Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 1.djvu/203

Rh Dr. Thorne, who was also one of the magistrates. I don't suppose one of them then thought so."

"Then their action, to say the least of it, was very strange."

"It was all because you had nobody to manage it for you. I thoroughly believe that if you had placed the matter in the hands of a good lawyer, you would never have heard a word more about it. That seems to be the opinion of everybody I speak to on the subject."

"Then in this country a man is to be punished or not, according to his ability to fee a lawyer!"

"I am not talking about punishment."

"And presuming an innocent man to have the ability and not the will to do so, he is to be punished, to be ruined root and branch, self and family, character and pocket, simply because, knowing his own innocence, he does not choose to depend on the mercenary skill of a man whose trade he abhors for the establishment of that which should be clear as the sun at noon-day! You say I am innocent, and yet you tell me I am to be condemned as a guilty man, have my gown taken from me, be torn from my wife and children, be disgraced before the eyes of all men, and be made a byword and a thing horrible to be mentioned, because I will not fee an attorney to fee another man to come and lie on my behalf, to browbeat witnesses, to make false appeals, and perhaps shed false tears in defending me. You have come to me asking me to do this, if I understand you, telling me that the archdeacon would so advise me."

"That is my object." Mr. Crawley, as he had spoken, had in his vehemence risen from his seat, and Mr. Robarts was also standing.

"Then tell the archdeacon," said Mr. Crawley, "that I will have none of his advice. I will have no one there paid by me to obstruct the course of justice or to hoodwink a jury. I have been in courts of law, and know what is the work for which these gentlemen are hired. I will have none of it, and I will thank you to tell the archdeacon so, with my respectful acknowledgments of his consideration and condescension. I say nothing as to my own innocence, or my own guilt. But I do say that if I am dragged before that tribunal, an innocent man, and am falsely declared to be guilty, because I lack money to bribe a lawyer to speak for me, then the laws of this country deserve but little of that reverence which we are accustomed to pay to them. And if I be guilty"

"Nobody supposes you to be guilty."

"And if I be guilty," continued Mr. Crawley, altogether ignoring the interruption, except by the repetition of his words, and a slight