The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,92

“And not only the words but the right time to utter them.”

“Long practice, sir.” Pike smiled, clearly pleased at the compliment.

“I was sorry, though, to see Hughes and Morgan get off scot-free. It is the merest quibble to suggest that they were not part of the mutiny.”

“We may owe that to Mr. Stanton’s final plea, though not in the way he intended it.”

An expression had appeared on the lawyer’s face as he spoke that Kemp had seen there not infrequently before and did not much care for, a look that went with the tone of his voice: amused, sardonic, in a way regretful.

“How do you mean?” he asked, with a certain coldness.

“Well, you will remember that he urged the court to show mercy as they themselves would wish for mercy? Perhaps you did not glance at the Lord High Admiral’s face as these words were uttered.”

“No, as a matter of fact I did not.”

“He was not pleased, sir, he was not pleased at all. He did not care to be included in that way, lumped together with common mortals. He sits in judgment, you see, he delivers the sentence. While he is up there on the bench in his robes of office he is not in need of mercy. It is those below him who are in need of that—in sore need, often enough. No, I think Stanton made a mistake there. It is one often made by zealous reformers—they are too set on benefiting the human race, they forget to make allowance for divergent views of what is beneficial.”

“Well, but the two men were pardoned, after all.”

“Having first been found guilty. That was not Stanton’s aim, nor was it Ashton’s. They wanted them all acquitted. The Lord Admiral, on the other hand, wanted to show that he it is who doles out justice and mercy. In the right measure and proportion, of course.” Pike smiled and raised his glass. “He and no one else,” he said. “Here is to the law, sir. If the judge had not wished to assert his prerogatives, those two would probably have been condemned to death along with the rest.”

Kemp nodded. “I see, yes.” But even as they drank together, even though grateful to Pike for his efforts, he found his old disapproval returning, and for the same reason. Pike made light of the institution that gave him his reputation and his living—a good living too. It was ungrateful; it was even duplicitous. And Pike grew aware of it now, as before, this disapproval, and as before felt a kind of contempt for it, the lack of humor, the rigidity of mind, impelling him—and this too not for the first time—to do further outrage to his client’s sense of propriety. Propriety and property, the fellow’s guiding lights …

“I am not altogether sure that it was wise to appeal to the jury’s sense of common humanity either,” he said. “Or to urge them to imagine the state of mind of the crew on that distant morning.”

“I don’t see much wrong in that.”

“The jury is open to pity, both singly and by a sort of contagion, as are we all. But the ability to imagine the thoughts and feelings of others is a great deal rarer than might be thought, and people will quickly grow hostile if urged to exercise a faculty they do not possess. Nor will they always wish to share their humanity with the accused persons in the dock, especially when these persons are common seamen, and ragged and penniless into the bargain. They would rather recognize common humanity in persons more closely resembling themselves, or better still, persons higher up in the scale of things. The jurors are men of property, sir, they are landowners. Small landowners, to be sure, but landowners nevertheless. There is a property qualification at present set at fifteen pounds a year.”

“That is very little.”

“Indeed it is, sir, indeed it is. But it must be remembered that probably close on three-quarters of the inhabitants of this great city will be too poor even to pay taxes, much less be in possession of freehold or copyhold to any extent of value at all. This huge mass of humanity lies just below the noses of the jurors. They can smell it, sir. Their greatest fear is to slide back down into it.”

He paused for some moments, raising his glass to drink. With the case ended and his connection with his client about to be dissolved, he felt a lightening of