After the lapse of a day or two he began to think if it might not be well for him to consult with Edmund Burke as to whether it would be to the advantage of Baretti or otherwise to submit evidence as to the threats made use of by Jackson in regard to Baretti. He thought that it might be possible to do so without introducing the name of Mary Horneck. But Burke, after hearing the story--no mention of the name of Mary Horneck being made by Goldsmith--came to the conclusion that it would be unwise to introduce at the trial any question of animosity on the part of the man who had been killed, lest the jury might be led to infer--as, indeed, they might have some sort of reason for doing-that the animosity on Jackson's part meant animosity on Baretti's part. Burke considered that a defence founded upon the plea of accident was the one which was most likely to succeed in obtaining from a jury a verdict of acquittal. If it could be shown that the man had attacked Baretti as impudently as some of the witnesses for the Crown were ready to admit that he did, Burke and his legal advisers thought that the prisoner had a good chance of obtaining a verdict. The fact that neither Burke nor any one else spoke with confidence of the acquittal had, however, a deep effect upon Goldsmith. His sanguine nature had caused him from the first to feel certain of Baretti's safety, and any one who reads nowadays an account of the celebrated trial would undoubtedly be inclined to think that his feeling in this matter was fully justified. That there should have been any suggestion of premeditation in the unfortunate act of self-defence on the part of Baretti seems amazing to a modern reader of the case as stated by the Crown. But as Edmund Burke stated about that time in the House of Commons, England was a gigantic shambles. The barest evidence against a prisoner was considered sufficient to bring him to the gallows for an offence which nowadays, if proved against him on unmistakable testimony, would only entail his incarceration for a week. Women were hanged for stealing bread to keep their children from that starvation which was the result of the kidnapping of their husbands to serve in the navy; and yet Burke's was the only influential voice that was lifted up against a system in comparison with which slavery was not only tolerable, but commendable. Baretti was indeed the only one of that famous circle of which Johnson was the centre, who felt confident that he would be acquitted. For all his railing against the detestable laws of the detestable country--which, however, he found preferable to his own--he ridiculed the possibility of his being found guilty. It was Johnson who considered it within the bounds of his duty to make the Italian understand that, however absurd was the notion of his being carted to the gallows, the likelihood was that he would experience the feelings incidental to such an excursion.