Thou art now talking against thine own interests, and I interrupt thee in
pure mercy. 'Twould be scandalous in me to sit here and listen to one that
hath bespattered the law with an evil tongue."
"I know naught of the subtleties of thy laws, but well do I know their
cruelty and wrongs, as respects me and mine! All others come into the
world with hope, but we have been crushed from the beginning. That surely
cannot be just which destroys hope. Even the sinner need not despair,
through the mercy of the Son of God! but we, that have come into the world
under thy laws, have little before us in life but shame and the scorn of
men!"
"Nay, thou quite mistakest the matter, dame; these privileges were first
bestowed on thy families in reward for good services, I make no doubt, and
it was long accounted profitable to be of this office."
"I do not say that in a darker age, when oppression stalked over the land,
and the best were barbarous as the worst to-day, some of those of whom we
are born may not have been fierce and cruel enough to take upon themselves
this office with good will; but I deny that any short of Him who holds the
universe in his hand, and who controls an endless future to compensate for
the evils of the present time, has the power to say to the son, that he
shall be the heritor of the father's wrongs!"
"How! dost question the doctrine of descents? We shall next hear thee
dispute the rights of the buergerschaft!"
"I know nothing, Herr Bailiff, of the nice distinctions of your rights in
the city, and wish to utter naught for or against.
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