The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

The judge looked still more grave than the counsel, and it was easy to see that he deeply regretted it should fall to his lot to try such an issue. He leaned forward, with an elbow on the very primitive sort of desk with which he was furnished by the public, indented it with the point of his knife, and appeared to be passing in review such of the circumstances of this important case as he had become acquainted with, judicially. We say ‘judicially;’ for it is not an easy thing for either judge, counsel, or jurors, in the state of society that now exists, to keep distinctly in their minds that which has been obtained under legal evidence, from that which floats about the community on the thousand tongues of rumour—fact from fiction. Nevertheless, the respectable magistrate whose misfortune it was to preside on this very serious occasion, was a man to perform all his duty to the point where public opinion or popular clamour is encountered. The last is a bug-bear that few have moral courage to face; and the evil consequences are visible, hourly, daily, almost incessantly, in most of the interests of life. This popular feeling is the great moving lever of the republic; the wronged being placed beneath the fulcrum, while the outer arm of the engine is loaded with numbers. Thus it is that we see the oldest families among us quietly robbed of their estates, after generations of possession; the honest man proscribed; the knave and demagogue deified; mediocrity advanced to high places; and talents and capacity held in abeyance, if not actually trampled under foot. Let the truth be said: these are evils to which each year gives additional force, until the tyranny of the majority has taken a form and combination which, unchecked, must speedily place every personal right at the mercy of plausible, but wrong-doing, popular combinations.

“Has the prisoner been arraigned?” asked the judge. “I remember nothing of the sort.”

“No, your honour,” answered Timms, now rising for the first time in the discussion, and looking about him as if to scan the crowd for witnesses. “The prosecution does not yet know the plea we shall put in.”

“You are retained for the prisoner, Mr. Timms?”

“Yes, sir; I appear in her behalf. But Mr. Dunscomb is also retained, and will be engaged in the New York Superior Court until Wednesday, in an insurance case of great magnitude.”

“No insurance case can be of the magnitude of a trial for life,” returned Williams. “The justice of the State must be vindicated, and the person of the citizen protected.”

This sounded well, and it caused many a head in the crowd, which contained both witnesses and jurors, to nod with approbation. It is true, that every thoughtful and observant man must have had many occasions to observe how fallacious such a declaration is, in truth; but it sounded well, and the ears of the multitude are always open to flattery.

“We have no wish to interfere with the justice of the State, or with the protection of the citizen,” answered Timms, looking round to note the effect of his words—“our object is to defend the innocent; and the great and powerful community of New York will find more pleasure in seeing an accused acquitted than in seeing fifty criminals condemned.”

This sentiment sounded quite as well as that of Williams’s, and heads were again nodded in approbation. It told particularly well in a paragraph of a newspaper that Timms had engaged to publish what he considered his best remarks.

“It seems to me, gentlemen,” interposed the judge, who understood the meaning of these ad captandum remarks perfectly well, “that your conversation is premature at least, if not altogether improper. Nothing of this nature should be said until the prisoner has been arraigned.”