“You make much out of a very little, Jack, and imagine far more than you can prove. Why should old Goodwin set fire to his own house—for I understand the property was his—steal his own money—for, though married women did then hold a separate estate in a bed-quilt, or a gridiron, the law could not touch the previous accumulations of a feme coverte—and murder a poor foreigner, who could neither give nor take away anything that the building contained? Then he is to burn his own house, and make himself a vagrant in his old age—and that among strangers! I learn he was born in that very house, and has passed his days in it. Such a man would not be very likely to destroy it.”
“Why not, to conceal a murder? Crime must be concealed, or it is punished.”
“Sometimes,” returned Michael, drily. “This Mary Monson will be hanged, out of all question, should the case go against her, for she understands French, and Italian, and German, you say; either of which tongues would be sufficient to hang her; but had old Mrs. Goodwin murdered her, philanthropy would have been up and stirring, and no rope would be stretched.”
“Millington[“Millington], you have a way of talking, at times, that is quite shocking! I do wish you could correct it. What use is there in bringing a young lady like Miss Monson down to the level of a common criminal?”
“She will be brought down as low as that, depend on it, if guilty. There is no hope for one who bears about her person, in air, manner, speech, and deportment, the unequivocal signs of a lady. Our sympathies are all kept for those who are less set apart from the common herd. Sympathy goes by majorities, as well as other matters.”
“You think her, at all events, a lady?” said John, quickly. “How, then, can you suppose it possible that she has been guilty of the crimes of which she stands accused?”
“Simply, because my old-fashioned father has given me old-fashioned notions of the meaning of terms. So thin-skinned have people become lately, that even language must be perverted to gratify their conceit. The terms ‘gentleman’ and ‘lady’ have as defined meanings as any two words we possess—signifying persons of cultivated minds, and of certain refinements in tastes and manners. Morals have nothing to do with either, necessarily, as a ‘gentleman’ or ‘lady’ may be very wicked; nay, often are. It is true there are particular acts, partaking of meannesses, rather than anything decidedly criminal, that, by a convention, a gentleman or lady may not commit; but there are a hundred others, that are far worse, which are not prohibited. It is unlady-like to talk scandal; but it is not deemed always unlady-like to give grounds to scandal. Here is a bishop who has lately been defining a gentleman, and, as usually happens with such men, unless they were originally on a level with their dioceses, he describes a ‘Christian,’ rather than a ‘gentleman.’ This notion of making converts by means of enlisting our vanity and self-love in the cause, is but a weak one, at the best.”
“Certainly, Mike; I agree with you in the main. As large classes of polished people do exist, who have loose enough notions of morals, there ought to be terms to designate them, as a class, as well as to give any other name, when we have the thing. Use has applied those of ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies,’ and I can see no sufficient reason for changing them.”
“It comes wholly from the longings of human vanity. As a certain distinction is attached to the term, everybody is covetous of obtaining it, and all sorts of reasoning is resorted to, to drag them into the categories. It would be the same, if it were a ground of distinction to have but one ear. But this distinction will be very likely to make things go hard with our client, Jack, if the jury say ‘guilty’.”
“The jury never can—never will render such a verdict! I do not think the grand jury will even return a bill. Why should they? The testimony wouldn’t convict an old state-prison-bird.”