
Nazareth.
“To myself, however, the recognition brought an immediate and profound
sense of joy. All my doubts, my terrors, my perplexities, were no
more. They passed as completely as though they had never been. The
business of the court proceeded, but I was inaccessible to its bearing
upon my task. My every thought was merged in the personality of the
foreman of the jury. The precise, calm, and harmonious legal diction
of my learned friends lost all its meaning and coherence, and even the
demeanor of the good and upright judge, who is making trial of this
cause, became one with the glamour which environed the figure in the
jury-box.
“That august jury seemed to sit and listen to all that passed. By
an extreme courtesy which they were able to impose on their finely
disciplined natures, they gave heed to the ceremonial that was enacted
for their benefit. It is true that there were moments when they were
unable to conceal the smile of soft irony which veiled their lips; but
from the beginning to the end their patience and urbanity remained
inviolate. The foreman, however, muttering continually inaudible words
to himself, with fingers twitching, and the hectic pulse beating in
his thin and fevered cheek, never took his eyes from the rail in front
of him. And when at last the time came for the jury to consider their
verdict, they were able to return it instantly, without leaving the
box, as you would expect such a tribunal to do.
“I can scarcely hope to picture to your minds the scene that was
presented when the foreman, so frail and thin and yet so full of
compassion, rose humbly in his place. ‘Are you agreed upon your
verdict, gentlemen?’ said the Clerk of Arraigns. ‘We are,’ said the
voice of the divine mystic of the Galilean hills; yet I can convey to
you the sound of it no better than could those poor fishermen who
heard it nineteen centuries ago. ‘What is your verdict, gentlemen?’
said the Clerk of Arraigns, whose own voice sounded so ludicrously
trite in comparison with that of the foreman, that it seemed to have no
place in human nature. ‘I understand,’ said the foreman of the jury,
‘according to your laws the penalty is death.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the
Clerk of Arraigns, with a quiet dignity, ‘the penalty according to the
law is death.’ ‘The jury return a verdict of Not Guilty,’ replied the
foreman instantly, stooping to write with his finger on the rail in
front of him, as though he had heard him not.”
At this point Mr. Weekes rose excitedly.
“My lord,” he cried, “this blasphemous travesty has gone too far. It
must be carried no farther. It must cease.”
“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote, turning to confront him, while a wave of
emotion swept over the court which seemed to make the air vibrate, “I
must ask you resume your seat.” He pointed with a finger with sorrowful
sternness. “I cannot submit to interruption at such a moment as this.
You hold your brief for the Crown; I hold mine for God and human
nature.”
The hush which followed was broken by a poor actor among the jury. He
had been out of an engagement for two years, and he had left his home
that morning with his wife sitting with a child at her breast before a
grate without a fire in it.
“That’s true,” he muttered heavily.
“My lord, I appeal to you,” cried Mr. Weekes more excitedly than ever.
“I did not come here to be browbeaten and insulted. I did not come
here to witness religion made into mockery and dragged through the
mire.”
“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote with a depth of compassion in his tone
which made many veins run cold, “a subterfuge of this kind will not
serve you. The jury have no desire that you should make a parade of
your feelings at such a moment as this. They desire that you will
resume your seat, and relinquish any further attempt to make their task
more hideous than it already is.”
“That is perfectly true,” exclaimed the foreman in a hoarse whisper.
It was observed by those who were behind Northcote that in the
stress of the mental anguish through which he had already passed, by
constantly plucking with his fingers at the back of his hands, the skin
had been pulled away and the bleeding flesh was exposed.
“I appeal to your lordship,” cried Mr. Weekes.
“My lord, I also appeal to you,” said Northcote; and the poise of his
head and the lift of his chin, as it was directed upwards to the bench,
reminded those who had seen it of the figure of Balzac as modelled by
Rodin in clay.
