Henry Northcote

by J. C. Snaith

The ex-president of the Oxford Union and his friend, whose youth rendered them sternly critical, were following Northcote’s every word with the closest attention.

“He’s got a brogue you could cut with a knife,” said the ex-president, with an air of resenting a personal injury.

“You are wrong,” said his friend, with an absence of compromise. “He was at school with me.”

By this time the advocate had cut into the heart of his subject. In a 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.