It is now our still more melancholy task
to apply its salutary though severe enactments to a case of a
very singular character, in which the crime (for a crime it is,
and a deep one) arose less out of the malevolence of the heart,
than the error of the understanding--less from any idea of
committing wrong, than from an unhappily perverted notion of that
which is right. Here we have two men, highly esteemed, it has
been stated, in their rank of life, and attached, it seems, to
each other as friends, one of whose lives has been already
sacrificed to a punctilio, and the other is about to prove the
vengeance of the offended laws; and yet both may claim our
commiseration at least, as men acting in ignorance of each
other's national prejudices, and unhappily misguided rather than
voluntarily erring from the path of right conduct.
"In the original cause of the misunderstanding, we must in
justice give the right to the prisoner at the bar. He had
acquired possession of the enclosure, which was the object of
competition, by a legal contract with the proprietor, Mr. Ireby;
and yet, when accosted with reproaches undeserved in themselves,
and galling, doubtless, to a temper at least sufficiently
susceptible of passion, he offered notwithstanding, to yield up
half his acquisition, for the sake of peace and good
neighbourhood, and his amicable proposal was rejected with scorn.
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