The dæmonic quality was dominant here, as is the case always when the
gospel of force has its dealings with human nature. Few had suspected
that this old judge, with his brusque manners and his great barking
irascible voice was no longer fit to fill his position. His lionlike
exterior was no more than the livery of his dignity. He was not the man
to face a crisis, when above all things an iron nerve and an implacable
will were needed to impose restraint upon a jury and an advocate who
were in danger of trampling underfoot the accepted rules of decorum
and procedure. And the week before the judge had buried his youngest
daughter. When Northcote’s gaunt eyes were turned upon this old man,
who was trembling violently under his ermine, the tears began to course
down his face.
“My God, he’s settled Bow-wow,” said the fat barrister on the back
bench.
“Always was a senile old fool at bottom,” said his companion. “That
young bounder ought to lose his wig and gown.”
“Shut up! He’s speaking again.”
XXVII
THE PERORATION
“It is too much the custom, my friends,” Northcote continued to the
jury when Mr. Weekes had sat down as spasmodically as he had got up,
“to regard this divine mystic of whom I have spoken as a supernatural
being whose name can only be mentioned with propriety in the presence
of an elaborate ritual. That fetish dies hard, my friends, but dying
it is, for if ever a human being walked this earth, whose life and
opinions are a great poem that deserves to be recited in our bosoms
and our businesses during every hour that we dwell, it is the life
and opinions of him who has already given his verdict in this case.
There are very few things that are of any importance to us upon which
we have not his pronouncement in one form or another; and though that
pronouncement may not always be coincident with the technical lawyer’s
law of the time, which is understanded of no man, least of all of
themselves, these _obiter dicta_ of his, delivered upon the spur of the
occasion, have already outlasted kings, dynasties, and nations; and
they are likely to endure when court-houses, jury-boxes, and scaffolds
have long ceased to be.
“A few centuries ago such words as I am now addressing to you would
have sent me to the lions, and you also would have been torn in pieces
for having deigned to listen to them. It is not a hundred years since
small children were hanged in this country for stealing five shillings.
A hundred years before that a woman was burned at the stake for the
practice of witchcraft. It was the custom to disembowel those who
were guilty of a felony; to break on the wheel those who did not hold
orthodox political opinions; and to burn, maim, cut off the heads, and
inflict indescribable physical torments upon any person because of his
religious views.
“I am going to ask you, my friends, how these monstrous enactments
were overcome. By the lawyers who drew their fees from the Crown to
put them in practice? Not so. By those educated minds that conducted
the business of the state? Not so. These unspeakable crimes committed
in the name of justice were overcome by a handful of prophets, seers,
and reformers, who arose in Israel. They were common and unrefined,
of small education, and less culture; poor and obscure herdsmen and
fishermen, a pedlar by the wayside; the keeper of a public-house;
a small tradesman in Lambeth; a miserable grocer of Spitalfields;
a wretched old tinker who passed the choicest part of his days in
Bedford jail. This very Jesus himself, the foreman of this jury which
is sitting with you in the box, which at this moment urges these words
to my lips, was a common rustic by trade, a carpenter. And you will
remember that he paid for the extreme unorthodoxy of his religious and
political views by crucifixion upon the tree.
“The tree has gone, my friends, but he remains. I say the tree has
gone. That tree has gone, but as mankind in the present imperfect stage
of its development, does not dare as yet to trust itself without a
tree of some kind to lean upon, a substitute has been provided for
that cross of wood upon which it nailed the redeemer of his kind. And
it seems to me that if the divine mystic of whom I am speaking were
again to roam the hills of Galilee, his fate would be the same to-day
as it was yesterday. In the present phase which has been attained by
our sympathies with those who share the burden of our so dark and so
inscrutable inheritance, it would be extremely easy for some learned
Treasury counsel in the performance of his duty to the Crown, to
reënact the supreme tragedy of a world which is filled with tragedies.
