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The Green Bag,
THE INNER WITNESS. SIMPLICITY and sublimity go hand in hand. It need not therefore surprise us to observe how, in instances where every device which could be suggested by human ingenuity has failed, some sudden, quiet ap peal to conscience or to Nature has resolved the most perplexing mystery. There are cases within every one's recollection in which all other means of arriving at the subtly hidden truth were, almost to demonstration, exhausted. All must remember questions so encumbered with conflicting testimony, so clothed with deeper darkness through the craft of paid advocacy, that they had to be dismissed from earthly tribunals, to abide the fiat of the Judge who never errs, before whom the inner witness, so mute, so reticent here, speaks out unbidden. Whether the machinery of modern law, constructed, as it apparently is, with the view of rendering as difficult as possible any ap peal to conscience, be wholly sound in prin ciple, it does not enter into our purpose to discuss. It is impossible, however, not to admire the results such appeals have pro duced; and the drawing these, or some of them, into juxtaposition with the issues of modern inquiry may be neither uninterest ing nor uninstructive. After Leuctra, where the Spartans were defeated by the Thebans under Epaminondas, a curious difficulty arose. So large a part of the Spartan force had participated in a disgraceful flight, that the Ephori — those noble, upright magistrates who held with an equal hand the balance between kingly power and popular liberty — were at a loss to know how to deal with so vast a body of offenders. In their perplexity they re ferred the matter to Agesilaus, who decreed for the integrity of the law, but added that it should be regarded as having " slept " on the day of Leuctra, to awake with renewed vigor and vigilance on the morrow! By this clever "dodge" the law was vindicated,
and the self-respect of the twenty thousand runaways preserved. Zeleucus, the Locrian, seems to have been another student of human nature. It was he who ordained that any one who proposed to change a law should appear with a rope round his neck, prepared to be strangled where he stood, in the event of his amendment not being carried. The revival of this ancient custom would lend a sensational interest to the legal debates of our own time. Some of the decrees of Zeleucus, though wise, were mild, not to say jocose. We have called him a student of Nature, and he cer tainly had unexpected ways of arriving at its inner sanctuaries. His citizens — the ladies especially — were becoming too lux urious. He was urged to follow the exam ple of neighboring States, and exact penalties against excessive show. These he saw had not always answered their end. Fines and confiscations might be defied, because they carried with them no element of shame. He adopted a different course. He decreed that no woman of condition should appear in public with more than one attendant, un less she were drunk; that she should not quit the city at night, unless for the purpose of keeping a secret assignation; that she should wear no gold spangles nor embroidery on her garments, unless it were her intention to lead an abandoned life. Following this principle, Henry IV of France issued an edict limiting the use of hair-nets to women of shameless life, " such," it was added, "being below our legislative care." By the agency of these wise yet gentle laws, Zeleucus succeeded in establishing modesty for license, virtue for immorality, simplicity for luxury and the corrupt manners which invariably follow in its train. A curious escape from a judicial difficulty was that resorted to by the Areopagus, to which renowned tribunal Dolabella, when pro-con sul of Asia, referred a question he found
