"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
convictions--after your charge."
"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"
Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
it.
"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"
"The law assumes all men to be equal--"
"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law
is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
that your theory doesn't work."
He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
situation and his sense of wrong.
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