threw Tucker down, I did not see the
possibility that he would die from a sort of attack which ordinarily occurs in
fighting without any fatal effect. As to my assaulting a constable, it was a
quick choice between two evils: I should else have been disabled. And he
attacked me under a mistake about my intentions. I'm not prepared to say I never
would assault a constable where I had more chance of deliberation. I certainly
should assault him if I saw him doing anything that made my blood boil: I
reverence the law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it should be
the very object of law to hinder. I consider that I should be making an unworthy
defence, if I let the court infer from what I say myself, or from what is said
by my witnesses, that because I am a man who hates drunken disorder, or any
wanton harm, therefore I am a man who would never fight against authority. I
hold it blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there
is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the
beginning. It would be impertinent for me to speak of this now, if I did not
need to say in my own defence, that I should hold myself the worst sort of
traitor if I put my hand either to fighting or disorder - which must mean injury
to somebody - if I were not urged to it by what I hold to be sacred feelings,
making a sacred duty either to my own manhood or to my fellow-man. And
certainly,« Felix ended with a strong ring of scorn in his voice, »I never held
it a sacred duty to try and get a Radical candidate returned for North
Loamshire, by willingly heading a drunken howling mob, whose public action must
consist in breaking windows, destroying hard-got produce, and endangering the
lives of men and women. I have no more to say, my Lord.«
    »I foresaw he would make a blunder,« said Harold, in a low voice to Esther.
Then, seeing her shrink a little, he feared she might suspect him of being
merely stung by the allusion to himself. »I don't mean what he said about the
Radical candidate,« he added hastily, in correction. »I don't mean the last
sentence. I mean that whole peroration of his, which he ought to have left
unsaid. It has done him harm with the jury - they won't understand it, or rather
will misunderstand it.