Condemned man

“ It does not follow that the people who, on one pretext or another, shut their eyes to the evil of the system, while they tried to keep their personal dealing humane, can be sweepingly condemned by any man. ”

“ It means that a man is tried, is condemned, is covered with ignominy, his own name, that of his wife, of his children, of his father, of all his connections eternally blasted, on the faith of a document he had never been shown. Gentlemen, who among you would not revolt at the very idea of being condemned under such conditions? ”

“ Their own sad experience teaches them, better than a thousand arguments, the truth of that Book which declares, that the wicked shall not go unpunished, and that the way of transgressors is hard. Having witnessed one judgment day, and feeling the awful and death-like consequences of being condemned there, they think, with trembling, of the great Judgment day of all mankind, and of the more awful consequences of condemnation then. ”

“ To our mind, the destiny of the Sovereign, the awful responsibility, the utter loneliness of station, the general want of sympathy, the proneness to be condemned for faults or omissions of which they are, individually, as innocent as their contemners, present a subject for consideration and sympathy, and ought to check the unkind thoughts and hasty condemnation, excited merely because they are placed in rank and circumstances above us. ”

“ The harsh, stern, vindictively pure and good people—in my humble judgment—have many and grave sins to answer for as well as those whom they so mercilessly condemn. I condemn all that which appears evil to me, and I seek to avoid it, but I condemn no man, no woman. ”

“ Ah, why should all mankind, For one man's fault, thus guiltless be condemned, It guiltless? ”

“ I act against conviction, indeed, and am self-condemned, which to a liberal mind is no small punishment. But look into the world, and see if that punishment be sufficient to induce the bulk of mankind, nay the gross body of philosophers themselves, to depart from evil. ”

“ Those who made the perpetrators ignorant through oppression, and savage by misrule. The responsibilities of a certain order through many centuries were called to judgment during the brief period before us; and the sentence of condemnation not only went forth on the four winds to the farthest corners of the globe, but shall be repeated down to those remote ages when it shall be forgotten on earth, though recorded in heaven, that man ever shed the blood of man. ”

“ Most men strike on one or the other, either thinking themselves condemned, when they are not, or thinking they deserve to be acquitted. Nay, the truth lies between: they still deserve, strictly speaking, only the damnation of hell. ”

“ Dimly it seemed to her that they were all over ready, over eager to condemn the man whose one crime had been mere heedlessness, who was surely hurting no one but himself, but who offended their ideas in refusing to take life seriously and bear the common burden of responsibility. ”

“ The intimate relations of the two men gave prominence to the hatefulness of a system by which a man who had been insulted must, at the peril of being branded as a coward, expose himself to be shot, and, if the issue proved fatal to his adversary, be punished as a criminal. ”

“ Cry out into the world your “wild and guilty fantasy” of property in man, and every echo responds with a cry of horror or contempt; every breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may come, brings you a verdict of condemnation. ”

“ In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned—to protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence. ”

“ He knows not your letters, your laws, the tenets of your religion. The nobler nature of the man sleeps in his savage breast. His only plea is — his degradation. His defence before the world and before God is this: He is a savage, he knows no law but force, no right but only might alone. For that plea and defence the civilized man must excuse him, perhaps God holds him guiltless. ”

“ I have to consider on the one hand the grave nature of your offence, the deliberate way in which you subsequently altered the counterfoil, the danger you caused to an innocent man—and that, to my mind, is a very grave point—and finally I have to consider the necessity of deterring others from following your example. ”

“ Atrocious as such forms of rudimentary justice undoubtedly are, and severely reprehensible, to be condemned always and without any reserve, it cannot be denied that they have a certain rough and horrible virtue. ”

“ How they will rage against me, and if opportunity is afforded how eagerly and how quickly they will drag me to punishment! For I am writing against not only the dead, but the living also, not this man or that, but a host, not merely private individuals, but the authorities. ”

“ Their only controls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling, in every man makes a part of his nature. An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it concerns. ”

“ Nothing which reason condemns can be suitable to the dignity of the human mind. To be driven by external motives from the path which our own heart approves, to give way to any thing but conviction, to suffer the opinion of others to rule our choice, or overpower our resolves, is to submit tamely to the lowest and most ignominious slavery, and to resign the right of directing our own lives. ”

“ No more fitting retribution could have reached this man-monster—who had so recklessly spilled the blood of the subjects, violated all the laws at the will of a tyrant, and terrified every one who came before him by the diabolical fury of his looks and language—than that he should perish in his cell, of terror and shame, which he did soon after. ”

“ When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body,—even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,—the spectacle is a sublime one,—didn’t ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?—and we become criminal in comparison. ”

“ Have you not owned, that you have thought worse of me, than now you find me to deserve? No men, nor their works, ought to be condemned upon hearsays and bare surmises, much less upon the accusations of their enemies, without being examined into. ”

“ Is He, forsooth, only to condemn that man whom we think deserving of condemnation? Shall we look upon it as an absurdity, that He should condemn the man whose lot it is to be declared deserving of damnation? [270] Shall we consider it wrong that He should harden whom He chooses to harden, and have mercy on whom He wills to have mercy? ”

