University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

What should I 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 pursued
for the king, is treated as if she were pursued by the

king—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 his

elbow)—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 the

court, 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 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 countenance

and 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 eatch 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? You are 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 of justice, 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 their

very 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 wlth 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 obsolute 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?

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 were
proved to be guilty, where the very judges were said to
demnation 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 where
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 would

even 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.