CHAPTER VIII.
WhatshouldI say? replied Burroughs. What would you have me say? standing up and growing very pale. What would you have me say, you that are of counsel for the prisoner, you! the judges of the court? You that appear to rejoice when you see the last hope of the prisoner about to be made of no value to her, by the trick and subterfuge of the law. Why do you not speak to her?—Why do you not advise me? You know that I depend upon the reply—You know that I have no other hope, and that she has no other hope, and yet you leave us both to be destroyed by the stratagem of an adversary. How shall I proceed? Speak to me, I entreat you! Speak to me judges! Do not leave me to grope out a path blind-folded over a precipice—a path which it would require great skill to tread—O, I beseech you! do not leave me thus under the awful, the tremendous accountability, which, in my ignorance of the law, I have been desperate enough to undertake!—Here by my side are two men of the law—yet have you assigned her, in a matter of life and death, no counsel. They are afraid I see—afraid not only to rise up and speak for the wretched woman, but they are afraid even to whisper to me. And you, ye judges! are you also on the side of the prosecutor and the witnesses—are you all for the king?—all!—all!—not so much as one to say a word for the poor creature, who being pursuedforthe king, is treated as if she were pursuedbytheking—pursued by him for sacrifice! What! no answer—not a word! What am I to believe? ... that you take pride in the exercise of your terrible power? that you look upon it as a privilege? ... that you regard me now with displeasure ... that if you could have your own way, you would permit no interference with your frightful prerogative?... O that I knew in what way to approach the hearts of men! O that I knew how to proceed in this affair! Will nobody advise me!
Sir—Sir!—allow me, said a man of the law who sat near, allow me Sir; I can bear it no longer—it is a reproach to the very name of law—but—but (lowering his voice) if you will suffer me to suggest a step or two for your consideration—you have the courage and the power—I have not—my brethren here have not—you have—and you may perhaps be able to—hush, hush—to bring her off.
Speak out, Sir—speak out, I beseech you. What am I to do?
Lower if you please—lower—low——er—er—er—we must not be overheard—Brother Trap’s got a quick ear. Now my notion is—allow me—(whispering) the jury are on the watch; they have heard you with great anxiety—and great pleasure—if you can manage to keep the hold you have got for half an hour—hush—hush—no matter how—the poor soul may escape yet—
I’ll address the jury—
By no manner of means! That will not be suffered—you cannot address the jury—
Good God! what shall I do!
Thirteen-pence more—carry five—paid to watchman.
I’ll put you in the way (with a waggish leer.) Though you are not allowed to address the jury, you are allowed to address the court—hey?—(chucking him with hiselbow)—the court you see—hey—sh!—sh!—you understand it—hey?
No—how cool you are!
Cool—you’d be cool too, if you understood the law.
Never—never—in a case of life and death.
Life and death? poh—everything is a case of life and death, Sir—to a man o’ the law—everything—all cases are alike, Sir—hey—provided—a—a—
Provided what, Sir?
Where the quid is the same.
The quid?
The quid pro quo—
How can you, Sir?—your levity is a—I begin to be afraid of your principles—what am I to do?
Do—just keep the court in play; keep the judges at work, while I run over to the shop for an authority or two I have there which may be of use.—You have the jury with you now—lay it on thick—you understand the play as well as I do now—
Stop—stop—am I to say to the judges what I would say to the jury, if I had leave?
Pre—cisely! but—but—a word in your ear—so as to be heard by the jury.—Tut—tut—
The head-prosecutor jumped up at these words, and with a great show of zeal prayed the judges to put a stop to the consultation, a part of which was of a character—of a character—that is to say, of a character—
Burroughs would have interrupted him, but he was hindered by his crafty law-adviser, who told him to let the worthy gentleman cut his own throat in his own way, now he was in the humor for it.
