I do not think there had ever been much intimacy between the Tedhams and
the Haskeths, before Tedham's calamity came upon him. But Mrs. Hasketh
did not refuse her share of it. She came forward, and probably made her
husband come forward, in Tedham's behalf, and do what hopelessly could
be done to defend him where there was really no defence, and the only
thing to be attempted was to show circumstances that might perhaps tend
to the mitigation of his sentence. I do not think they did. Tedham had
confessed himself and had been proven such a thorough rogue, and the
company had lately suffered so much through operations like his, that,
even if it could have had mercy, as an individual may, mercy was felt to
be bad morals, and the case was unrelentingly pushed. His sentence was
of those sentences which an eminent jurist once characterized as rather
dramatic; it was pronounced not so much in relation to his particular
offence, as with the purpose of striking terror into all offenders like
him, who were becoming altogether too common. He was made to suffer for
many other peculators, who had been, or were about to be, and was given
the full penalty. I was in court when it was pronounced with great
solemnity by the judge, who read him a lecture in doing so; I could have
read the judge another, for I could not help feeling that it was, more
than all the sentences I had ever heard pronounced, wholly out of
keeping with the offence. I met Hasketh coming out of the court-room,
and I said that I thought it was terribly severe. He agreed with me, and
as I knew that he and Tedham had never liked each other, I inferred a
kindliness in him which made me his friend, in the way one is the friend
of a man one never meets. He was a man of few words, and he now simply
said, "It was unjust," and we parted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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