Chapter 23

A VERY COMMON CASE: OR A GREAT DEAL OF LAW, AND VERY LITTLE JUSTICE—HEADS AND TAILS, WITH THE DANGERS OF EACH.

I was early with Noah on the following morning. The poor fellow, when it is remembered that he was about to be tried for a capital offence, in a foreign country, under novel institutions, and before a jury of a different species, manifested a surprising degree of fortitude. Still, the love of life was strong within him, as was apparent by the way in which he opened the discourse.

“Did you observe how the wind was this morning, Sir John, as you came in?” the straightforward sealer inquired, with a peculiar interest.

“It is a pleasant gale from the southward.”

“Right off shore! If one knew where all them blackguards of rear admirals and post captains were to be found, I don’t think, Sir, John, that you would care much about paying those fifty thousand promises?”

“My recognizances?—Not in the least, my dear friend, were it not for our honor. It would scarcely be creditable for the Walrus to sail, however, leaving an unsettled account of her captain’s behind us. What would they say at Stunin’tun—what would your own consort think of an act so unmanly?”

“Why, at Stunin’tun, we think him the smartest who gets the easiest out of any difficulty; and I don’t well see why Miss Poke should know it—or, if she did, why she should think the worse of her husband, for saving his life.”

“Away with these unworthy thoughts, and brace yourself to meet the trial. We shall, at least, get some insight into the Leaphigh jurisprudence. Come, I see you are already dressed for the occasion; let us be as prompt as duellists.”

Noah made up his mind to submit with dignity; although he lingered in the great square, in order to study the clouds, in a way to show he might have settled the whole affair with the fore-topsail, had he known where to find his crew. Fortunately for the reputations of all concerned, however, he did not; and, discarding everything like apprehension from his countenance, the sturdy mariner entered the Old Bailey with the tread of a man and the firmness of innocence. I ought to have said sooner, that we had received notice early in the morning, that the proceedings had been taken from before the pages, on appeal, and that a new venue had been laid in the High Criminal Court of Leaphigh.

Brigadier Downright met us at the door; where also a dozen grave, greasy-looking counsellors gathered about us, in a way to show that they were ready to volunteer in behalf of the stranger, on receiving no more than the customary fee. But I had determined to defend Noah myself (the court consenting) for I had forebodings that our safety would depend more on an appeal to the rights of hospitality, than on any legal defence it was in our power to offer. As the brigadier kindly volunteered to aid me for nothing, I thought proper not to refuse his services, however.

I pass over the appearance of the court, the empanelling of the jury, and the arraignment; for, in matters of mere legal forms, there is no great difference between civilized countries, all of them wearing the same semblance of justice. The first indictment, for unhappily there were two, charged Noah with having committed an assault, with malice prepense, on the king’s dignity, with “sticks, daggers, muskets, blunderbusses, air-guns, and other unlawful weapons, more especially with the tongue, in that he had accused his majesty, face to face, with having a memory, etc., etc.” The other indictment, repeating the formula of the first, charged the honest sealer with feloniously accusing her majesty the queen, “in defiance of the law, to the injury of good morals and the peace of society, with having no memory, etc., etc.” To both these charges the plea of “not guilty,” was entered as fast as possible, in behalf of our client.

I ought to have said before, that both Brigadier Downright and myself had applied to be admitted of counsel for the accused, under an ancient law of Leaphigh, as next of kin; I as a fellow human being, and the brigadier by adoption.

The preliminary forms observed, the attorney-general was about to go into proof, in behalf of the crown, when my brother Downright arose and said that he intended to save the precious time of the court, by admitting the facts; and that it was intended to rest the defence altogether on the law of the case. He presumed the jury were the judges of the law as well as of the facts, according to the rule of Leaplow, and that “he and his brother Goldencalf were quite prepared to show that the law was altogether with us, in this affair.” The court received the admission, and the facts were submitted to the jury, by consent, as proven; although the chief-justice took occasion to remark, Longbeard dissenting, that, while the jury were certainly judges of the law, in one sense, yet there was another sense in which they were not judges of the law. The dissent of Baron Longbeard went to maintain that while the jury were the judges of the law in the “another sense” mentioned, they were not judges of the law in the “one sense” named. This difficulty disposed of, Mr. Attorney-General arose and opened for the crown.