Burroughs obeyed, and after his adversary had run himself out of breath, arose in reply, and with a gravity and a moderation that weighed prodigiously with thecourt, called upon the chief-judge to put a stop to such gladiatorial controversy—
What would you have us do? said the judge.
I would have you do nothing more than your duty—
Here the coadjutor of Burroughs, after making a sign to him to face the jury, slid away on tip-toe.
—I would have you rebuke this temper. Ye are the judges of a great people. I would have you act, and I would have you teach others to act, as if you and they were playing together, in every such case—not for your own lives—that were too much to ask of mortal man; but for another’s life. I would have you and your officers behave here as if the game that you play were what you all know it to be, a game of life and death—a trial, not of attorney with attorney, nor of judge with judge, in the warfare of skill, or wit, or trick, or stratagem, for fee or character—but a trial whereby the life here, and the life hereafter it may be, of a fellow-creature is in issue. Yea—more—I would have you teach the king’s Attorney-General, the prosecutor himself, that representative though he be of majesty, it would be more dignified and more worthy of majesty, if he could contrive to keep his temper, when he is defeated or thwarted in his attack on human life. We may deserve death all of us, but we deserve not mockery; and whether we deserve death or not, I hope we deserve, under our gracious Lord and Master, to be put to death according to law—
That’ll do!—that’ll do!—whispered the lawyer, who had returned with his huge folios—that’ll do my boy! looking up over his spectacles and turning a leaf—that’ll do! give it to ’em as hot as they can sup it—I shall be ready for you in a crack—push on, push on—what a capital figure you’d make at the bar—don’t stop—don’t stop.
Why, what on earth can I say!
Talk—talk—talk—no matter what you say—don’t give them time to breathe—pop a speech into ’em!
A speech!
Ay, or a sermon, or a whar-whoop, or a prayer—any thing—anything—if you do but keep the ball up—no matter-what, if the jury can hear you—they are all agog now—they are pricking up their ears at you—now’s your time!
Very well——Judges!
Proceed.
Judges. I am a traveller from my youth up. I have journied over Europe; I have journied over America—I am acquainted with every people of both hemispheres, and yet, whithersoever I go, I am a stranger. I have studied much—thought much—and am already a show among those who watched over my youth. I am still young, though I appear old, much younger than you would suppose me to be, did you not know me—
Here he turned to the lawyer—I never shall be able to get through this; I don’t know what I am saying.—
Nor I—So much the better—don’t give up—
——A youth—a lad in comparison with you, ye judges, you that I now undertake to reprove——a spectacle and a show among men. They follow me every where, (I hope you’ll soon be ready) they pursue me day after day—and week after week—and month after month—
—And year after year—by jings, that’ll do!—
—And year after year; they and their wives, and their little ones—
And their flocks and their herds, and their man-servants and their maid-servants, whispered the lawyer.
Do be quiet, will you.—They pursue me however, not because of their veneration or their love, but only that they may study the perpetual changes of my countenanceand hear the language of one to whom all changes and all languages are alike, and all beneath regard. They follow me too, not because they are able to interpret the look of my eyes, or to understand the meaning of my voice, but chiefly because they hear that I have been abroad in the furthermost countries of all the earth, because they are told by grave men, who catch their breath when they speak of me, though it be in the House of the Lord, as you have seen this very day, that I have been familiar with mysterious trial and savage adventure, up from the hour of my birth, when I was dropped in the wilderness like the young of the wild-beast, by my own mother—
I say—Brother B.—I say though—whispered the lawyer, in much perplexity—I say though—what are you at now?Youare not on trial—are you?
Yes—yes—let me alone, I beseech you....
Fire away ... fire away ... you’ve got possession of the jury, and that’s half the battle ... fire away.
