darling object, without whose participation, bliss would be joyless, and in whose sympathies sorrow has found a charm; whose smile has cheered his toil, whose love has pillowed his misfortunes, whose angel-spirit, guiding him through danger, and darkness, and despair, amid the world's frown and the friend's perfidy, was more than friend, and world, and all to him! God forbid, that by a villain's wile, or a villain's wickedness, he should be taught how to appreciate the wo of others in the dismal solitude of his own. Oh, no! I feel that I address myself to human beings, who, knowing the value of what the world is worth, are capable of appreciating all that makes it dear to us. Observe, however,-lest this crime should want aggravationobserve, I beseech you, the period of its accomplishment. My client was not so young as that the elasticity of his spirit could rebound and bear him above the pressure of the misfortune; nor was he withered by age into a comparative insensibility ; but just at that temperate interval of manhood, when passion had ceased to play, and reason begins to operate; when love, gratified, left him nothing to desire; and fidelity, long tried, left him nothing to apprehend: he was just, too, at that period of his professional career, when, his patient industry having conquered the ascent, he was able to look around him from the height on which he rested. For this, welcome had been the day of tumult, and the pale midnight lamp succeeding; welcome had been the drudgery of form; welcome the analysis of crime; welcome the sneer of envy, and the scorn of dulness, and all the spurns which "patient merit of the unworthy takes." For this he had encountered, perhaps, the generous rivalry of genius, perhaps the biting blasts of poverty, perhaps the efforts of that deadly slander, which, coiling round the cradle of his young ambition, might have sought to crush him in its envenomed foldings. "Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? Can such an injury as this admit of justification? I think the learned counsel will concede it cannot. But it may be palliated. Let us see how.-Perhaps the defendant was young and thoughtless; perhaps unmerited prosperity raised him above the pressure of misfortune, and the wild impulses of impetuous passion impel led him to a purpose at which his experience would have shuddered. Quite the contrary. The noon of manhood has almost passed over him: and a youth, spent in the recesses of a debtor's prison, made him familiar with every form of human misery: he saw what misfortune was ;-it did not teach him pity: he saw the effects of guilt;-he spurned the admonition.-Perhaps in the solitude of a single life, he had never known the social blessedness of marriage; he has a wife and children; or, if she be not his wife, she is the victim of his crime, and adds another to the calender of his seduction. Certain it is, he has little children, who think themselves legitimate; will his advocates defend him, by proclaiming their bastardy? Certain it is, there is a wretched female, his own cousin too, who thinks herself his wife; will they protect him, by proclaiming he has only deceived her into being his prostitute?-Perhaps his crime, as in the celebrated case of Howard, immortalized by Lord Erskine, may have found its origin in parental cruelty; it might perhaps have been that in their spring of life, when fancy waved her fairy wand around them, till all above was sun-shine, and all beneath was flowers; when to their clear and charmed vision this ample world was but a weedless garden, where every tint spoke Nature's loveliness, and every sound breathed Heaven's melody, and every breeze was but em bodied fragrance; it might have been that, in this cloudless holiday, Love wove his roseate bondage round them, till their young hearts so grew together, a separate existence ceased, and life itself became a sweet identity; it might have been that, envious of this paradise, some worse than demon tore them from each other to pine for years in absence, and at length to perish in a palliated impiety. Oh! Gentlemen, in such a case, Justice herself, with her uplifted sword, would call on Mercy to preserve the victim. There was no such palliation:-the period of their acquaintance was little more than sufficient for the maturity of their crime; and they dare not libel Love by shielding under its soft and sacred name the loathsome revels of an adulterous depravity.—It might have been, the husband's cruelty left a too easy inroad for seduction. Will they dare assert it? Ah! too well they know he would not let " the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly." Monstrous as it is, I have heard, indeed, that they mean to rest upon an opposite palliation: I have heard it rumoured, that they mean to rest the wife's infidelity upon the husband's fondness. I know that guilt, in its conception mean, and in its commission tremulous, is, in its exposure, desperate and audacious. I know that, in the fugitive panic of its retreat it will stop to fling its Parthian poisons upon the justice that pursues it. But I do hope, bad and abandoned, and hopeless as their cause is, I do hope, for the name of human nature, that I have been deceived in the rumours of this unnatural defence. Merciful God! is it in the presence of this venerable Court, is it in the hearing of this virtuous jury, is it in the zenith of an enlightened age, that I am to be told, because female tenderness was not watched with worse than Spanish vigilance, and harassed with worse than eastern severity; because the marriage-contract is not converted into the curse of incarceration; because woman is allowed the dignity of a human soul, and man does not degrade himself into a human monster; because the vow of endearment is not made the vehicle of deception, and the altar's pledge is not become the passport of a barbarous perjury; and that too in a land of courage and chivalry, where the female form has been held as a patent direct from the Divinity, bearing in its chaste and charmed helplessness the assurance of its strength, and the amulet of its protection: am I to be told, that the demon adulterer is therefore not only to perpetrate his crimes, but