’And presuming an innocent man to have the ability and not the will to do so, he is to be punished, to be ruined root and branch, self and family, character and pocket, simply because, knowing his own innocence, he does not choose to depend on the mercenary skill of a man whose trade he abhors for the establishment of that which should be clear as sun at noonday!  You say I am innocent, and yet you tell me I am to be condemned as a guilty man, have my gown taken from me, be torn from my wife and children, be disgraced before the eyes of all men, and made a byword and a thing horrible to be mentioned, because I will not fee an attorney to fee another man to come and lie on my behalf, to browbeat witnesses, to make false appeals, and perhaps shed false tears in defending me.  You have come to me asking me to do this, if I understand you, telling me that the archdeacon would so advise me.’

‘That is my object.’  Mr Crawley, as he had spoken, had in his vehemence, risen from his seat, and Mr Robarts was also standing.

‘Then tell the archdeacon,’ said Mr Crawley, ’that I will have none of his advice.  I will have no one there paid by me to obstruct the course of justice or to hoodwink a jury.  I have been in the courts of law, and know what is the work for which these gentlemen are hired.  I will have none of it, and I will thank you to tell the archdeacon so, with my respectful acknowledgements of his consideration and condescension.  I say nothing as to my own innocence, or my own guilt.  But I do say that if I am dragged before that tribunal, an innocent man, and am falsely declared to be guilty, because I lack money to bribe a lawyer to speak for me, then the laws of this country deserve but little of that reverence which we are accustomed to pay them.  And if I be guilty—­’

‘Nobody supposes you to be guilty.’

‘And if I be guilty,’ continued Mr Crawley, altogether ignoring the interruption, except by the repetition of his words, and a slight raising of his voice, ’I will not add to my guilt by hiring anyone to prove a falsehood or to disprove a truth.’

‘I’m sorry that you should say so, Mr Crawley.’

’I speak according to what light I have, Mr Robarts; and if I have been over-warm with you—­and I am conscious that I have been at fault in that direction—­I must pray you to remember that I am somewhat hardly tried.  My sorrows and troubles are so great that they rise against me and disturb me, and drive me on—­whither I would not be driven.’

’But, my friend, is not that just the reason why you should trust in this matter to someone who can be more calm than yourself?’

’I cannot trust to anyone—­in a matter of conscience.  To do as you would have me is to me wrong.  Shall I do wrong because I am unhappy?’

’You should cease to think it wrong when so advised by persons you can trust.’

’I can trust no one with my own conscience;—­not even the archdeacon, great as he is.’