Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/131

 he has marshalled before you. You have noted the inferences which he has not been afraid to draw. You have been thrilled by the union of a consummate skill with a consummate learning. All that is base, sordid, and unworthy in the human heart has been stripped naked before your eyes. The smallest acts of this unfortunate woman have been shown to you as vile; even the aspirations which are allowed to ennoble her sex have been rendered abominable. Every kind of mental and moral degradation has been made to defile before you; for verily there is no limit to the talent of this accomplished gentleman.

"That such a talent should have taken service with an outworn formula is a great public danger. For just as our common humanity is able to assure us that the acts of the most wicked are not always wrong, so those of the finest integrity would not bear dissection at the hands of a cold and scientific cynicism. Our every act has two faces. One is presented to belief, the other to unbelief; one is presented to truth, the other to error. And as this penal code of ours, which we traverse constantly with searchings of heart, is itself a survival of a time of gross darkness, called into being by unbelief and fostered by error, the acts of the best and worthiest among us are liable to be visited by the sword of the avenger, in other words by justice. I am convinced that if any one of you gentlemen, or any private citizen, was called upon to rebut the most awful charge that can be levelled against him, innocent as you might be, innocent as he might be, it would be found immensely difficult, I will not say impossible, to combat the deadly