“Umph! ‘Time will show;’ which is the English, I suppose, of the ‘_nous verrons_,’ that is flying about in the newspapers. Yes, she has money to buy three or four journals, to get up a ‘sympathy’ in her behalf; when her acquittal would be almost certain, if her trial were not a legal impossibility. I am not sure it is not her safest course, in the actual state of the facts.” “Would you think, Dunscomb, of advising any one who looked up to you for counsel, to take such a course?” “Certainly not—and you know it, well enough, McBrain; but that does not lessen, or increase, the chances of the expedient. The journals have greatly weakened their own power, by the manner in which they have abused it; but enough still remains to hoodwink, not to say to overshadow, justice. The law is very explicit and far-sighted as to the consequences of allowing any one to influence the public mind in matters of its own administration; but in a country like this, in which the virtue and intelligence of the people are said to be the _primum mobile_ in everything, there is no one to enforce the ordinances that the wisdom of our ancestors has bequeathed to us. Any editor of a newspaper who publishes a sentence reflecting on the character or rights of a party to a pending suit, is guilty, at common law, of what the books call a ‘libel on the courts of justice,’ and can be punished for it, as for any other misdemeanor; yet, you can see for yourself, how little such a provision, healthful and most wise—nay, essential as it is to justice—is looked down by the mania which exists, of putting everything into print. When one remembers that very little of what he reads is true, it is fearful to reflect that a system, of which the whole merit depends on its power to extract facts, and to do justice on their warranty, should be completely overshadowed by another contrivance which, when stripped of its pretension, and regarded in its real colours, is nothing more than one of the ten thousand schemes to make money that surround us, with a little higher pretension than common to virtue.” “‘Completely overshadowed’ are strong words, Dunscomb!” “Perhaps they are, and they may need a little qualifying. Overshadowed often—much too often, however, is not a particle stronger than I am justified in using. Every one, who thinks at all, sees and feels the truth of this; but here is the weak side of a popular government. The laws are enforced by means of public virtue, and public virtue, like private virtue, is very frail. We all are willing enough to admit the last, as regards our neighbours at least, while there seems to exist, in most minds, a species of idolatrous veneration for the common sentiment, as sheer a quality of straw, as any image of a lover drawn by the most heated imagination of sixteen.” “You surely do not disregard public opinion, Tom, or set it down as unworthy of all respect!”