Very fair—very fair—but what on earth has it to do with our case?
Wait and you shall see; I begin to see my way clear now—wherefore judges, I hold that the liberty of a people and therefore the greatness of a people may be safely estimated by the degree of seriousness with which a criminal is arraigned, or tried, or judged, or punished—.
—Very true—and very well spun out, brother B.... but a non sequitur nevertheless. That wherefore, with which you began the period was a bit of a——
Pray—pray—don’t interrupt me; you will be overheard—you will put me out.—In a word, ye Judges of Israel! I have had a notion that arbitrary power would betray itself in every case, and every-where on earth, by its mode of dealing with liberty and life—being, I persuade myself, more and more summary and careless, in proportion as it is more and more absolute of a truth, not as it is more and more absolute by character. You had for a time, while the northern savages were at your door, a downright military government.—You know therefore that my words are true. Your government was called free—to have called it arbitrary, would have offended you; yet for a season you dealt with human life as the Turk would. You know, for you have seen the proof, that in proportion to the growth of power in those who bear sway among you, the forms and ceremonies which fortify and hedge in, as it were, the life and liberty of the subject, are either disregarded or trampled on.—
Oh ho!—I see what you are driving at now!
—For my own part, I love to see the foreheads of them who are appointed to sit in the high-places and give judgment forever upon the property or character, life or liberty of their fellow man.—
Property or character—life or liberty—of a fellow man! Very fair—very fair indeed.
—Expressive at least of decent sorrow, if not of profound awe. I would have them look as if they were afraid—as if they trembled under the weight of their tremendous authority; as if they were deeply and clearly and reverentially sensible of what they have undertaken to do—which is, to deal with the creatures of God, as God himself professes to deal with them—according to their transgressions—to do a part of his duty with his own Image—to shelter the oppressed and to stay the oppressor, not only now and for a time, but hereafter and forever—
Don’t stop to breathe now; I shall be at your back in a jiffy—
I would that every man who has to do with the administration of law, wherever that law is to touch the life or liberty of another; and whoever he may be, from the highest judge in the highest court of all the earth, down to the humblest ministerial officer—I would that he should feel, or at least appear to feel, that for a time he is the delegate of Jehovah—I do not stop to say how, nor to ask why. That is for others to say.—I would have the judges remarkable for their gravity, not for their austerity; for their seriousness and for their severe simplicity, not for a theatrical carriage. I would have the bar, as you call it, above the trick and subterfuge of the law—incapable of doing what I see them do every day of my life; and I would have the bench as you call it, incapable of suffering what I see them not only suffer, but take pleasure in, every day of my life——are you ready?