ing. If he is true, it is incredible that the prisoner can be innocent.

Gentlemen, I have gone through with the evidence in this case, and have endeavored to state it plainly and fairly before you. I think there are conclusions' to be drawn from it, the accuracy of which you cannot doubt. I think you cannot doubt that there was a conspiracy formed for the purpose of committing this murder, and who the conspirators were:

That you cannot doubt that the Crowninshields and the Knapps were the parties in this conspiracy:

That you cannot doubt that the prisoner at the bar knew that the murder was to be done on the night of the 6th of April:

That you cannot doubt that the murderers of Captain White were the suspicious persons seen in and about Brown Street on that night :

That you cannot doubt that Richard Crowninshield was the perpetrator of that crime :

That you cannot doubt that the prisoner at the bar was in Brown Street on that night.

If there, then it must be by agreement, to countenance, to aid the perpetrator. And if so, then he is guilty as PRINCIPAL.

Gentlemen, your whole concern should be to do your duty, and leave consequences to take care of themselves." You will receive the law from the court. Your verdict, it is true, may endanger the prisoner's life, but then it is to save other lives. If the prisoner's guilt has been shown and proved beyond all reasonable doubt, you will convict him. If such reasonable doubts of guilt still remain, you will acquit him. You are the judges of the whole case. You owe a duty to the public, as well as to the prisoner at the bar. You cannot presume to be wiser than the law. Your duty is a plain, straightforward one. Doubtless we would all judge him in mercy. Towards him, as an individual, the law inculcates no hostility; but towards him, if he proved to be a murderer, the law, and the oaths you have taken, and public justice, demand that you do your duty. With consciences satisfied with the discharge of duty, no 3 Page 257.

1 Pages 256, 257. 2 Pages 205, 236.

consequences can harm you. There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.

BRUTUS'S SPEECH IN JULIUS CÆSAR, III. 2.

mon sense.

After the assassination of Cæsar, Antony is allowed to address the people on condition that he speak no evil of the conspirators while saying all the good he can of Cæsar. Brutus flatters himself that he will obviate all danger from the mob by mounting the rostrum and explaining "The reason of Cæsar's death." Reason to a mob! It is even to such a point as this that Brutus is carried by his illusions. His ignorance of men's hearts and his blindness to actual facts, we have already seen; but till now, he had given no proof of his absolute lack of comSo little does he know of men that when addressing this multitude, he speaks to them as to so many philosophers; he sternly forbids himself any persuasive eloquence of animated gesture or pathetic tones, because he himself despises any appeal to the imagination or to the passions, and cares only for what recommends itself to his reason. His speech is a model of the most finished conciseness and studied coldness; but the irony of facts brings about as unexpected a turn of affairs as ever humiliated the eloquence of a public orator. His speech was received with loud applause, it is true; but silence would have been better. He spoke of one thing, and all the people understood another; he spoke of the love of country and of justice; the people understood him as asking for power and honors; he spoke of the glory of having cast down tyranny, and the people thought to please him by offering to put him in Cæsar's place! His laconic and sententious style, his "reasons," his coldness, his lack of sympathy, his ignorance of men and the base facts of life, his inability to gauge the littleness of little souls, render his conscious patriotism, his honesty of purpose and his angelic candor utterly ineffectual with the manyheaded multitude 1:

"Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear: believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe: censure 1 Adapted from Stapfer's Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity.

'me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Cæsar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Cæsar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why The Speech. Brutus rose against Cæsar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Cæsar were living and die all slaves, than that Cæsar were dead, to live all free men? As Cæsar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him: but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valour; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.

"All.-None, Brutus, none.

"Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Cæsar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death. Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony who, though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart, — that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death.

"My Countrymen,

Good countrymen, let me depart alone,

And, for my sake, stay here with Antony :
Do grace to Cæsar's corpse, and grace his speech
Tending to Cæsar's glories; which Mark Antony,
By our permission, is allow'd to make.

I do entreat you, not a man depart,
Save I alone, till Antony have spoke."

ANTONY'S SPEECH IN JULIUS CÆSAR, III. 2.

It was easy for Antony with his artistic temperament, to give tears to the victim of conspiracy. With his splendid capacity of receiving vivid impressions from anything grand, –

“When Antony found Julius Cæsar dead
He cried almost to roaring.”

When he begged permission of Brutus to speak at Cæsar's funeral, he probably had no intention of turning the opportunity to account: he never guessed the immense effect of his eloquence on the crowd. Not till afterward did Antony perceive the advantage that permission to address the multitude gave him; and only in the course of his speech did he perceive to what length this advantage might be pushed.

In order thoroughly to appreciate this famous speech, with its strange mixture of good faith and astuteness, of premeditated art and the sudden and irresistible inspiration of the moment, we must picture to ourselves the unpropitious circumstances under which the speaker labored at the beginning. Brutus had stipulated that Antony should cast no blame upon the conspirators, and had himself, the very moment before, publicly justified the murder of Cæsar; so that the people upon seeing Antony ascend the tribune, all cried with one voice, ""Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here." "This Cæsar was a tyrant." "We are blessed that Rome is rid of him." Then Antony began his magnificent address, his eloquence soon carrying his hearers with him, and finally working them up to such a pitch of excitement, that they burst out into groans for Cæsar's death, and cries of revenge for his wrongs. The people departed tumultuously to set fire to the traitor's houses; and Antony, as he stood there, left alone, said with cynical indifference not the indifference of an ambitious man pursuing relentlessly a definite aim, but of an elegant conjurer who has succeeded in performing a brilliant piece of juggling by means