I soon found that we had one of a very comprehensive and philosophical turn of mind against us, in the advocate of the other side. He commenced his argument by a vigorous and lucid sketch of the condition of the world previously to the subdivisions of its different inhabitants into nations, and tribes, and clans, while in the human or chrysalis condition. From this statement, he deduced the regular gradations by which men become separated into communities, and subjected to the laws of civilization, or what is called society. Having proceeded thus far, he touched lightly on the different phases that the institutions of men had presented, and descended gradually and consecutively to the fundamental principles of the social compact, as they were known to exist among monikins. After a few general observations that properly belonged to the subject, he came to speak of those portions of the elementary principles of society that are connected with the rights of the sovereign. These he divided into the rights of the king’s prerogative, the rights of the king’s person, and the rights of the king’s conscience. Here he again generalized a little, and in a very happy manner; so well, indeed, as to leave all his hearers in doubt as to what he would next be at; when, by a fierce logical swoop, he descended suddenly on the last of the king’s rights, as the one that was most connected with the subject.

He triumphantly showed that the branch of the royal immunities that was chiefly affected by the offence of the prisoner at the bar, was very clearly connected with the rights of the king’s conscience. “The attributes of royalty,” observed the sagacious advocate, “are not to be estimated in the same manner as the attributes of the subject. In the sacred person of the king are centred many, if not most, of the interesting privileges of monikinism. That royal personage, in apolitical sense, can do no wrong: official infallibility is the consequence. Such a being has no occasion for the ordinary faculties of the monikin condition. Of what use, for instance, is a judgment, or a conscience, to a functionary who can do no wrong? The law, in order to relieve one on whose shoulders was imposed the burden of the state, had consequently placed the latter especially in the keeping of another. His majesty’s first-cousin is the keeper of his conscience, as is known throughout the realm of Leaphigh. A memory is the faculty of the least account to a personage who has no conscience; and, while it is not contended that the sovereign is relieved from the possession of his memory by any positive statute law, or direct constitutional provision, it follows, by unavoidable implication, and by all legitimate construction, that, having no occasion to possess such a faculty, it is the legal presumption he is altogether without it.

“That simplicity, lucidity and distinctness, my lords,” continued Mr. Attorney-General, “which are necessary to every well-ordered mind, would be impaired, in the case of his majesty, were his intellectual faculties unnecessarily crowded in this useless manner, and the state would be the sufferer. My lords, the king reigns, but he does not govern. This is a fundamental principle of the constitution; nay, it is more—it is the palladium of our liberties! My lords, it is an easy matter to reign in Leaphigh. It requires no more than the rights of primogeniture, sufficient discretion to understand the distinction between reigning and governing, and a political moderation that is unlikely to derange the balance of the state. But it is quite a different thing to govern. His majesty is required to govern nothing, the slight interests just mentioned excepted; no, not even himself. The case is far otherwise with his first-cousin. This high functionary is charged with the important trust of governing. It had been found, in the early ages of the monarchy, that one conscience, or indeed one set of faculties generally, scarcely sufficed for him whose duty it was both to reign and to govern. We all know, my lords, how insufficient for our personal objects are our own private faculties; how difficult we find it to restrain even ourselves, assisted merely by our own judgments, consciences, and memories; and in this fact do we perceive the great importance of investing him who governs others, with an additional set of these grave faculties. Under a due impression of the exigency of such a state of things, the common law—not statute law, my lords, which is apt to be tainted with the imperfections of monikin reason in its isolated or individual state, usually bearing the impress of the single cauda from which it emanated—but the common law, the known receptacle of all the common sense of the nation—in such a state of things, then, has the common law long since decreed that his majesty’s first-cousin should be the keeper of his majesty’s conscience; and, by necessary legal implication, endowed with his majesty’s judgment, his majesty’s reason, and finally, his majesty’s memory.

