eloquence. His cross-examination of Goodridge rivalled, in mental
torture, every thing martyrologists tell us of the physical agony
endured by the victim of the inquisitor, when roasted before slow fires
or stretched upon the rack. Still it seemed impossible to assign any
motive for the self-robbery and the self-maiming of Goodridge, which any
judge or jury would accept as reasonable. The real motive has never been
discovered. Webster argued that the motive might have originated in a
desire to escape from the payment of his debts, or in a whimsical
ambition to have his name sounded all over Maine and Massachusetts as
the heroic tradesman who had parted with his money only when overpowered
by superior force. It is impossible to say what motives may impel men
who are half-crazed by vanity, or half-demonized by malice. Coleridge
describes Iago's hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature
instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment of motives for
his acts as the mere "motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity."

Whatever may have been Goodridge's motive in his attempt to ruin the
innocent men he falsely accused, it is certain that Webster saved these
men from the unjust punishment of an imputed crime. Only the skeleton of
his argument before the jury has been preserved; but what we have of it
evidently passed under his revision. He knew that the plot of Goodridge
had been so cunningly contrived, that every man of the twelve before
him, whose verdict was to determine the fate of his clients, was
inwardly persuaded of their guilt. Some small marked portions of the
money which Goodridge swore he had on his person on the night of the
pretended robbery were found in their house. Circumstantial evidence
brought their guilt with a seemingly irresistible force literally "home"
to them. It was the conviction of the leaders of the Essex bar that no
respectable lawyer could appear in their defence without becoming, in
some degree, their accomplice. But Webster, after damaging the character