when Mr.
Dunbar rose and took a position close to the jury-box. The gray pallor
of his sternly set face increased his resemblance to a statue of the
Julian type, and he looked rigid as granite, as he turned his brilliant
eyes full of blue fire upon the grave, upturned countenances of the
twelve umpires:

"Gentlemen of the Jury: The sanctity of human life is the foundation on
which society rests, and its preservation is the supreme aim of all
human legislation. Rights of property, of liberty, are merely
conditional, subordinated to the superlative divine right of life.
Labor creates property, law secures liberty, but God alone gives life;
and woe to that tribunal, to those consecrated priests of divine
justice, who, sworn to lay aside passion and prejudice, and to array
themselves in the immaculate robes of a juror's impartiality, yet
profane the loftiest prerogative with which civilized society can
invest mankind, and sacrilegiously extinguish, in the name of justice,
that sacred spark which only Jehovah's fiat kindles. To the same astute
and unchanging race, whose relentless code of jurisprudence demanded
'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life,' we owe the
instructive picture of cautious inquiry, of tender solicitude for the
inviolability of human life, that glows in immortal lustre on the pages
of the 'Mechilti' of the Talmud. In the trial of a Hebrew criminal,
there were 'Lactees,' consisting of two men, one of whom stood at the
door of the court, with a red flag in his hand, and the other sat on a
white horse at some distance on the road that led to execution. Each of
these men cried aloud continually, the name of the suspected criminal,
of the witnesses, and his crime; and vehemently called upon any person
who knew anything in his favor to come forward and testify. Have we,
supercilious braggarts of this age of progress, attained the prudential
wisdom of Sanhedrim?

"The State pays an officer to sift, probe, collect and array the
evidences of crime, with which the criminal is stoned to death; does it
likewise commission and compensate an equally painstaking, lynx-eyed
official whose sole duty is to hunt and proclaim proofs of the
innocence of the accused? The great body of the commonwealth is
committed in revengeful zeal to prosecution; upon whom devolves the
doubly sacred and imperative duty of defence? Are you not here to give
judgment in a cause based on an indictment by a secret tribunal,