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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
shackles of society , yet they would hardly be recreating themselves at midnight for the purpose of admiring the beauties of a luxuriant spring vegetation ; and , although you cannot sympathize much with them in their calling , nor love them as thieves , yet you perhaps would despise them still more ,, if they should be at the
trouble of breaking into the garden , and take nothing from it . A thief may have some good qualities blended with hi 3 failings , to excite our admiration , and call for our laudatory testimonials in his favour ; but who will waste his breath , or his paper and ink in palliation of a fool ? The indictment , however , will not avail , unless the articles are minutely specified which they abstracted ; but as the advertiser has not mentioned them , we must wait till he
comes forward with some further explanation . 11 th . < IC Insignificant as this tiny pronoun may appear , and though it must be admitted to be the smallest word the alphabet can bestow in two letters , yet in its sense it is of superior importance .
It is , in this case , the rear-guard of the whole document , and it prevents the necessity for much roundabout circumlocution . You may magnify it , till it shall be as large as the garden itself , or a bag of moonshine , or the solar system , or even the whole universe . Let it then have its due , and let crowns and palaces yield it the palm of superiority .
But now , may not a forensic objection be legally started , —was it the garden that was robbed , or was it Mr . Blyth ? To rob , may be defined , to take something secretly or by force from another . Another what ? A person , undoubtedly , be it man or be it woman . But one garden cannot rob another garden ; and by the definition here given , how can a man be said to rob a garden ?
The cabbages and roses don ' t belong to the garden ; the garden can't prosecute , or carry the action into a court of justice , nor can it pay the costs in case of being nonsuited . The law is always presumed to guard , as much as possible , against its being perverted or strained to suit any particular purpose , and must therefore be understood and acted upon to the letter . A man was
prosecuted for stealing a couple of ducks , but was acquitted , on the plea that , though what he stole had once been ducks , they were no longer so , as they were dead when he took them , and being stripped of their feathers and decapitated , they were not perfect , and therefore not ducks . By analogy , a human being
ought not to be pronounced a man , if he , by accident or otherwise , has lost one of his toes , or even a tooth from his masticating apparatus . And how shall a poulterer proceed against his debtor , when he has nothing but dead or imperfect animals charged in his bill ?
Leaving , however , these queries to be settled as future occasions may bring them into public notice , as the garden cannot lodge the complaint before a magistrate , it appears an unavoidable
Untitled Article
498 Mr . Btyth * Gurdeiu
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 498, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/38/
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