plenty of time to spare, for some preliminaries of
trial have yet to be arranged, and the judge has just stepped out to get
a sandwich, and every body stands at ease; moreover, gentle reader, the
paragraphs following are well worthy of your attention. Let us name
them,

"MORBID SYMPATHIES.

"We have often thought that the tenderness shown by our law to presumed
criminals is as injurious as it is inconsistent and excessive. A
miserable beggar, a petty rioter, the wretch who steals a loaf to
satisfy the gnawings of his hunger, is roughly seized, closely examined,
and severely punished; meanwhile, the plain common sense of our mobs, if
not of our magistracy, has pitied the offender, and perhaps acquitted
him. But let some apparent murderer be caught, almost in the flagrant
deed of his atrocity; let him, to the best of all human belief, have
killed, disembowelled, and dismembered; let him have united the coolness
of consummate craft to the boldest daring of iniquity, and straightway
(though the generous crowd may hoot and hunt the wretch with yelling
execration) he finds in law and lawyers, refuge, defenders, and
apologists. Tenderly and considerately is he cautioned on no account to
criminate himself: he is exhorted, even by judges, to withdraw the
honest and truthful plea of 'guilty,' now the only amends which such a
one can make to the outraged laws of God and man: he is defended, even
to the desperate length of malignant accusation of the innocent, by
learned men, whose aim it is to pervert justice and screen the guilty!
he is lodged and tended with more circumstances of outward comfort and
consideration than he probably has ever experienced in all his life
before; and if, notwithstanding the ingenuity of his advocates, and the
merciful glosses of his judge, a simple-minded British jury capitally
convict him, and he is handed over to the executioner, he still finds
pious gentlemen ready to weep over him in his cell, and titled dames to
send him white camellias, to wear upon his heart when he is hanging.[A]

"Now what is the necessary consequence of this, but a mighty, a
fearfully influential premium on crime? And what is its radical cause,
but the absurd indulgence wherewith our law greets the favoured,
_because_ the atrocious criminal? Upon what principle of propriety, or
of natural justice, should a seeming murderer not be--we will not say
sternly, but even kindly--catechised, and for his very soul's sake
counse