Besides, the Judges are lawyers, with the technical training of lawyers, with the disposition of character which comes from their special training and profession, and which marks the manners, the language and looks of a lawyer. They have the excellence of the lawyer, and also his defects. Commonly they are learned in their profession, acute and sharp, circumspect, cautious, skilful in making nice technical distinctions, and strongly disposed to adhere to historical precedents on the side of arbitrary power, rather than to obey the instinctive promptings of the moral sense in their own consciousness. Nay, it seems sometimes as if the moral sense became extinct, and the legal letter took the place of the spirit of Justice which gives life to the People. So they look to the special statute, its technical expositions and applications, but not to Justice, the ultimate Purpose of human law; they preserve the means and miss the end, put up the bars in the nicest fashion, and let the cattle perish in their pen. Like the nurse in the fable, they pour out the baby, and carefully cherish the wooden bath-tub! The Letter of the statute is the Idol of the Judicial Den, whereunto the worshipper offers sacrifices of human blood. The late Chief Justice Parker, one of the most humane and estimable men, told the Jury they _had nothing to do with the harshness of the statute_! but must execute a law, however cruel and unjust, because somebody had made it a law! How often Juries refuse to obey the statute and by its means to do a manifest injustice; but how rarely does a Judge turn off from the wickedness of the statute to do Justice, the great Purpose of human law and human life! Gentlemen, I once knew a democratic judge--a man with a noble mind, and a woman's nicer sense of right--who told the Jury, "Such is the law, such the decisions; such would be its application to this particular case. But it is unjust;--it would do a manifest and outrageous wrong if thus applied. You as Jurors are to do Justice by the law, not injustice. _You will bring in a verdict according to your conscience._" They did so. Gentlemen, I should not dare tell you that Judge's name. It would greatly injure his reputation. God knows it--for there is a Higher Law.