"The police
considered the precaution necessary," urged the magistrate, in reply
to the scathing denunciations of the unprecedented outrage which fell
from the lips of Mr. Ernest Jones, one of the prisoners' counsel. The
police considered it necessary, though within the courthouse no friend
of the accused could dare to show his face--though the whole building
bristled with military and with policemen, with their revolvers
ostentatiously displayed;--necessary, though every approach to the
courthouse was held by an armed guard, and though every soldier in the
whole city was standing to arms;--necessary there, in the heart of an
English city, with a dense population thirsting for the blood of the
accused, and when the danger seemed to be, not that they might escape
from custody--a flight to the moon would be equally practicable--but
that they might be butchered in cold blood by the angry English mob
that scowled on them from the galleries of the court house, and howled
round the building in which they stood. In vain did Mr. Jones protest,
in scornful words, against the brutal indignity--in vain did he appeal
to the spirit of British justice, to ancient precedent and modern
practice--in vain did he inveigh against a proceeding which forbad
the intercourse necessary between him and his clients--and in vain
did he point out that the prisoners in the dock were guiltless and
innocent men according to the theory of the law.
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