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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