“At the present time there is still a tree standing in England upon
which we nail women. They may be guilty of dark offences, as were
the associates of that Nazarene Jew of whom I have spoken; their
fate, according to the written statutes, may be sound in equity; some
wretched Magdalene in falling by the way may have stained the pavements
of the street with blood. But if we, her peers and coadjutors, are to
continue at this time of day to visit her with reprisals, I am forced
to believe, my friends, that all we most cherish in our national life
will perish. And I think I discern by that which is written in your
faces that you are of this opinion also.
“I have alluded to the two unhappy outcasts who were nailed upon the
tree with Jesus. Technically they were malefactors; it was right that
they should be immolated upon the altar of the law. Doubtless the
instant the counsel for the Crown had compassed this desirable end,
he repaired to his home with a substantial emolument and a perfect
security of soul, ate a good dinner, and afterwards lay on a mat and
harkened to the sounds of the lyre. But I do not think from that day to
this the associate of these malefactors was ever shown to be guilty of
any crime at all, at least of any crime known to the judicial calendar.
His only offence, if offence there was, was in living before his day
and generation, which, in the eyes of those who are contemporary, is a
misdemeanor of a heinous character. Posterity only is able to condone
a greatness which transcends its own era. Yet do not misunderstand me.
Technically he was blameless, technically he had committed no crime.
“This consideration brings me to the final word I shall venture to
speak--the supreme danger of the tree. It is very dangerous to keep a
tree at all. Whatever is once nailed upon it can never be removed. The
stains sink into the wood, and, strive as they may, the labors of those
who undertake to cleanse it and purify it cannot avail. Like corrosive
acids these stains percolate through the fibres and change them to
wormwood and fungus. And do not forget, my friends, that the fibres of
the tree are the fibres also of the national life. A nation pledges its
honor when it seeks reprisal.
“We do well to shudder at the many bitter degradations which have
sprung from this habit of keeping a tree. Jesus was not the first
innocent person whose blood was spilt upon that oft-humiliated wood.
And he was not the last. Our human faculties play us such strange
tricks that they can render us certain of nothing. Even a poor outcast
who has fainted by the bleak wayside of life, who has occasionally
drunk a glass of spirits to keep her from the river, may by some
obscure possibility which the counsel for the prosecution has not been
able to reveal to us have refrained from destroying the man who has
been the first cause of her fall, although it devolves upon all who
love justice--in whatever justice may consist--to explain away the
coincidence of a packet of poison having been found in her possession.
But, as I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that the theory
of the prosecution is wrong.
“It would not be the first occasion that an uncommon zeal has led it
into error. A year ago to-morrow, at these sessions, one John Davis,
a butler, who for thirty years had been a faithful servant in the
household of his mistress, was found guilty of the crime of compassing
the death of that aged lady, in order that he might spend his own
latter days in the enjoyment of a small legacy she had left him in her
will. In the mind of the counsel for the Crown, and in the mind of the
judge, the evidence against this man was overwhelming. At first you
gentlemen of the jury were disposed to see a doubt in the case, but the
learned counsel for the prosecution was so consummate in his arguments,
the learned judge was so emphatic, the array of witnesses for the Crown
was so formidable, from zealous police-constables, with their way to
make in the world, to experts and past-masters in criminology who had
made theirs long ago; and the youthful advocate, whom the butler’s
legal adviser had selected to defend him, was so unused to a trial of
this magnitude, for his experience had been limited, that he failed in
cross-examination to elucidate from a hostile witness an extremely
important fact; and in his address to you, gentlemen of the jury, he
was unable to soften the impression that the Crown had been able to
build up in your minds.
“I have hardly a need, gentlemen, to reveal to you the sequel of this
painful story. As all the world remembers, you had in the end to submit
to the inevitable. You, gentlemen of the jury, consented to a verdict
of guilty; a month later the unhappy man was hanged; and he had not
been five days in his grave when a nephew of the murdered woman gave
himself up to a justice that had already wreaked itself on an innocent
man, and confessed that he himself had murdered his aunt because he was
in need of her money.