498 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

466 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

any thing done on the part of the assailants, similar to the
conduct, warnings, and declarations of the prisoners? An-
swer for yourselves, gentlemen. The words, reiterated all
around, stabbed to the heart; the actions of the assailants
tended to a worse énd; to awaken every passion of which
the human breast is susceptible. Fear, anger, pride, resent-
ment, revenge, alternately, take possession of the whole man,
To expect, under these circumstances, that such words would
assuage the tempest, that such actions would allay the
flames—you might, as rationally, expect the inundations of
a torrent would suppress a deluge, or rather, that the flames
of Etna would extinguish a conflagration!

Prepare, gentlemen of the jury, now to attend to that
species of law, which will adapt itself to this trial, with all
its singular and aggravating circumstances; a law full of
Denignity, full of compassion, replete with merey.

And here, gentlemen, I must, agreeable to the method we
formerly adopted, first tell you by what law the prisoners are
not to be tried, or condemned. And they most certainly are
not to be tried by the Mosaic law; a law, we take it, peculiarly
designated for the government of a peculiar nation, who be-
ing in great measure under « theocratical form of govern-
ment, its institutions cannot, with any propriety, be adduced
for our regulation in these days. It is with pain, therefore,
I have observed any endeavor to mislead our judgment on
this oceasion, by drawing our attention to the precepts deliv-
ered in the days of Moses; and by disconnected passages of
Seriptures, applied in a manner foreign to their original de-
sign or import, there seems to have been an attempt to touch
some peculiar sentiments, which we know are thought to be
prevalent; and in this way, we take it, an injury is like to
be done by giving the mind a bias, it ought never to have re-
ceived; because it is not warranted by our lawa.

‘We have heard it publicly said of late, oftener than for-
merly, ‘“Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man ghall his
blood be shed.’’ This is plainly, gentlemen, a general rule,
which, like all others of the kind, must have its exception, A