to vindicate himself through the very virtues he has violated? I cannot believe it; I dismiss the supposition; it is most "monstrous, foul, and unnatural." Suppose that the plaintiff pursued a different principle; suppose, that his conduct had been the reverse of what it was; suppose, that in place of being kind, he had been cruel to this deluded female; that he had been her tyrant, not her protector; her jailor, not her husband; what then might have been the defence of the adulterer? Might he not then say, and say with speciousness. "True, I seduced her into crime, but it was to save her from cruelty; true, she is my adulteress, because he was her despot." Happily, Gentlemen, he can say no such thing. I have heard it said, too, during the ten months of calumny, for which, by every species of legal delay, they have procrastinated this trial, that next to the impeachment of the husband's tenderness, they mean to rely on what they libel as the levity of their unhappy victim! I know not by what right any man, but above all, a married man, presumes to scrutinize into the conduct of a married female. I know not, Gentlemen, how you would feel, under the consciousness that every coxcomb was at liberty to estimate the warmth, or the coolness of your wives, by the barometer of his vanity, that he might ascertain precisely the prudence of his invasion on their virtue. But I do know, that such a defence, coming from such a quarter, would not at all surprise me. Poor-unfortunate-fallen female! How can she expect mercy from her destroyer? How can she expect that he will revere the characters he was careless of preserving? How can she suppose that, after having made her peace the pander to his appetite, he will not make her reputation the victim of his avarice? Such a defence is quite to be expected: knowing him, it will not surprise me; if I know you, it will not avail him. Having now shown you, that a crime almost unprecedented in this country, is clothed in every aggravation, and robbed of every palliative, it is natural you should inquire, what was the motive for its commission? What do you think it was? Providentially-miraculously, I should have said, for you never could have divined-the Defendant has himself disclosed it. What do you think it was, Gentlemen? Ambition! But a few days before this criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked him for the almost princely expenditure of his habits-" Oh," says he, "never mind; Sterne must do something by which Sterne may be known!" I had heard, indeed, that ambition was a vice, but then a vice so equivocal, it verged on virtue; that it was the aspiration of a spirit, sometimes perhaps appalling, always magnificent; that though its grasp might be fate, and its flight might be famine, still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, and played in heaven's lightnings; that though it might fall in ruins, it arose in fire, and was withal so splendid, that even the horrors of that fall became immerged and mitigated in the beauties of that aberration! But here is an ambition!-base and barbarous and illegitimate, with all the grossness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the virtue; a mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, in the silence of sleep and the shades of midnight, steals his Ephesian torch into the fane, which it was virtue to adore, and worse than sacrilege to have violated! Gentlemen, my part is done; yours is about to commence. You have heard this crime-its origin, its progress, its aggravations, its novelty amongst us. Go and tell your children and your country, whether or not it is to be made a precedent. Oh! how awful is your responsibility! I do not doubt that you will discharge yourselves of it as becomes your characters. I am sure, indeed, that you will mourn with me over the almost solitary defect in our otherwise matchless system of jurisprudence, which leaves the perpetrators of such an injury as this, subject to no amercement but that of money. I think you will lament the failure of the great Cicero of our age, to bring such an offence within the cognizance of a criminal jurisdiction; it was a subject suited to his legislative mind, worthy of his feeling heart, worthy of his immortal eloquence. I cannot, my Lord, even remotely allude to Lord Erskine, without gratifying myself by saying of him, that, by the rare union of all that was learned in law with all that was lucid in eloquence, by the singular combination of all that was pure in morals with all that was profound in wisdom; he has stamped upon every action of his life the blended authority of a great mind and an unquestionable conviction. I think, Gentlemen, you will regret the failure of such a man in such an object. The merciless murderer may have manliness to plead; the highway robber may have want to palliate; yet they both are objects of criminal infliction but the murderer of connubial bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy ;-the robber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in this case, may be his instrument; he is suffered to calculate on the infernal fame which a superfluous and unfelt expenditure may purchase. The law, however, is so, and we must only adopt the remedy it affords us. In your adjudication of that remedy, I do not ask too much, when I ask the full extent of your capability; how poor, even so, is the wretched remuneration for an injury which nothing can repair,—for a loss which nothing can alleviate? Do you think that a mine could recompense my client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than life to him? "Oh, had she been but true, Though heaven had made him such another world, Of one entire and perfect chrysolite He'd not exchange her for it!" I put it to any of you, what would you take to stand in his situation? What would you take to have your prospects blasted, your profession despoiled, your peace ruined, your bed profaned, your parents heart-broken, your children parentless? Believe, Gentlemen, if it were not for those children, he would not come here to day to seek such remuneration; if it were not that, by your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent defrauded wretches L |