“My lords, this is the legal presumption. It would, in addition, be easy for me to show, in a thousand facts, that not only the sovereign of Leaphigh, but most other sovereigns, are and ever have been, destitute of the faculty of a memory. It might be said to be incompatible with the royal condition to be possessed of this obtrusive faculty. Were a prince endowed with a memory, he might lose sight of his high estate, in the recollection that he was born, and that he is destined, like another, to die; he might be troubled with visions of the past; nay, the consciousness of his very dignity might be unsettled and weakened by a vivid view of the origin of his royal race. Promises, obligations, attachments, duties, principles, and even debts, might interfere with the due discharge of his sacred trusts, were the sovereign invested with a memory; and it has, therefore, been decided, from time immemorial, that his majesty is utterly without the properties of reason, judgment, and memory, as a legitimate inference from his being destitute of a conscience.”

Mr. Attorney-General now directed the attention of the court and jury to a statute of the 3d of Firstborn 6th, by which it was enacted that any person attributing to his majesty the possession of any faculty, with felonious intent, that might endanger the tranquillity of the state, should suffer decaudization, without benefit of clergy. Here he rested the case on behalf of the crown.

There was a solemn pause, after the speaker had resumed his seat. His argument, logic, and above all, his good sense and undeniable law, made a very sensible impression; and I had occasion to observe that Noah began to chew tobacco ravenously. After a decent interval, however, Brigadier Downright—who, it would seem, in spite of his military appellation, was neither more nor less than a practising attorney and counsellor in the city of Bivouac, the commercial capital of the Republic of Leaplow—arose, and claimed a right to be heard in reply. The court now took it into its head to start the objection, for the first time, that the advocate had not been duly qualified to plead, or to argue, at their bar. My brother Downright instantly referred their lordships to the law of adoption, and to that provision of the criminal code which permitted the accused to be heard by his next of kin.

“Prisoner at the bar,” said the chief-justice, “you hear the statement of counsel. Is it your desire to commit the management of your defence to your next of kin?”

“To anybody, your honors, if the court please,” returned Noah, furiously masticating his beloved weed; “to anybody who will do it well, my honorables, and do it cheap.”

“And do you adopt, under the provisions of the statute in such cases made and provided, Aaron Downright as one of your next of kin, and if so, in what capacity?”

“I do—I do—my lords and your honors—I do, body and soul—if you please, I adopt the brigadier as my father; and my fellow human being and tried friend, Sir John Goldencalf, here, I adopt him as my mother.”

The court now formally assenting, the facts were entered of record, and my brother Downright was requested to proceed with the defence.

The counsel for the prisoner, like Dandin, in Racine’s comedy of Les Plaideurs, was disposed to pass over the deluge, and to plunge instantly into the core of his subject. He commenced with a review of the royal prerogatives, and with a definition of the words “to reign.” Referring to the dictionary of the academy, he showed triumphantly, that to reign, was no other than to “govern as a sovereign”; while to govern, in the familiar signification, was no more than to govern in the name of a prince, or as a deputy. Having successfully established this point, he laid down the position, that the greater might contain the less, but that the less could not possibly contain the greater. That the right to reign, or to govern, in the generic signification of the term, must include all the lawful attributes of him who only governed, in the secondary signification; and that, consequently, the king not only reigned, but governed. He then proceeded to show that memory was indispensable to him who governed, since, without one he could neither recollect the laws, make a suitable disposition of rewards and punishments, nor, in fact, do any other intelligent or necessary act. Again, it was contended that by the law of the land the king’s conscience was in the keeping of his first-cousin. Now, in order that the king’s conscience should be in such keeping, it was clear that he must HAVE a conscience, since a nonentity could not be in keeping, or even put in commission; and, having a conscience, it followed, ex necessitate rei, that he must have the attributes of a conscience, of which memory formed one of the most essential features. Conscience was defined to be “the faculty by which we judge of the goodness or wickedness of our own actions. (See Johnson’s Dictionary, page 162,