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'My good friend, said he, 'if we were banditti, as you suppose, it would be as easy for us, without all this parley, to break into your house as to break this pane of glass; therefore, if you would not incur the shame of suffering a fellow-creature to perish for want of assistance, give us admittance. This plain argument had its weight upon the man, and opening the door, he desired them to enter.
With lying words I argued away the life of a fellow-creature, whom, whilst I uttered them, I half believed to be innocent; and now, when I have attained all I desired and reached the summit of my hopes, the Almighty has sent him back upon the earth to blast me with the sight. Three times this day three times this day! Again! Again! Again!"
The temptation to go and see a man, a fellow-creature, tried for a crime which one's wife committed, and to which one is an accessory after the fact. Oh, that morning! How well I remember it. Breakfast was just oyer, the table with its relics of fragrant bloaters and terrine of paté still stood in the patio. I was alone. I loafed lazily and at my ease.
The heart which naturally grew warm at the mere sight of a human being, under the operation of this new experience slowly becomes paralysed. There seats itself gradually in the man's mind a presumption concerning every new face that it is the face of an enemy, and a habit of gathering himself into an attitude of self-defence whenever he deals with a fellow-creature.
"Every fellow-creature in distress," she used to say, "was a proper object of her bounty; and whilst she was blessed with plenty she thought it her duty to relieve, as far as she prudently could, all whom she knew to be in need." She therefore fetched a mug, and, filling it with milk herself, gave it to the poor woman to drink.
"It was my duty to know what a fellow-creature suffers there, lest, through inexperience, I might be cruel. Ignorance is the mother of cruelty!" "I hear you, sir. "And cruelty is a fearful crime in His eyes, whose servant I am." "I am thinking, sir; I am putting two or three things together I see " "Speak more slowly and articulately." "I will; I see what you are now you are a Christian."
Who could remain unmoved, to see a fellow-creature thus tied, unable to move or to raise a hand in his own defence; scourged on his bare back, with a cowhide, until the blood flows in streams from his quivering flesh? And for what? Often for the most trifling fault; and, as sometimes occurs, because a mere whim or caprice of his brutal overseer demands it.
For instance, if I should be able to save a man's children from a great danger with no risk to myself, I should not hesitate to do so. If a man be worthy I would defend him even with my blood, and would share his perils; if he be unworthy, and yet by merely crying for help I can rescue him from robbers, I would without reluctance raise the shout which would save a fellow-creature.
A boy, scarcely so old as himself, was the only human being in the crowd who dared to scale the ladder that even then scarcely reached the windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes; that boy penetrated into the room, found the inmate almost insensible, rallied, supported, dragged him to the window, got him on the ladder, saved his life then: and his life later, by nursing with a woman's tenderness, through the fever caused by terror and excitement, the fellow-creature he had rescued by a man's daring.
They maintained that one of the most fundamental maxims of law "in every country calling itself free was, that property was in the highest degree entitled to the protection of the law; and, if so, that the right of disposing of it or investing it in any manner must be considered under the same protection;" that any interference "with ordinary commercial transactions was equally repugnant to the spirit of the constitution;" and, taking a practical view of the question, they warned the minister that such rigorous enactments imposing such extreme penalties would defeat their own end; for "it was a general and true maxim, that excess of punishment for a crime brings impunity along with it; and that no jury would ever find a verdict which would doom a fellow-creature to death for selling a yard of cloth and sending it to France."
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