red and second folio of Logerhedius, tome six
hundred, page 9768.

"There is another case bearing strongly upon the present one, in
'Snifter and Snivell's Reports,' vol. 86, page 1480, in which an
old woman, who was too poor to purchase a Bible, stole one, and was
prosecuted for the theft. The counsel for the prosecution and the
defence were both equally eminent and able. Counsellor Sleek was for the
prosecution and Rant for the defence. Sleek, who was himself a religious
barrister, insisted that the _locus delicti_ aggravated the offence,
inasmuch as she had stolen the Bible out of a church; but Rant
maintained that the _locus delicti_ was a _prima facie_ evidence of her
innocence, inasmuch as she only complied with a precept of religion,
which enjoins all sinners to seek such assistance toward their spiritual
welfare as the church can afford them.

"Sleek argued that the principle of theft must have been innate and
strong, when the respect due to that sacred edifice was insufficient to
restrain her from such an act--an act which constituted sacrilege of a
very aggravated kind.

"Rant replied, that the motive and not the act constituted the crime.
There was _prima facie_ proof that she stole it for pious purposes--to
wit, that she might learn therefrom a correct principle for the conduct
of her life. It was not proved that the woman had sold the book, or
pledged it, or in any-other way disposed of it for her corporal or
temporal benefit; the inference, therefore, was, that the motive, in
the first place, justified the act, which was _in se_ a pious one; and,
besides, had the woman been a thief, she would have stolen the plate and
linen belonging to the altar; but she did not, therefore there existed
on her part no consciousness nor intention of wrong.

"Sleek rejoined, that if the woman had felt any necessity for religious
advice and instruction, she would have gone to the minister, whose duty
it was to give it.

"Rant replied, that upon Sleek's own principles, if the minister
had properly discharged his duty, the woman would have been under no
necessity for taking the Bible at all; and that, consequently, in a
strict spirit of justice, the theft, if theft it could be called, was
not the theft of the old woman, but that of the minister himself, who
had failed to give her proper instructions. It was the duty of the
minister to have gone to the old woman, and not that of the old woman
to have gone to the minister;