e into
account. I have to consider on the one hand the grave nature of your
offence, the deliberate way in which you subsequently altered the
counterfoil, the danger you caused to an innocent man--and that, to
my mind, is a very grave point--and finally I have to consider the
necessity of deterring others from following your example. On the
other hand, I have to bear in mind that you are young, that you have
hitherto borne a good character, that you were, if I am to believe
your evidence and that of your witnesses, in a state of some
emotional excitement when you committed this crime. I have every
wish, consistently with my duty--not only to you, but to the
community--to treat you with leniency. And this brings me to what
are the determining factors in my mind in my consideration of your
case. You are a clerk in a lawyer's office--that is a very serious
element in this case; there can be no possible excuse made for you on
the ground that you were not fully conversant with the nature of the
crime you were committing, and the penalties that attach to it. It
is said, however, that you were carried away by your emotions. The
story has been told here to-day of your relations with this--er--Mrs.
Honeywill; on that story both the defence and the plea for mercy were
in effect based. Now what is that story? It is that you, a young
man, and she, a young woman, unhappily married, had formed an
attachment, which you both say--with what truth I am unable to gauge
--had not yet resulted in immoral relations, but which you both admit
was about to result in such relationship. Your counsel has made an
attempt to palliate this, on the ground that the woman is in what he
describes, I think, as "a hopeless position." As to that I can
express no opinion. She is a married woman, and the fact is patent
that you committed this crime with the view of furthering an immoral
design. Now, however I might wish, I am not able to justify to my
conscience a plea for mercy which has a basis inimical to morality.
It is vitiated 'ab initio', and would, if successful, free you for
the completion of this immoral project. Your counsel has made an
attempt to trace your offence back to what he seems to suggest is a
defect in the marriage law; he has made an attempt also to show that
to punish you with further imprisonment would be unjust. I do not
follow him in these flights. The Law is what it is--a majestic
edifice, sheltering all of us, each