“I expected you would all censure me,” observed Lady Marvlynn; “but it is done, and can’t be helped now.”
“But the scoundrel knocked my hat over my eyes, and would have killed me if I’d given him the chance,” exclaimed Lord Fitzbogleton. “He’s a wetch whom hanging is too good for. I am sowwy you have let him go.”
“So am I; so are we all, I expect,” remarked Major Smithers Smyth. “What say you, Mr. Quirp?”
Mr. Quirp was a solicitor of Furnival’s-inn, Holborn.
“I always regret hearing of the escape of a robber,” said he. “It but too frequently happens that men belonging to the criminal class escape through their victims declining to prosecute. There are many reasons for this. In the first place the duty which falls to the share of a prosecutor is at once an onerous and unpleasant one. It is attended with great inconvenience, loss of time, and in some cases considerable expense, and hence it is that so many object to the task.”
“Clearly so,” observed Mr. Tangle, another of the company, a barrister in the Temple. “It has always been so. People do not like to be hanging about police-courts, but it is essential in the interests of society that persons should sacrifice their own personal comfort for the public good.”
“I dare say Lady Marvlynn has made use of her good sense and judgment in this case,” cried Sir William Leathbridge, coming to the rescue. “It may be against the dictatorial opinions or views of our legal friends, but I am quite sure no one ought to blame her or any other woman for leaning to the side of mercy.”
“Hear, hear,” cried several of the company.
“I would not for a moment presume to dictate,” observed Quirp. “It would not be right and proper for me to do so; still, at the same time, I frankly confess I see much to regret in adopting such a course. If you knew how many hardened ruffians, how many habitual thieves escape from this cause, you would, I think, endorse the opinion expressed by myself and Mr. Tangle.”
“I am sure they would, and, what’s more,” chimed in the other lawyer, “there are hundreds and thousands of men in the metropolis and elsewhere who calculate with the greatest possible coolness the chances of detection and conviction, and it is only the reliability and certainty that punishment follows detection that we can hope for any beneficial effect therefrom as a deterrent from the commission of crime.”