If he means to lock them
_all_ up, even you and I are hardly safe. (Laughter.) The only serious
question, I apprehend, is on what basis the damages ought to be assessed.
The plaintiffs counsel has made a powerful appeal to your passions, and
calls for vengeance. Now I must tell you, you have no right to make
yourselves ministers of vengeance, nor even to punish the defendant, in a
suit of the kind: still less ought you to strike the defendant harder
than you otherwise would--in the vague hope of punishing indirectly the
true mover of the defendant and the other puppets. I must warn you
against that suggestion of the learned counsel's. If the plaintiff wants
vengeance, the criminal law offers it. He comes here, not for vengeance,
but for compensation, and restoration to that society which he is every
way fitted to adorn. More than this--and all our sympathies--it is not
for us to give him. But then the defendant's counsel went too far the
other way. His client, he says, is next door to an idiot, and so,
forsooth, his purse must be spared entirely. This is all very well if it
could be done without ignoring the plaintiff and his just claim to
compensation.
Pages:
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253