Smoothbore) to notice what had been said with respect to motive. If the
prisoner at the bar had even had the intention, which had been so
gratuitously imputed to him, of returning this money to the prosecutor,
when once the object of his supposed scheme had been effected, he would
be no less guilty of the crime that was laid to his charge. It was
possible, indeed, in such a case, that there might be extenuating
circumstances, but those would not affect the verdict of the jury,
however they might influence his lordship's sentence after that verdict
had been truly given. And this he would say, after what had just
occurred in that court--after the painful scene they had just
witnessed--the breaking down of that innocent girl in an act of
self-sacrifice, culpable in itself, but infinitely more culpable in him
who had incited her to do it--for he could not for an instant suppose
that the prisoner's legal advisers could have suggested such a line of
defense: taking all this into consideration, he, Mr. Smoothbore, would
confidently ask the jury whether the prisoner at the bar was to be
credited with merely a romantic stratagem, or with a crime the
heinousness of which was only exceeded by the means by which he had
striven to exculpate himself from it, and to evade the ends of justice.
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