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EDWARD D, WORRELL. 37

it away. It is its most awful power; and because the power
is awful, its exercise demands the utmost caution. Yeast
Government may take life, but it should be fatal to the peace
of any tribunal of government to take it by going on the
wrong side of the line which marks the distribution of power.
If the boundary be doubtful—if we are not certain of the
legal territory on which we stand—humanity, the spirit of
the law, justice itself, demands that the path of safety is to
err humanely. Nor should we jend an ear to the voice of ex-
citement, if that voice should counsel otherwise. It is the
nature of excitement to confound the judgment, by sub-
atituting feeling for reason. The best of men are subject to
this disturbing influence; but the spirit of our law will not
submit that any man shall minister in thia temple of justice
who is under its power. To this end it provides a shelter
from excitement—a city of refuge—not such as Moses created
to protect the unhappy Jew from the avenger of blood, but a
Jory of twelve men, uplifted beyond the reach of the highest
wave of popular commotion.

The means of refuge is change of venue; but the law takes
eare that excitement shall not pursue. How carefully did
his Honor, who sits above you, probe each of you to find in
the head an opinion, or in the heart a feeling against the pris-
oner, But no sooner are you sworn and impanelled, and
charged with the fate of the accused, than the first assistant
Prosecutor, my friend, Mr, Coalter, rises to let in the disturb-
ing elements of passion, which the law was so careful to keep
out. He starts in passion, and touches as he goes every cord
of feeling in the human heart, The deceased is ‘‘the noble
son of a widowed mother’’—‘‘a whole people, roused by his
lofty qualities, in the depth of winter are seen dragging the
earth, shronded by a deep snow to find the body.’’? On the
bare suspicion of his ‘‘taking off,’’ they left their ‘‘eomfort-
able flresides, amid the bitter inclemency of the season,’ and
“torned out to a man’’—they were ‘‘deeply roused’? that
one “‘go noble’? should meet “disaster so foul’’—they felt
that a man ‘‘so good’? should not perish without retribution
on his murderers. Their acuteness took inspiration from in-

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