Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/158

 And is not one entitled to say that a dog is a good dog, a cat a good cat, a rabbit a good rabbit, just as faithfully as it follows the instincts under its fur, whatever they happen to be? I have taken this excursus, Mrs. Brown, and have ventured to theorize a little, quite unprofitably, I grant, and at the risk of causing you some ill-founded alarm, because to-morrow I have to exercise all the talents with which the good God has endowed me in the cause of an extremely wicked woman who has committed a murder. Her crime is of a vulgar and calculating kind, perpetrated in cold blood; there is not a rag of evidence to save her from the gallows; but Providence has called upon me to attempt to save her from the fate she so richly merits. And there is an instinct within me, her advocate, for which I am at a loss to account by the rules of reason and logic, which calls on its possessor to save this abandoned creature at all hazard. If I obey that instinct I shall be a good advocate and a bad citizen; if I disobey it I shall be a good citizen but a bad advocate. Yet if I obey it I shall have fulfilled to the best of my ability the legal contract into which I have entered, and in so doing I shall be called on to commit a serious misdemeanor against human nature. On the other hand, if I disobey it I shall be causing human nature to be vindicated in a becoming manner, yet shall be guilty of an equally serious misdemeanor against myself; and further, I shall be false to the interests of my unfortunate client whose money I have taken, and render myself indictable for the offence of entering into a contract which I have wilfully refrained from carrying