th which he is charged? That is the question in the mind of
the court. What sort of man is he? That is the question in my own mind.
And the answer to the other question has no bearing whatsoever on the
answer to this one. The English law assumes the prisoner innocent until
he shall have been proved guilty. And, seeing him there a prisoner, a
man who happens to have been caught, while others (myself included) are
pleasantly at large after doing, unbeknown, innumerable deeds worse in
the eyes of heaven than the deed with which this man is charged--deeds
that do not prevent us from regarding our characters as quite fine
really--I cannot but follow in my heart the example of the English law
and assume (pending proof, which cannot be forthcoming) that the
prisoner in the dock has a character at any rate as fine as my own. The
war that this assumption wages in my breast against the fact that the
man will perhaps be sentenced is too violent a war not to discommode
me. Let justice be done. Or rather, let our rough-and-ready, well-meant
endeavours towards justice go on being made. But I won't be there to
see, thank you very much.

It is the natural wish of every writer to be liked by his readers. But
how exasperating, how detestable, the writer who obviously touts for
our affection, arranging himself for us in a mellow light, and inviting
us, with gentle persistence, to note how lovable he is! Many essayists
have made themselves quite impossible through their determination to
remind us of Charles Lamb--'St. Charles,' as they invariably call him.
And the foregoing paragraph, though not at all would-be-Lamb-like in
expression, looks to me horribly like a blatant bid for your love. I
hasten to add, therefore, that no absolutely kind-hearted person could
bear, as I rejoice, to go and hear cases even in the civil courts. If
it be true that the instinct of cruelty is at the root of our pleasure
in theatrical drama, how much more is there of savagery in our going to
look on at the throes of actual litigation--real men and women
struggling not in make-believe, but in dreadful earnest! I mention this
aspect merely as a corrective to what I had written. I do not pretend
that I am ever conscious, as I enter a court, that I am come to gratify
an evil instinct. I am but conscious of being glad to be there, on
tiptoe of anticipation, whether it be to hear tried some particular
case of whose matter I know already something, or to hear at hazard