And indeed, my Lords, the
disproportion between crime and justice, when seen in the particular
acts of either, would be so much to the advantage of crimes and
criminals, that we should find it difficult to defend laws and
tribunals, (especially in great and arduous cases like this,) if we did
not look, not to the _immediate_, not to the _retrospective_, but to the
_provident_ operation of justice. Its chief operation is in its future
example; and this turns the balance, upon the total effect, in favor of
vindictive justice, and in some measure reconciles a pious and humble
mind to this great mysterious dispensation of the world.
Upon the charge of delay in this particular cause, my Lords, I have only
to say that the business before you is of immense magnitude. The
prisoner himself says that all the acts of his life are committed in it.
With a due sense of this magnitude, we know that the investigation could
not be short to us, nor short to your Lordships; but when we are called
upon, as we have been daily, to sympathize with the prisoner in that
delay, my Lords, we must tell you that we have no sympathy with him.
Rejecting, as we have done, all false, spurious, and hypocritical
virtues, we should hold it to be the greatest of all crimes to bestow
upon the oppressors that pity which belongs to the oppressed.
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