“This consideration brings me to the final word I shall venture to speak--the supreme danger of the tree. It is very dangerous to keep a tree at all. Whatever is once nailed upon it can never be removed. The stains sink into the wood, and, strive as they may, the labors of those who undertake to cleanse it and purify it cannot avail. Like corrosive acids these stains percolate through the fibres and change them to wormwood and fungus. And do not forget, my friends, that the fibres of the tree are the fibres also of the national life. A nation pledges its honor when it seeks reprisal. “We do well to shudder at the many bitter degradations which have sprung from this habit of keeping a tree. Jesus was not the first innocent person whose blood was spilt upon that oft-humiliated wood. And he was not the last. Our human faculties play us such strange tricks that they can render us certain of nothing. Even a poor outcast who has fainted by the bleak wayside of life, who has occasionally drunk a glass of spirits to keep her from the river, may by some obscure possibility which the counsel for the prosecution has not been able to reveal to us have refrained from destroying the man who has been the first cause of her fall, although it devolves upon all who love justice--in whatever justice may consist--to explain away the coincidence of a packet of poison having been found in her possession. But, as I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that the theory of the prosecution is wrong. “It would not be the first occasion that an uncommon zeal has led it into error. A year ago to-morrow, at these sessions, one John Davis, a butler, who for thirty years had been a faithful servant in the household of his mistress, was found guilty of the crime of compassing the death of that aged lady, in order that he might spend his own latter days in the enjoyment of a small legacy she had left him in her will. In the mind of the counsel for the Crown, and in the mind of the judge, the evidence against this man was overwhelming. At first you gentlemen of the jury were disposed to see a doubt in the case, but the learned counsel for the prosecution was so consummate in his arguments, the learned judge was so emphatic, the array of witnesses for the Crown was so formidable, from zealous police-constables, with their way to make in the world, to experts and past-masters in criminology who had made theirs long ago; and the youthful advocate, whom the butler’s legal adviser had selected to defend him, was so unused to a trial of this magnitude, for his experience had been limited, that he failed in cross-examination to elucidate from a hostile witness an extremely important fact; and in his address to you, gentlemen of the jury, he was unable to soften the impression that the Crown had been able to build up in your minds.