“Thou shalt not kill,” is a commandment addressed, not to him alone, but to me, to you, to the Court, and to the whole community. There are no exceptions from that commandment, at least not in civil life, save those of self-defense, and capital punishment for crimes in the due and just administration of the law. There is not only a question, then, whether the prisoner has shed the blood of his fellow-man, but the question whether we shall unlawfully shed his blood. I should be guilty of murder if, in my present relation, I saw the executioner waiting for an insane man and failed to say, or failed to do in his behalf, all that my ability allowed. I think it has been proved of the prisoner at the bar, that during all this long and tedious trial, he has had no sleepless nights, and that even in the daytime, when he retires from the halls to his lonely cell, he sinks to rest like a wearied child, on the stone floor, and quietly slumbers till roused by the constable with his staff, to appear again before the jury. His counsel enjoy no such repose. Their thoughts by day and their dreams by night are filled with oppressive apprehension that, through their inability or neglect, he may be condemned.
I am arraigned before you for undue manifestations of zeal and excitement. My answer to all such charges shall be brief. When this cause shall have been committed to you, I shall be happy indeed if it shall appear that my only error has been that I have felt too much, thought too intensely, or acted too faithfully.
If my error would thus be criminal, how great would yours be if you should render an unjust verdict? Only four months have elapsed since an outraged people, distrustful of judicial redress, doomed the prisoner to immediate death. Some of you have confessed that you approved that lawless sentence. All men now rejoice that the prisoner was saved for this solemn trial. But this trial would be as criminal as that precipitate sentence, if, through any wilful fault or prejudice of yours, it should prove but a mockery of justice. If any prejudice of witnesses, or the imagination of counsel, or any ill-timed jest, shall, at any time, have diverted your attention; or if any prejudgment which you have brought into the jury box, or any cowardly fear of popular opinion shall have operated to cause you to deny to the prisoner that dispassionate consideration of his case which the laws of God and man exact of you, and if, owing to such an error, this wretched man fall from among the living, what will be your crime? You have violated the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” It is not the form or letter of the trial by jury that authorizes you to send your fellow-man to his dread account, but it is the spirit that sanctifies that glorious institution; and if, through pride, passion, timidity, weakness, or any cause, you deny the prisoner one iota of all the defense to which he is entitled by the law of the land, you yourselves, whatever his guilt may be, will have broken the commandment, “Thou shalt do no murder.”
narration
Narration is recounting the particulars of events, or enumerating facts; telling of occurrences or things in regular order. Specifically, it is that part of explanation that allows the subject in its relations to the movement of time. In simple words, it is a continuous telling.
The narrative form of composition is beautifully employed by Daniel Webster in his first Bunker Hill Monument address, the following being an extract from that admirable speech:
The society whose organ I am was formed for the purpose of rearing some honorable and durable monument to the memory of the early friends of American independence. They have thought that for this object no time could be more propitious than the present prosperous and peaceful period; that no place could claim preference over this memorable spot; and that no day could be more auspicious to the undertaking than the anniversary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of that monument we have now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion, with prayer to Almighty God for His blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the works of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it.
description
Description is showing of things by means of language-pictures; telling the attributes that make up the whole. Word-pictures are created by means of explaining the individual parts of a theme or view as they affect the entire thing.
As a piece of word-picturing the following description of the breaking of day, by Edward Everett, is certainly magnificent: