contrary, he will be found to have been a pattern of conjugal and parental affection. Mr. Fawcett being thus settled in the neighborhood, and thus received by Mr. Markam as his friend and companion, it is needless to say he could harbor no suspicion that the defendant was meditating the seduction of his wife:-there was nothing indeed, in his conduct, or in the conduct of the unfortunate lady, that could administer any cause of jealousy to the most guarded or suspicious temper. Yet dreadful to relate, and it is, indeed, the bitterest evil of which the plaintiff has to complain, a criminal intercourse for nearly five years before the discovery of the connexion had most probably taken place. I will leave you to consider what must have been the feelings of such a husband, upon the fatal discovery that his wife, and such a wife, had conducted herself in a manner that not merely deprived him of her comfort and society, but placed him in a situation too horrible to be described. If a man without children is suddenly cut off by an adulterer from all the comforts and happiness of marriage, the discovery of his condition is happiness itself when compared with that to which the plaintiff is reduced. When children, by a woman, lost for ever to the husband, by the arts of the adulterer, are begotten in the unsuspected days of virtue and happiness, there remains a consolation; mixed indeed, with the most painful reflections, yet a consolation still. But what is the plaintiff's situation?-He does not know at what time this heavy calamity fell upon him -he is tortured with the most afflicting of all human sensations. When he looks at the children, whom he is by law bound to protect and to provide for, and from whose existence he ought to receive the delightful return which the union of instinct and reason has provided for the continuation of the world, he knows not whether he is lavishing his fondness and affection upon his own children, or upon the seed of a villain sown in the bed of his honor and his delight. He starts back with horror, when, instead of seeing his own image reflected from their infant features, he thinks he sees the destroyer of his happiness -a midnight robber introduced into his house, under professions of friendship and brotherhood-a plunderer, not in the repositories of his treasure which may be supplied, or lived without, "but there where he had garnered up his hopes, where either he must live or bear no life." In this situation, the plaintiff brings his case before you, and the defendant attempts no manner of defence: he admits his guilt, he tenders it unnecessary for me to go into any proof of it; and the only question, therefore, that remains, is for you to say what shall be the consequences of his crime, and what verdict you will pronounce against him. You are placed, therefore, in a situation most momentous to the public; you have a duty to discharge, the result of which, not only deeply affects the present generation, but which remotest posterity will contemplate to your honor or dishonor. On your verdict it depends whether persons of the description of the defendant, who have cast off all respect for religion, who laugh at morality, when it is opposed to the gratification of their passions, and who are careless of the injuries they inflict upon others, shall continue their impious and destructive course with impunity. On your verdict it depends whether such men, looking to the proceedings of Courts of Justice, shall be able to say to themselves, that there are certain limits beyond which the damages of juries are not to pass. On your verdict it depends whether men of large fortunes shall be able to adopt this kind of reasoning to spur them on in the career of their lusts:- There are many chances that I may not be discovered at all :-there are chances, that, if I am discovered, I may not be the object of legal inquiry, and supposing I should, there are certain damages, beyond which a jury cannot go; they may be large, but still within a certain compass : if I cannot pay them myself, there may be persons belonging to my family who will pity my situation-somehow or other the money may be raised, and I may be delivered from the consequences of my crime. I TRUST THE VERDICT OF THIS DAY WILL SHOW MEN WHO REASON THUS, THAT THEY ARE MISTAKEN. The action for adultery, like every other action, is to be considered according to the extent of the injury, which the person complaining to a Court of Justice has received. If he has received an injury, or sustained a loss that can be estimated. directly in money, there is then no other medium of redress, but in moneys numbered according to the extent of the proof: I apprehend it will not be even stated by the Counsel for the defendant, that if a person has sustained a loss, and can show it is to any given extent, he is not entitled to the full measure of it in damages. If a man destroys my house or furniture, or deprives me of a chattel, I have a right, beyond all manner of doubt, to recover their corresponding values in money; and it is no answer to me to say, that he who has deprived me of the advantage I before possessed, is in no situation to render me satisfaction. A verdict pronounced upon such a principle, in any of the cases I have alluded to, would be set aside by the Court, and a new trial awarded. It would be a direct breach of the oaths of jurors, if, impressed with a firm conviction that a plaintiff had received damages to a given amount, they retired from their duty, because they felt commiseration for a defendant, even in a case where he might be worthy of compassion from the injury being unpremeditated and inadvertent. But there are other wrongs which cannot be estimated in money: "You cannot minister to a mind diseas'd." You cannot redress a man who is wronged beyond the possibility of redress:-the law has no means of restoring to him what he has lost. -God himself, as he has constituted human nature, has no means of alleviating such an injury as the one I have brought before you. While the sensibilities, affections, and feelings he has given to man remain, it is impossible to heal a wound which strikes so deep into the soul. When you have given to a plaintiff, in damages, all that figures can number, it is as nothing; he goes away hanging down his head in sorrow, accompanied by his wretched family, dispirited and dejected. Nevertheless, the law has given a civil action for adultery, and, strange to say, it has given nothing else.--The law commands that the injury shall be compensated (as far as it is practicable) IN MONEY, because Courts of Civil Justice have no other means of compensation THAN money; and the only question, therefore, and which you upon your oaths are to decide, is this: has the plaintiff sustained an injury up to the extent which he has complained of? Will twenty thousand pounds place him in the same condition of comfort and happiness that he enjoyed before the adultery, and which the adulterer has deprived him of? You know that it will not.