In the case of minor offences, it is the proportionately trifling nature of the punishment inflicted which justifies, if anything can justify, the summary conviction; but such conviction cannot possibly in a free country be tolerated, when the punishment consequent on conviction is of a nature so injurious and irretrievable. If you deprive a man of life the punishment is irretrievable; no recompense can be made for it if erroneously inflicted; hence in some countries punishment by death is on this very account prohibited when the evidence is only circumstantial. What then shall we say of a case in which an irretrievable punishment is inflicted where there is no necessary circumstantial evidence at all, but suspicion only, and further, without the safeguard, which the law applies in the other case, of jury trial? What can atone to an innocent woman for the destruction of her character brought about by mere suspicion, and without the chance of the time-honoured appeal “to God and my country”? What can atone to her for the personal outrage, which is made so light of by some doctors, but which, whether inflicted by any private villain, or by a gentleman paid by the Government to inflict it, must bring to every decent woman unmitigated shame and anguish? We therefore claim that these cases under this Act shall not be summarily treated as minor cases, because, to put it in the light least favourable to ourselves, no one can prove to us that an innocent woman may not be accused under it; and, being so accused, if punished wrongfully, she suffers more than any other person punished wrongfully would suffer; she has therefore more than any other person the right to all the safeguards which the law can offer. Now, it is admitted by all great lawyers that the supreme safeguard against accused persons being wrongfully punished, or against persons being wrongfully accused, is the existence of jury trial. These women, therefore, more than any other accused people, are entitled to have every legal safeguard. It is more tyrannical than can for a moment be endured in England, that such cases should be classed among minor cases, and be treated in the same summary fashion as when a little boy breaks windows.[46]