I suppose that very few persons have ever formed a rightful estimate
of the extent to which the skill and cleverness of an able lawyer
have enabled him to wound their feelings and insult their self-love. I
conclude this to be the case, not alone from my own brief and unhappy
experience, but from reading a vast number of trials and always
experiencing a sense of astonishment at the powerful perversity of these
men. The cruel insinuation, the imputed meanness, the perversion of
meaning, the insinuations of unworthy motive, are all acquired and
cultivated, like the feints and parries of an accomplished fencer. The
depreciation of a certain testimony, and the exaggerated estimate of
some other; the sneering acknowledgment of this, or the triumphant
assertion of that; the dark menace of a hidden meaning here, and the
subtle insinuation that there was more than met the eye there,--are all
studied and practised efforts, as artificial as the stage-trick of the
actor. And yet how little does all our conviction of this artifice avail
against their influence!

Bad as these are, they are as nothing to the resources in store when the
object is to assail the reputation and blacken the character; to hold
up some poor fellow-man--frail and erring as he may be--to everlasting
shame, and mark him with ignominy forever. Alas for the best and purest!
what an alloy of meanness and littleness, what vanity and self-seeking
mingle with their very noblest and highest efforts. What need, then, to
overwhelm the guilty with more than his guilt, and quote the "Heart"
in the indictment as well as the Crime? No, no; if the best be not all
good, believe me the worst are not all and hopelessly depraved. I have
a right to speak of these things, as one who has felt them. For eight
hours and more I listened to such a character of myself as made me sick,
to very loathing, at my own identity; I heard a man in a great assembly
denounce me as one of the most corrupt and infamous of mankind! I felt
the eyes that were turned towards me, I almost thought I overheard the
muttered reprobation that surrounded me. A number of the incidents of
my changeful life--how learned I know not--were related with every
exaggeration and every perversion that malice could invest them with.
For a while, a sense of guiltlessness supported me; I knew many of the
accusations to be false, others grossly overstated. The scenes in
which I was often depicted as an actor had either no e