|
206 TRIAL OP JOHN W. WEBSTER.
like physical, causes will always produce their natural effects.
The parties did meet under these most untoward circumstances -
in this state of unhappy excitement and we are now, in pursuing this
part of the argument, to suppose that the interview was closed by the
death of one of them. But if it be assumed that this were indeed its
termination, it will not be pretended that we have any direct evidence
of what transpired between them, or of the means by which that end
was- produced. Those means therefore can be discovered only by
the exercise of reason upon the facts which surrounded their meeting.
The creditor was certainly there, pressing on with a firm, if not a rigor-
ous hand: the debtor, if he could not object to the legal validity of
the claim, might yet have been inflamed by passion to resistance. Even
justice may sometimes be too strict and exacting in its requisitions.
The claim of right may seem, at least to him against whom it is pre-
ferred, to be urged too far, and to justify retaliation against what is
deemed the wrong of an aggressor. Words will engender blows; and
violence may be followed by the most fatal consequences.
Since we can reason here only from probabilities, it cannot be unin-
structive to inquire, which proposition is most likely to be true,-that
there should, under such circumstances, have been sudden altercation,
bringing the parties to mutual combat, and carrying them from combat
to death or that Professor Webster should previously have entered
into a cold, slow, and fearful calculation, for a sin like this,-have pre-
pared the way,-have seduced his victim into the snare, there alone in
cold blood and with deliberate hand, to slay him? It is impossible to
doubt what answer should be returned to such interrogatories as these.
No; the last proposition cannot be true. The annals of crime tell no
such revolting story as that. Men of such character, and in such a
position as his, do not, at a single effort, leap away from all the influ-
ences of education social life, and religious instruction, and commit
at once the highest and worst crime which can be perpetrated against,
their fellow-beings. And yet you are asked to make this your final
decision. You are asked,-though the scenes of that fatal hour, if fatal
it were, were unseen, and its secrets are now all untold,-to believe,
against these amazing probabilities, that such men, meeting, hot and
excited by all their former altercations, engendered by long-continued
irritations, did not, in the heat of blood, rush into mutual combat; but,
that the homicide was the result of deliberate preparation,-was, in its
strongest sense, with malice aforethought. There is no other alter-
native. You must judge between deliberate design and sudden exasper-
ation; and I leave to your solemn consideration which of them shall
be adopted.
You are not to go forward beyond this period of time to determine
the character and quality of the act of crime from subsequent events;
you must stop and decide upon it there. Nothing which transpired
afterwards, could change its quality, since it was then already complete.
It was, then the result of cold, calculating premeditation, or of sudden
violence and anger, when there was a fearful heat of blood between
these exasperated parties; and it is your peculiar province to deter-
mine from a full consideration of all the surrounding circumstances,
to which of these causes the homicide is to be assigned.
But I repeat, that you must not look beyond the period of time when
the act itself was complete, in order to ascertain and determine its
character. It is easy to show you that this proposition is correct. The
crime consists in the homicide, and is consummated when life is taken.
You can find in no subsequent events or proceeding, a cause of the act
or an element of the crime; for they are only its painful and distressing
consequences. Should your first impression be otherwise,-should it
incline you to take up, in this connection, the facts concerning the dispo-
sition of the body, when life was extinct,-the progress of the mutila-
tion,-the attempted destruction,-or the rude disrespect shown to the
mangled remains,-I pray you. for one moment, pause and consider.
|
