Henry Northcote

“It is too much the custom, my friends,” Northcote continued to the jury when Mr. Weekes had sat down as spasmodically as he had got up, “to regard this divine mystic of whom I have spoken as a supernatural being whose name can only be mentioned with propriety in the presence of an elaborate ritual. That fetish dies hard, my friends, but dying it is, for if ever a human being walked this earth, whose life and opinions are a great poem that deserves to be recited in our bosoms and our businesses during every hour that we dwell, it is the life and opinions of him who has already given his verdict in this case. There are very few things that are of any importance to us upon which we have not his pronouncement in one form or another; and though that pronouncement may not always be coincident with the technical lawyer’s law of the time, which is understanded of no man, least of all of themselves, these obiter dicta of his, delivered upon the spur of the occasion, have already outlasted kings, dynasties, and nations; and they are likely to endure when court-houses, jury-boxes, and scaffolds have long ceased to be.

“A few centuries ago such words as I am now addressing to you would have sent me to the lions, and you also would have been torn in pieces for having deigned to listen to them. It is not a hundred years since small children were hanged in this country for stealing five shillings. A hundred years before that a woman was burned at the stake for the practice of witchcraft. It was the custom to disembowel those who were guilty of a felony; to break on the wheel those who did not hold orthodox political opinions; and to burn, maim, cut off the heads, and inflict indescribable physical torments upon any person because of his religious views.

“I am going to ask you, my friends, how these monstrous enactments were overcome. By the lawyers who drew their fees from the Crown to put them in practice? Not so. By those educated minds that conducted the business of the state? Not so. These unspeakable crimes committed in the name of justice were overcome by a handful of prophets, seers, and reformers, who arose in Israel. They were common and unrefined, of small education, and less culture; poor and obscure herdsmen and fishermen, a pedlar by the wayside; the keeper of a public-house; a small tradesman in Lambeth; a miserable grocer of Spitalfields; a wretched old tinker who passed the choicest part of his days in Bedford jail. This very Jesus himself, the foreman of this jury which is sitting with you in the box, which at this moment urges these words to my lips, was a common rustic by trade, a carpenter. And you will remember that he paid for the extreme unorthodoxy of his religious and political views by crucifixion upon the tree.

“The tree has gone, my friends, but he remains. I say the tree has gone. That tree has gone, but as mankind in the present imperfect stage of its development, does not dare as yet to trust itself without a tree of some kind to lean upon, a substitute has been provided for that cross of wood upon which it nailed the redeemer of his kind. And it seems to me that if the divine mystic of whom I am speaking were again to roam the hills of Galilee, his fate would be the same to-day as it was yesterday. In the present phase which has been attained by our sympathies with those who share the burden of our so dark and so inscrutable inheritance, it would be extremely easy for some learned Treasury counsel in the performance of his duty to the Crown, to reënact the supreme tragedy of a world which is filled with tragedies.

“At the present time there is still a tree standing in England upon which we nail women. They may be guilty of dark offences, as were the associates of that Nazarene Jew of whom I have spoken; their fate, according to the written statutes, may be sound in equity; some wretched Magdalene in falling by the way may have stained the pavements of the street with blood. But if we, her peers and coadjutors, are to continue at this time of day to visit her with reprisals, I am forced to believe, my friends, that all we most cherish in our national life will perish. And I think I discern by that which is written in your faces that you are of this opinion also.

“I have alluded to the two unhappy outcasts who were nailed upon the tree with Jesus. Technically they were malefactors; it was right that they should be immolated upon the altar of the law. Doubtless the instant the counsel for the Crown had compassed this desirable end, he repaired to his home with a substantial emolument and a perfect security of soul, ate a good dinner, and afterwards lay on a mat and harkened to the sounds of the lyre. But I do not think from that day to this the associate of these malefactors was ever shown to be guilty of any crime at all, at least of any crime known to the judicial calendar. His only offence, if offence there was, was in living before his day and generation, which, in the eyes of those who are contemporary, is a misdemeanor of a heinous character. Posterity only is able to condone a greatness which transcends its own era. Yet do not misunderstand me. Technically he was blameless, technically he had committed no crime.

“This consideration brings me to the final word I shall venture to speak—the supreme danger of the tree. It is very dangerous to keep a tree at all. Whatever is once nailed upon it can never be removed. The stains sink into the wood, and, strive as they may, the labors of those who undertake to cleanse it and purify it cannot avail. Like corrosive acids these stains percolate through the fibres and change them to wormwood and fungus. And do not forget, my friends, that the fibres of the tree are the fibres also of the national life. A nation pledges its honor when it seeks reprisal.

“We do well to shudder at the many bitter degradations which have sprung from this habit of keeping a tree. Jesus was not the first innocent person whose blood was spilt upon that oft-humiliated wood. And he was not the last. Our human faculties play us such strange tricks that they can render us certain of nothing. Even a poor outcast who has fainted by the bleak wayside of life, who has occasionally drunk a glass of spirits to keep her from the river, may by some obscure possibility which the counsel for the prosecution has not been able to reveal to us have refrained from destroying the man who has been the first cause of her fall, although it devolves upon all who love justice—in whatever justice may consist—to explain away the coincidence of a packet of poison having been found in her possession. But, as I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that the theory of the prosecution is wrong.

