offices, and wrote two or three
heart-rending leading articles on the subject of the proceedings in
court. The next morning the public caught light like tinder; and the
prisoner was tried over again, before an amateur court of justice,
in the columns of the newspapers. All the people who had no personal
experience whatever on the subject seized their pens, and rushed
(by kind permission of the editor) into print. Doctors who had _not_
attended the sick man, and who had _not_ been present at the examination
of the body, declared by dozens that he had died a natural death.
Barristers without business, who had _not_ heard the evidence, attacked
the jury who had heard it, and judged the judge, who had sat on the
bench before some of them were born. The general public followed the
lead of the barristers and the doctors, and the young buccaneers who had
set the thing going. Here was the law that they all paid to protect them
actually doing its duty in dreadful earnest! Shocking! shocking! The
British Public rose to protest as one man against the working of its own
machinery; and the Home Secretary, in a state of distraction, went to
the judge. The judge held firm. He had said it was the right verdict at
the time, and he said so still. 'But suppose,' says the Home Secretary,
'that the prosecution had tried some other way of proving her guilty at
the trial than the way they did try, what would you and the jury have
done then?' Of course it was quite impossible for the judge to say.
This comforted the Home Secretary, to begin with. And, when he got the
judge's consent, after that, to having the conflict of medical evidence
submitted to one great doctor; and when the one great doctor took the
merciful view, after expressly stating, in the first instance, that he
knew nothing practically of the merits of the case, the Home Secretary
was perfectly satisfied. The prisoner's death-warrant went into the
waste-paper basket; the verdict of the law was reversed by general
acclamation; and the verdict of the newspapers carried the day. But
the best of it is to come. You know what happened when the people found
themselves with the pet object of their sympathy suddenly cast loose on
their hands? A general impression prevailed directly that she was not
quite innocent enough, after all, to be let out of prison then
and there! Punish her a little--that was the state of the popular
feeling--punish her a little, Mr. Home Secretary, on general mora