Peace ... peace, I pray you ... Judges! whenever I go abroad ... wherever I go ... the first place into which I set my foot, is the tribunal of death. Go where I may, I go first in search of the courts ... the courts ofjustice, I should say, to distinguish them from all other courts—
Good!—
—And I go thither because I have an idea that nations are to be compared with nations, not in every thing—not altogether, but only in a few things; and because after much thought, I have persuaded myself that matters of religion, politics and morals, are inadequate for the chief purposes of such comparison—the comparison of people with people, though not for the comparison of individual with individual perhaps; and that a variety of matters which regard the administration of law, in cases affecting either life or liberty, are in theirvery nature adequate, and may be conclusive. We may compare court with court and law with law; but how shall we compare opinion with opinion, where there is no unchangeable record of either? goodness with goodness—where goodness itself may be but a thing of opinion or hearsay, incapable of proof, and therefore incapable of comparison?
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 itwere, 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 everyday 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?
Persevere—persevere—you may say what you please now, said the lawyer, shuffling his papers about with both hands, chuckling in his sleeve, and whispering without appearing to whisper.—Have your own way now ... they like to hear the lawyers and the judges, and the law cut up; it’s a new thing to hear in such a place ... fire away, fire away ... you see how they enjoy it ... you’ve got us on the hip now ... fire away.
If a criminal be arraigned on a charge that may affect his life or character, limb or property, or if a witness be to be sworn, or the oath administered, ... I care not how ... I care not why ... if you will have oaths ... ye should order silence to be proclaimed by the sound of trumpet.
—Pho! pho!
I would have a great bell, one so large that it might be heard far and wide over the whole town—I would have this tolled on the day of condemnation, if that condemnation were to death. And if it must be—if you will have it so—if you will that a man be put to death by the rope or the axe, on the scaffold or over an open grave—as the poor soldier dies—I would have him perish at night—in the dead of midnight—and all the town should wake up at the tolling of that heavy bell, or at the roar of cannon, with a knowledge that a fellow-creature had that instant passed away from the earth forever—just gone—that very instant—before the Everlasting Judge of the quick and the dead—that while they were holding their breath and before they could breathe again—he would receive the sentence from which there would be no appeal throughout all the countless ages of eternity.
Very fair—very fair—I see the foreman of the jury shudder—keep him to it—
I love theory, but I love practice better—
Zounds! what a plunge!
—Bear with me, I beseech you. I had come to a conclusion years and years ago, before I went away into the far parts of the earth, Judges and Elders, that where human life is thought much of, there liberty is; and that just in proportion to the value of human life are the number and variety, the greatness and the strength of the safe-guards forms and ceremonies, which go to make it secure, if not altogether inaccessible.
Very fair—stick to the foreman—keep your eye on his face—don’t take it off, and you’ll be sure of the jury.
I can hardly see his face now—
So much the better—we’ll have candles for them yet; and if we do, my boy, the game is our own ... fire away; my authorities are almost ready now—fire away.
—I journeyed the world over, but I found little to prove that human life was of much value anywhere—anywhere I should say, except among the barbarians and the savages. My heart was troubled with fear. I knew not whither to go, nor where to look. Should I pursue my way further into the cities of Europe, or go back into the wilderness of America?—At last I heard of a nation—bear with me judges—where all men were supposed by the law to be innocent, until they wereprovedto be guilty, where the very judges were said to be of counsel for the accused, where the verdict of at least twelve, and in some cases of twenty-four men—their unanimous verdict too, was required for the condemnation of such accused; where if a man were charged with a crime, he was not even permitted to accuse himself or to acknowledge the truth, till he had been put upon his guard by the judges—who wouldeven allow him, nay press him to withdraw an avowal, though it were made by him with serious deliberation; where the laws were so tender of human life to say all in a word, and so remarkable for humanity as to be a perpetual theme for declamation. I heard all this.... I had much reason to believe it ... for everybody that I knew believed it.... I grew instantly weary of home....
Lights there! lights....
—I could not sleep for the desire I had to see that country.
You’d better stop awhile, Mr. Burroughs, whispered the lawyer.
—And I lost no time in going to it.
Pull up where you are ... but keep your face toward the jury.