“ If your object be, as you have intimated, to aid you in exposing and disabling man whose antecedents have been those of guilt, and who threatens with danger the society which receives him, you must give me proofs that are not reducible to magic; and you must prepossess me against the person you accuse, not by powders and fumes that disorder the brain, but by substantial statements, such as justify one man in condemning another. ”

“ A Philosopher, included in the same sentence of condemnation with several guilty persons among whom he had been apprehended, sent the following lines, composed suddenly in the moment when he was going to death, to a certain King whom had ignorantly condemned him. ”

“ Who meets with the smallest condemnation, or rather, who does not meet with sympathy and benevolence, for any amount of evil which he may have brought upon himself and those dependent on him, by this species of incontinence? ”

“ On the other hand, injustice, falsehood, enmity, treachery, cruelty, adultery, theft, murder and similar dispositions and acts in their thousand forms of unmistakable manifestation, are universally condemned. ”

“ How often do you meet people condemning wars, prisons, violence of any kind and yet directly getting involved in the same deeds, which they condemn?
Man of our times, if he doesn't want to act immorally, must very carefully consider those seemingly innocent acts to participation in which he is called upon. ”

“ The magistrates, the constables, and the multitudinous crowd which followed them, all stood in silence and what we may call thunderstruckness, so little credence had they given to the assurances of Gregory Myrtle; for let it be remembered, that the first effect produced by an accusation against any one, upon vulgar minds, is to lead them at once to condemn him. I am afraid there is something in the human heart that loves the act of condemnation--an act which either gratifies malignity or vanity. ”

“ Come now, and say, that you only do as others do. It is exactly by that you condemn yourselves. What! the most terrible certainty of your condemnation shall become the only motive for your confidence! Which, according to the Scriptures, is the road that conducts to death? Is it not that which the majority pursues? Which is the party of the reprobate? Is it not the multitude? You do nothing but what others do. ”

“ Before however they are wholly condemned, for what may appear to us a vindictive and revengeful character, it should be stated that the better part of Society are ignorant what provocation these poor wretches receive. ”

“ And as that word of dreadful condemnation awes each lurid spark of hasty anger from your soul, let these words of endless peace, and joy, and mercy steal in, and soften all your spirit into gentlest pity, tenderness, and love: "Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." ”

“ Io, I have not only broken God’s law, but the laws of my country. Justice demands a victim. My cross is to let the world know my guilt, publicly to confess my crime and accept its penalty, even should it be a death of shame. ”

“ Every one of us sins, and therefore there is condemnation in store for every one of us. But those of us who are teachers will receive a heavier sentence than those of us who are not such; for our obligations to live up to the law which we know, and profess, and urge upon others, are far greater. Heaviest of all will be the condemnation of those who, without being called or qualified, through fanaticism, or an itch for notoriety, or a craze for controversy, or a love of fault-finding, push themselves forward to dispense instruction and censure. ”

“ I know well that in the eye of the law we are offenders and enemies of society. But imagine only for a moment, gentlemen, the situation of this enemy of society when he is accused wholesale of an offence which he not only never committed, but which he is ready to resist with the whole strength of his soul. ”

“ The principle of condemnation, in all ages of the world, is no other than rejecting the very message which God sends to them while they pretend to cleave closely to that which He has sent in former ages. ”

“ Have we no evils and sins of our own, which, if the Divine justice were to call us to account for, as rigorously as we are ready to call our fellow-men to account for theirs, would bring down fearful condemnation on our heads? ”

“ It is wonderful how forward some have been to look upon it as a kind of presumption and ingratitude, and rebellion, and cruelty, and I know not what besides, not to allege only, nor to own, but to suffer any one so much as to imagine, that an old-established law could in any respect be a fit object of condemnation. ”

“ He cannot go unpunished.—He is punished in the remorse and condemnation of his conscience; in the abhorrence of him in the judgment of every respectable member of society; in the continual fear he has of shameful discovery. None can trust him. ”

“ I speak this with no malice to my fellow-men—I bear no grudge against those who sentenced me; too deeply conscious am I of my many offences against the world to assume even to myself the pretension of martyr; but I do assert that vindication of character, restitution to fair fame, comes late when once the terrible ordeal of public condemnation has been passed. The very pity men extend to you humiliates—their compassion savors of mercy; and mercy is the attribute of One alone! ”

“ And this shews, that evil examples, in superiors, are doubly pernicious, and doubly culpable, because such persons are bad themselves, and not only do no good, but much harm to others; and the condemnation of such must, to be sure, be so much the greater!—And how much the greater still must my condemnation be, who have had such a religious education under you, and been so well nurtured by my good lady, if I should forget, with all these mercies heaped upon me, what belongs to the station I am preferred to!—O how I long to be doing some good! ”

“ It is very easy to make and strengthen a plea on either side, for each had a cause and found justification for standing for it, even to the most dire extremities. It is enough to say that our sympathy, at least, goes with the barbarous victims of their own blind and dauntless effort to resist what we call their destiny; and that the weight of condemnation must come on the English for suspicions and unwise measures and actual wrongs, in the early stages of the strife. ”

“ How long will it take an individual or a nation to conquer prejudices, by continuing to practice and excuse them;—substituting general acknowledgements of their guilt, for immediately and thoroughly repudiating them? ”