-Ask your own hearts the question, and you will receive the same answer. I should be glad to know, then, upon what principle, as it regards the private justice, which the plaintiff has a right to, or upon what principle, as the example of that justice affects the public and the remotest generations of mankind, you can reduce this demand even in a single farthing. This is a doctrine which has been frequently countenanced by the noble and learned lord who lately presided in the court of king's bench; but his lordship's reasoning on the subject has been much misunderstood, and frequently misrepresented. The noble lord is supposed to have said, that although a plaintiff may not have sustained an injury by adultery to a given amount, yet that large damages, for the sake of public example, should be given. - He never said any such thing. He said that which law and morals dictated to him, and which will support 'his reputation as long as law and morals have a footing in the world. He said that every plaintiff had a right to recover damages up to the extent of the injury he had received, and that public example stood in the way of showing favor to an adulterer, by reducing the damages below the sum, which the jury 1 would otherwise consider as the lowest compensation for the wrong. If the plaintiff shows you that he was a most affectionate husband; that his parental and conjugal affections were the solace of his life; that for nothing the world could bestow in the shape of riches or honors, would he have bartered one moment's comfort in the bosom of his family, he shows you a wrong that no money can compensate; nevertheless, if the injury is only mensurable in money, and if you are sworn to make upon your oaths a pecuniary compensation, though I can conceive that the damages when given to the extent of the declaration, and you can give no more, may fall short of what your consciences would have dictated, yet I am utterly at a loss to comprehend upon what principle they can be lessened.But then comes the defendant's counsel, and says, "It is true that the injury cannot be compensated by the sum which the plaintiff has demanded; but you will consider the miseries my client must suffer, if you make him the object of a severe verdict. You must, therefore, regard him with compassion; though I am ready to admit the plaintiff is to be compensated for the injury he has received." Here, then, lord Kenyon's doctrine deserves consideration.— "He who will mitigate damages below the fair estimate of the wrong which he has committed, must do it upon some principle which the policy of the law will support." Let me then examine whether the defendant is in a situation which entitles him to have the damages against him mitigated, when private justice to the injured party calls upon you to give them TO THE UTMOST FARTHING. The question will be-on what principle of mitigation he can stand before you? I had ocсаsion, not a great while ago, to remark to a jury, that the wholesome institutions of the civilized world came seasonably in aid of the dispensations of Providence for our well-being in the world. If I were to ask, what it is that prevents the prevalence of the crime of incest, by taking away those otherwise natural impulses, from the promiscuous gratification of which we should become like the beasts of the field, and lose all the intellectual endearments which are at once the pride and the happiness of man? - What is it that renders our houses pure, and our families innocent? - It is that by the wise institutions of all civilized nations, there is placed a kind of guard against the human passions, in that sense of impropriety and dishonor, which the law has raised up, and impressed with almost the force of a second nature. This wise and politic restraint beats down, by the habits of the mind, even a propensity to incestuous commerce, and opposes those inclinations, which nature, for wise purposes, has implanted in our breasts at the approach of the other sex. It holds the mind in chains against the seduc tions of beauty. It is a moral feeling in perpetual opposition to human infirmity. It is like an angel from heaven placed to guard us against propensities which are evil-It is that warning voice, gentlemen, which enables you to embrace your daughter, however lovely, without feeling that you are of a different sex. -It is that which enables you, in the same manner, to live familiarly, with your nearest female relations, w thout those desires which are natural to man. Next to the tie of blood (if not, indeed, before it,) is the sacred and spontaneous relation of friendship. The man who comes under the roof of a married friend, ought to be under the dominion of the same moral restraint: and, thank God, generrally is so, from the operation of the causes which I have described. Though not insensible to the charms of female beauty, he receives its impressions under an habitual reserve, which honor imposes. Hope is the parent of desire, and honor tells him he must not hope.-Loose thoughts may arise, but they are rebuked and dissipated "Evil into the mind of God or man May come and go, so unapprov'd, and leave Gentlemen, I trouble you with these reflections, that you may be able properly to appreciate the guilt of the defendant; and to show you, that you are not in a case where large allowances are to be made for the ordinary infirmities of our imperfect natures. When a man does wrong in the heat of sudden passion-as, for instance, when, upon receiving an affront, he rushes into immediate violence, even to the deprivation of life, the humanity of the law classes his offence amongst the lower degrees of homicide; it supposes the crime to have been committed before the mind had time to parley with itself. But is the criminal act of such a person, however disastrous may be the consequence, to be compared with that of the defendant?Invited into the house of a friend, received with the open arms of affection, as if the same parents had given them birth and bred them; -in THIS situation, this most monstrous and wicked defendant deliberately perpetrated his crime; and, shocking to relate, not only continued the appearances of friendship, after he had violated its most sacred obligations, but continued them as a cloak to the barbarous repetitions of his offence-writing letters of regard, whilst, perhaps, he was the father of the last child, whom his injured friend and companion was embracing and cherishing as his own. What protection can such conduct possibly receive from the humane consideration of the law for sudden and violent passions? A passion for |