but, as a member in full
standing of the worshipful P. B., I have the right to be slightly
arrogant; for I am well aware that this is a tribunal the circumference
of whose jurisdiction is infinite, or rather is a circle whose centre is
a little village on the Hudson river, where I reside.

No false modesty shall restrain me, therefore, from discussing this case
upon its merits. Before entering upon it, however, I desire to call your
attention to a few preliminary points.

In the first place, I ask you--who are all familiar with the record--if
an undue sympathy for the defendant, Antonio, was not felt on the trial?
The favor and good wishes of the court, the spectators, and of the
reporter, were evidently enlisted for him as against his opponent. This
Antonio, perhaps, was a very worthy fellow in his way; and in a criminal
action--as on an indictment for murdering a family or two, or
slaughtering a policeman--might have been, able to prove previous good
character. But such a plea, in a civil action for _debt_, is entitled to
no weight, while the fact that he was a good fellow in a series of
scrapes, not the least of which was matrimony, does not entitle him to
our sympathy. The prejudices of the court ought to have been against
instead of for him. He had failed in business, could not pay his
outstanding liabilities, and thus stood before the commercial world in
the position of bankruptcy. The fact that he had made a foolish
contract, which imperilled his life, does not improve his moral
condition, or entitle him to any just sympathy, unless it could be shown
that there was insanity in his family. No such plea was entered. His
counsel did not attempt to prove that his great-grandfather owned a mad
dog; a plea from which the court, fortified by many modern criminal
decisions, might have inferred his moral insanity. No such attempt to
relieve Antonio from the consequences of his criminal folly was made,
and I can see nothing in the case to entitle him to the sympathy which
was and had been always entertained for him.

Again: The lengthy and much-admired plea of the defendant's counsel on
the subject of mercy was clearly out of place, especially if, as I have
endeavored to show, the defendant was not entitled to any particular
clemency or sympathy. The remarks of Portia, commencing,

'The quality of Mercy is not strained,'

(and, by the way, who but a woman would talk of straining an emotion as
one strains milk?) are