the speaker, thus far had our citizens dwelt in barbarism, had indeed
been unfit, under the very definition of things, to bear the proud
title of citizens of America, the justest, the most order-loving, as
well as the bravest and the most aggressive nation of the world. The
time had now come for the establishment in this community of the Law,
that beneficent agency of progress, that indispensable factor, that
inseparable attendant upon civilization. Upon the sky should blaze no
more the red riot of anarchy and barbarism. Upon the summit of the
noble mountain overtopping this happy valley there should sit no more
the grinning figure of malevolent and unrestrained vice, but the pure
form of the blind Goddess of Justice, holding ever aloft over this
happy land the unfaltering sword and the unwavering scales, so that all
might look thereon, the rightdoers in smiling security, the wrong-doing
in terror of their deeds. This was the Law!

"And now, gentlemen of this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here
before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the
way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the
time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law. I say to
you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there enthroned
above us. The Law is not to come--it has come, it is here!"

The old days were, therefore, done, he went on. Henceforth we must
observe the Law. We were here now with the intention of observing that
Law. Should we therefore fear it? Should we dread the decision of
this distinguished servant of the Law? By no means. To show that the
Law was no dragon, no demon, he would now, in the very face of that
Law, proceed to clear this innocent man of that cloud of doubt and
suspicion which for a brief moment the social body had cast upon him.
He would show to the gentlemen of this jury and to this honorable court