No ... no ... no!... You have no power to stop me. The jury could not agree. Two of their number were unwilling to find the accused guilty. They were sent back—it was in the dead of winter, and they were allowed neither food, nor fire—and so, after a while they were starved and frozen into unanimity—
Grant me patience! what would you have, Sir?—you appear to be satisfied with nothing—I believe in my soul, George Burroughs, that you are no better than a Reformer—
A shudder ran through the whole court.
Here was a pretty illustration of what I had been told by you, and by such as you, and of what I believed before I went abroad, about the humanity of the law—the humanity of British law! of that very law that ye are now seeking to administer here, in this remote corner of the earth. Ye are amazed—ye do not believe me—and yet every word I have spoken is true; and that which is law there, ye would make law here. The judges, we are told, are of counsel for the prisoner—God preserve me from such counsel, I say!...
Five and one are six—six-and-sixpence, muttered a voice.
They never interfered while I was there, in favor of the prisoner; but they did interfere two or three times, and with great acuteness too, for it was a trial of wit among three, to his disadvantage, even as ye have this day. The accused are held to be innocent there, even as they are here, till they are proved to be guilty—so say the lawyers there, and so say the judges, and so say all the writers on the law, and so they believe, I dare say. And yet ... there as here, the man who happens to be suspected of a crime is held to be ... not innocent of the charge, but guilty, and is called upon to prove his innocence; which if he fail to do, judgment follows, and after two or three days, it may be, death. He had no counsel permitted to him where his life was at stake, though he might have had the best in the whole empire in a civil case affecting property to the value of a few pounds. He had no power to bring witnesses ... the law would not allow him witnesses therefore ... and if they appeared in spite of the law, that law put a disqualification upon whatever they said in favor of the prisoner. And after all this.... O the humanity of the law! ... the jury, a part of whom believed him to be innocent were starved into finding him guilty. What was I to think of all this? what of British law—that very law by authority whereof, ye are now trying that woman for her life—what of the—
Here Burroughs dropped into a chair completely out of breath.
Have you done Sir? said the chief judge.
He signified by a motion of the head that he must give up.
Very well Sir—You cannot say that we have not heard you patiently; nor that we have hurried the case of the prisoners at the bar, whatever else you may think proper to say. You have had such liberty as we never granted before, as we shall never grant again; you have had full swing Sir—full swing, and would have been stopped a good hour ago but for the deplorable situation of the accused. To tell you the plain truth however—I did hope—I did hope I say, that we should hear something—something to the purpose, before you gave the matter up—