“We do well to accept this institution with an unreserved emotion which, as a race, we regard as unworthy. For there are some who hold that this hiatus between our precepts and our practice confers a yet deeper lustre upon our love of justice. For, gentlemen, that love is innate in the heart of every Englishman; it is the stuff of which our constitution is composed, which quickens our pulses and tightens our throats; it helps to form the most magnificent of all our traditions; it is the woof of a fabric which is imperishable.
“It is the thought of this love of justice dominant in the breast of every London citizen, which sustains him who pleads the cause of the accused. For in a charge of this awful nature the constitution enacts with a noble wisdom that the prisoner at the bar is entitled to any doubt that may arise in any one of your minds in regard to the absolute conclusiveness of all the evidence that may be urged against her. That is a humane provision, gentlemen. It is worthy of the source from which it springs. Without this provision I do not know how any advocate would be prevailed upon to incur his responsibility; nor, gentlemen, do I know how any jury of twelve humane and enlightened Englishmen would be gathered into this court to adjudicate upon the life or death of an Englishwoman. It is a humane and far-sighted provision, and it enables the advocate of this unhappy Englishwoman to address you with a feeling of security which otherwise he could never have hoped to possess.
“I feel, gentlemen, that the exigencies of this case may compel me to speak to you at great length, but of one thing you may be assured. I shall not speak at all unless every word I am called to utter is weighed with care and fidelity in the scales of the reason that God has given to me, and I know, gentlemen, from the look upon your faces, that with equal care and equal fidelity you will weigh them in the scales of the reason God has given to you. I have placed myself in the most favorable position for addressing you I can devise. I shall hope to speak with the utmost distinction of which I am capable; and I shall hope not to employ a word whose meaning is obscure to you, or a phrase which is equivocal or open to misconstruction. That you are prepared to surrender your whole attention to me you tell me with your looks. That I shall hold that attention I dare to believe, unless the hand of Providence deprives me of the power to give utterance to those things with which my mind is charged to the bursting-point.
“You will not refute me when I assert that the fact in our common experience which at the present time has the greatest power to oppress us is the imperfection of human nature. And upon entering a court of justice this fact is apt to demoralize a feeling mind. The science of appraising criminal evidence has been carried among us to a curious pitch, as witness the unexampled skill of my learned friend; the paraphernalia of incrimination, if the expression may be allowed to me, is consummate; but in spite of the rare ingenuity of great legal minds, human nature is fallible. It is liable to err. It does err. To the deep grief of science it errs with great frequency. Indeed, its errors are so numerous that they even impinge upon the sacred domain of justice. Miscarriages of justice occur every day.
“In a cause of this nature it is most necessary that steps should be taken to exclude the element of injustice by all means that are known to us. We are bound, gentlemen, to keep that contingency constantly before our eyes. Such a contingency fills me with trembling; and I believe it fills you, for in this instance a miscarriage of justice would not only be irreparable, it would be a crime against our human nature.
“The question arises, how can we safeguard ourselves against this element of injustice? What means can we adopt to keep it out? Gentlemen, it devolves upon me, the advocate of the accused, to furnish that means. By taking thought I shall endeavor to provide it. To that end I propose to divide what I have to say to you into three parts. The first will deal with your legal duty. The second will deal with the duty to which every Christian Englishman must subscribe or forfeit his name, and with his name the title-deeds of his humanity. The third will show the consequences which must and do wait upon the evasion of this second duty, which is the highest and noblest known to mankind, which in itself completely transcends this legal one, this technical one you are sworn to obey.”
“I can see he means to be all night,” said Mr. Weekes to his junior, with marked irritation. “Lover of the sound of his own voice.”
“He is going wrong already,” said Mr. Topott complacently. “Saying too much; overdoing it generally.”
“Every inch a performer,” said Jumbo at the back to a companion. “There’s a fortune in that voice and manner. Hope the lad won’t say too much.”
“Has done already,” said his companion. “That cant of a duty higher than the legal one is merely ridiculous.”