The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-03-30

our citizens. Our public officers have,
as rule, been led to exhibit the vir-
tues of honesty, capacity and fidelity.
During this period, population and
productive industry and material
wealth have been largely multiplied,
while litigation, both civil and crimi-
nal, has signally diminished. What
truly patriotic mind can contemplate
such record without a lively sense
of the favor evidently shown and love
for the Author of it; or without de-
vout aspiration for its continuance
and growth?
Cheered by this encouraging retro
spect, let us come to our business
with confidence that the past, inter-
preted as promise and earnest of
good in store, shall be bettered in
our own persons, and at this present
term of court.
Approaching our work for the peo-
pie, it is we'll for us to bear in mind
that we are of the people. Our
competency to judge in their causes
is dependent on the fact that we are
men like themselves. Their affairs
we know, for we have mingled in
them. Their ways, their thoughts,
their feelings, their desires, their af-
fections, their failings are common
also to us. 1t is false notion that
represents Justice with blinded eyes,
balances in one hand and a sword in
the other. Human Justice needs hui
man eyes and human hands, open to
see things as they are and free to
handle other realities than balances
and swords,-as we'll as unshut eyes
and beating heart. We cannot pos
sibly grasp a criminal case as it is
we cannot lay hold of, and master the
actual heart of it,-unless we come to
it with our human sympathies in what
is human, as we'll as our Divine under
standing of what is ''lawful and right"
Happily for the proper administration
of our law, we can all, without diff
Guilty, assume, in aid of our judg-
ment, the guilty mans position. We
can appreciate his motives; we can
enter into his inward conflicts; we
can feel the criminal suggestion crys-
talize slowly, or at a flash, into the
fixity of purpose. There perhaps we
halt. For, "From the purpose of
''crime to the last act of crime there
''is an abyss wonderful to think of.
''The finger lies on the pistol but the
"whole man is not to human thought
s'murderer. Nay, his whole nature stag
.sgering at such consummation, is
mot there confused pause, rather
zone last instant of possibility for him?
"Not yet murderer; it is at the mercy
"of light trihes whether the most fixed
''idea may not yet become untixed.
"One slight twitch of a muscle, the
s.death flash bursts; and he is it and
"will, for eternity, be it; and earth has
"become penal Tartarus for him.
s'his horizon girdled not now with
golden hope, but with red flames of
ssremorse; voices from the depths of
"nature sounding, Wo, wo unto him.
"Of such stuff are we all made; in such
.'powder mines of bottomless guilt and
''criminality-'if God restrained us
osnot,' as is we'll said,-does the pur-
''est of us walk"
1t is, | say, an indispensable qualiti
cation TO your Office and mine, that
we are thus welded with all the ac-
cused and guilty of our race. In
the discharge of your duty, then,
gentlemen, do not attempt nor affect to
discard your human relationship to
your erring fellow man.
BY this, would not by any means
have you infer, that your commisera-
ton for any guilty, and therefore most
unfortunate, or for any deeply
wronged, fellow creature, should oper-
ate to prevent your finding "A true
bill' or "Not true BILL" exactly as
the facts displayed before you, and
impartially considered, warrant. Thor
ough sympathy At once with the pub
lie, the accused and any interested
witnesses Will urge to praisewortby,