they feel the moral instinct of human nature, and look not merely
to the letter of a particular enactment, but also to the spirit and
general purpose of law itself, which is justice between man and man.
The wicked Judge, looking only to the power which raised him to his
place, and may lift him higher still,--not to that other Hand which is
over all,--or consulting his own meanness of nature, selects the
wicked laws, and makes a wicked application thereof. Thus in America,
under plea of serving the people, he can work most hideous wrong.

Besides, the Judges are lawyers, with the technical training of
lawyers, with the disposition of character which comes from their
special training and profession, and which marks the manners, the
language and looks of a lawyer. They have the excellence of the
lawyer, and also his defects. Commonly they are learned in their
profession, acute and sharp, circumspect, cautious, skilful in making
nice technical distinctions, and strongly disposed to adhere to
historical precedents on the side of arbitrary power, rather than to
obey the instinctive promptings of the moral sense in their own
consciousness. Nay, it seems sometimes as if the moral sense became
extinct, and the legal letter took the place of the spirit of Justice
which gives life to the People. So they look to the special statute,
its technical expositions and applications, but not to Justice, the
ultimate Purpose of human law; they preserve the means and miss the
end, put up the bars in the nicest fashion, and let the cattle perish
in their pen. Like the nurse in the fable, they pour out the baby, and
carefully cherish the wooden bath-tub! The Letter of the statute is
the Idol of the Judicial Den, whereunto the worshipper offers
sacrifices of human blood. The late Chief Justice Parker, one of the
most humane and estimable men, told the Jury they _had nothing to do
with the harshness of the statute_! but must execute a law, however
cruel and unjust, because somebody had made it a law! How often Juries
refuse to obey the statute and by its means to do a manifest
injustice; but how rarely does a Judge turn off from the wickedness of
the statute to do Justice, the great Purpose of human law and human
life! Gentlemen, I once knew a democratic judge--a man with a noble
mind, and a woman's nicer sense of right--who told the Jury, "Such is
the law, such the decisions; such would be its application to this
particular case. But it is unju