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TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER. 269
the way of virtue. If the influences which come from within are want-
ing, no matter what his degree of intellectual culture, no matter what
the graces and accomplishments of which he is master, no matter what
may be his reputation among those who can see only the outside of the
man,-when the great trial of temptation comes,-(the temptation it
may be to keep from exposure and ruin that very reputation, a fair though
a false one,)-he knows not-no one can know-what "he may be left
to do."
The work of spiritual dilapidation may have been going on within
him, unobserved by the world's eye; and the first indication that the
fair outside fabric of his character is not free from crack or blemish, is
in its sudden, utter, and irretrievable fall! There never was a maxim so
much perverted in its application, as that which has teen cited and dwelt
upon by the counsel, both in the opening and the closing of this case, that
"no man becomes suddenly vile." This may be true; but it does not
follow that the first overt act of guilt is the first step from virtue. It
is the first, perhaps, that the world sees; and yet the world's judgment
may have long been an erroneous one.
Between such a man as I have described, and the poor outcast, with
whose face the prisoner's dock is associated, there are two modes in which
the world arrives at its decision and pronounces its judgment. We tried,
the other day, in a neighboring county, a man born and bred among us,
under the influence of our Christian institutions, for the murder of his
wife and two sleeping children. For one, in his condition, insanity was
the ready and obvious defence; while, if he had been an educated, gently-
nurtured, simulating sinner, the cant of the day would as obviously have
suggested the other answer, that the moral evidence outweighs the cir-
cumstantial proof: "Such a crime could not have been committed by
such a man."
No, Gentlemen! wherever, and in whatever outward circumstances,
you find the heart of man, with all its deceitful passions, and, in the
strong language of Holy Writ, "its desperate wickedness," there you will
find the liableness to and the potentiality of crime; and it is fortunate
for
society, that it is upon no fine theories, which it may be pleasant but
fatal to us to cherish, but upon the legal evidence presented to them,
that the duties of jurors are to be discharged.
You are to try this prisoner upon this evidence; and from it, you are
to say, as reasonable men, whether this charge against him has not
been made out by the Government.
Before considering that evidence, it may be proper for me, as a set-
off to some of the cases cited by my friend in his opening of the defence,
to present a few historical cases of an opposite character. I have before
me a list, from which I will select two or three whose study leads to the
precise result to which my recent remarks have tended, and which fur-
nish an answer to those cases and those considerations pressed upon you
by the counsel on the other side.
It is now just about one hundred years since, in our mother-country,
an accomplished scholar, a lecturer, and a teacher, was arraigned before
the highest judicial tribunal of that realm, to answer to the charge of
having murdered a man twelve years before, for money. And the evi-
dence of that man's death. was the discovery of his bones in a cave
where his body had been deposited by the murderer. During an interval
of twelve years, that murderer, with the red stains of blood upon his
hands, had wielded the pen of a scholar; had corresponded with the most
learned men of Europe; was engaged, at the time of his arrest, in the
preparation of an elaborate dictionary, which embraced a knowledge of
other languages besides his own. The accomplished scholar, Eugene
Aram, who has been the subject of a celebrated work of fiction, of a his-
tory stranger than any fiction, was tried, convicted, and executed for
that murder, committed twelve years before.
So with a reverend prelate of the Church of England, Dr. Dodd, who
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