“It would not be the first occasion that an uncommon zeal has led it into error. A year ago to-morrow, at these sessions, one John Davis, a butler, who for thirty years had been a faithful servant in the household of his mistress, was found guilty of the crime of compassing the death of that aged lady, in order that he might spend his own latter days in the enjoyment of a small legacy she had left him in her will. In the mind of the counsel for the Crown, and in the mind of the judge, the evidence against this man was overwhelming. At first you gentlemen of the jury were disposed to see a doubt in the case, but the learned counsel for the prosecution was so consummate in his arguments, the learned judge was so emphatic, the array of witnesses for the Crown was so formidable, from zealous police-constables, with their way to make in the world, to experts and past-masters in criminology who had made theirs long ago; and the youthful advocate, whom the butler’s legal adviser had selected to defend him, was so unused to a trial of this magnitude, for his experience had been limited, that he failed in cross-examination to elucidate from a hostile witness an extremely important fact; and in his address to you, gentlemen of the jury, he was unable to soften the impression that the Crown had been able to build up in your minds.

“I have hardly a need, gentlemen, to reveal to you the sequel of this painful story. As all the world remembers, you had in the end to submit to the inevitable. You, gentlemen of the jury, consented to a verdict of guilty; a month later the unhappy man was hanged; and he had not been five days in his grave when a nephew of the murdered woman gave himself up to a justice that had already wreaked itself on an innocent man, and confessed that he himself had murdered his aunt because he was in need of her money.

“These facts are green in the minds of you all. But there is a coincidence connected with this atrocious story and this grievous case which is engaging your attention. The counsel for the prosecution in both cases is identical. He stands before you framing yet another of those objections with which he has endeavored to impede the cause of humanity. I point my finger at him, and challenge him to deny the truth of the statement I am making. And by a perfectly logical and natural extension of this coincidence, the judge who sent the butler to his doom is seated above you now in all the panoply of his office. I leave him now if he is able to deal in a like manner with this poor Magdalene, who may or may not have fallen by the way.”

Northcote sat down after having spoken for nearly three hours. The December darkness had long fallen upon the court. The feeble gas-jets seemed to enhance the shadows that they cast. The intense faces of the overcrowded building, bar, jury, populace all electrified, seemed to belong to so many ghosts, so pale, shining, and transfigured did they gleam. For nearly three hours had the advocate cast his spell; yet moment by moment, in the dominion of his voice and the cumulation of his effects, he had increased the hold upon his hearers. At times the tension had been so great that it had seemed that somebody must break it with a laugh; but no one had done so. One and all were swept forward by the contained impetuosity of the orator; by the restrained and gentle modulations of a power that played through every word he used; by a ferocious irony which looked like tenderness, so little did they understand its nature; and above all by the irresistible magnetism of a personal genius which rendered the most perilous obstacles of no account.

None had foreseen the cruel, terrible, yet melodramatic climax to which the advocate was leading; and when it came over the minds of those present, all of whom in the course of the speech, even the most hardened officers of the court, the ushers, the chaplain, the javelin men, and the newspaper reporters, had passed in one form or another through all the anguish of the spirit of which they were capable, pity and horror were mingled with their overwrought surprise. As the advocate stood with his huge and livid face turned upwards towards the judge, with an ineffable emotion suffusing it, and the old man, with tears dripping quickly on to his ermine, put his two fat, white hands before his eyes, a feeling of silence and terror seemed to pervade the court.

The advocate sat down with parched lips. The hush that ensued was so long that it seemed it would never come to an end.

It was broken by a commotion among the public benches. A woman who had fainted was being carried out at the back of the court. The incident served to unloose the electricity which was pent up in the atmosphere. A voice from the solicitor’s well was heard to pronounce the word “Shame!” In an instant it was answered by the multitude with a volley of the wildest cheers that was ever heard in a court of justice. All the ragged, tattered, despised, broken and rejected units of the population, those humble, hungry, and inarticulate creatures upon whom Jesus himself had wrought his magic, upon whom he had depended for countenance, took up the challenge, and with their wild and hoarse cries flung it back upon him who had uttered it.

For a time the scene was one of consternation. The judge was but a poor, senile, old man, from whom the tears were leaping. Every official looked towards him for his prop and stay, but all there was to see was feeble and inept old age. The Clerk of Arraigns, as pale as a ghost and trembling violently, was spreading his hands before an alderman. Policemen stood dismayed, and officers of the court, who had grown old and despotic in its service, looked towards one another helplessly, seeking for that authority which none had the power to exercise.

“I never thought,” said the companion of the fat barrister, “we should come to this in England. It is a disgrace to English justice. That fellow must be brought before the general council. They must take away his wig and gown.”

“A little less prejudice and a little more appreciation, dear boy,” said the fat barrister, wiping his eyes stealthily. “That lad will be a peer of the realm long before they make you a stipendiary.”

“He is either the greatest madman or the greatest genius who was ever called to the bar.”

“Probably both, dear boy.”