And I would allow the accused the benefit of every flaw on the statute, of every error in the forms of procedure, and of every _reasonable_ doubt. I would even suffer him to array as many young and pretty women as he could entrap into the witness-box fronting the jury—although, perhaps, I might object to their appearing in tears or in mourning, like the Ionians and Greeks and Irish, lest, peradventure, the tables should be turned, as where an Irish barrister, pleading the cause of a little orphan, with the mother and all the rest of the family standing about with handkerchiefs to their eyes, held up the boy in tears. The jury, overcome with sympathy and compassion, were about rendering a verdict at once, and were only delayed by a question from the opposite counsel—“My little fellow,” said he, “what makes you cry?”—“_He pinched me!_” was the answer, and a verdict was rendered accordingly—as the Irish only are allowed to do it—by _acclamation_.
And I should not stop here. I would go further. For the purpose of fixing forever and ever the responsibility of a decision upon each of the twelve jurymen—I would have them polled, and questioned separately, and man by man (if permitted by the law,) and not lump their verdict, as they generally do, hit or miss: and I would call upon each to remember that if he erred in pronouncing the judgment of death—of death here, and it might be of death hereafter, he alone would be accountable—for he, alone, might interpose if he would, and arrest that judgment of death, and send the prisoner back to his family—a living man: and I would so picture his own death-bed to every man of that jury, if I had the power, that he should hear himself shrieking for mercy, and see and feel and acknowledge by his looks, that if he betrayed the awful trust, or trifled with it, by deference to others, he himself would be a man-slayer, and utterly without excuse here and hereafter, in this world or the next.
All this I would do, or try to do: for all this might be done by the _honest_ lawyer without a violation of God’s law. But, as I have said before, I would not have him “play falsely,” nor yet “foully win.” I would not have him brow-beat nor entrap honest witnesses. I would not have him guilty of misrepresenting the evidence nor the law “with submission to the court.” I would not have the opposite counsel insulted, nor the bench quarreled with—if it could be helped—