“‘But is there no such thing as mercy, my lord?’ asked a juror.

“In the administration of the law there is such a fiction—­a beautiful negation, indeed—­but we know that Justice always holds the first place, and when she is satisfied, then we call in Mercy.  Such, at least, is the wholesome practice and constitutional spirit of British law.  I have now, gentlemen, rendered you every assistance in my power.  If you think this old woman guilty, you will find accordingly; if not, you will give her the benefit of any doubt in her favor which you may entertain.

“The woman,” continued Coke, “was convicted, and here follows the sentence of the judge.

“Martha Dotinghed—­you have been convicted by the verdict of twelve as intelligent and respectable gentlemen as I ever saw in a jury-box; convicted, I am sorry to say, very properly, of a most heinous crime, that of attempting to work out your salvation in an improper manner—­to wit, by making illegally free with the Word of God.

“‘In troth, my lord,’ replied the culprit, ’the Word of God is become so scarce nowadays, that unless one steals it, they have but a poor chance of coming by it honestly, or hearing it at all’.”

“You have been convicted, I say, notwithstanding a most able defence by your counsel, who omitted no argument that could prove available for your acquittal; and I am sorry to hear from your own lips, that you are in no degree penitent for the crime you have committed.  You say, the Word of God is scarce nowadays—­but that fact, unhappy woman, only aggravates your guilt—­for in proportion to the scarcity of the Word of God, so is its value increased—­and we all know that the greater the value of that which is stolen, the deeper, in the eye of the law, is the crime of the thief.  Had you not given utterance to those impenitent expressions, the court would have been anxious to deal mercifully with you.  As it is, I tell you to prepare for the heaviest punishment it can inflict, which is, that you be compelled to read some one of the Commentaries upon the Book you have stolen, once, at least, before you die, should you live so long, and may God have mercy on you!

“Here the prisoner fell into strong hysterics, and was taken away in a state of insensibility from the dock.

“Now,” proceeded Coke, closing the ponderous tome, “I read this case from a feeling that it bears very strongly upon that before us.  Saponificus, the learned and animated civilian, in his reply to the celebrated treatise of ‘Rigramarolius de Libris priggatis,’ commonly called his Essay on Stolen Books, asserts that there never yet was a book printed but was more or less stolen; and society, he argues, in no shape, in none of its classes—­neither in the prison, lockup, blackhole, or penitentiary—­presents us with such a set of impenitents and irreclaimable thieves as those who write books.  Theft is their profession, and gets them the dishonest bread by which they live.  These may always read the eighth commandment by leaving the negative out, and then take it in an injunctive sense.  Such persons, in prosecuting another for stealing a book, cannot come into court with clean hands.  Felons in literature, therefore, appear here with a very bad grace in prosecuting others for the very crime which they themselves are in the habit of committing.”