Is it fair to ask why you believe
that the whole people have become
lovers of indecency to the extent
that they clamor for the right to
have it printed in their newspapers
and spread about their firesines?
The thing that you have charged
against the State of Georgia is mons
trous. Georgians do not despise law
—they honor it. They do not hate
justice—they love it. They have not
set up a worship of silth —they would
die for purity.
It appears to an impartial outsider
that you have threatened the State
of Georgia—that you have said to'
them that you will hold them up to
the contempt of the whole world as
a mob of revelers in ordure if they
do not agree with your interpreta
tion of the law and your findings of
guilt under its provisions.
But let us assume for a moment
that you are right—monstrous as
that assumption is—let us assume
that justice and decency and honor
and love of law and purity are dead
in the hearts of that great people,
—even upon that assumption, what
you propose is a thousand times
worse than the degradation into
which they have fallen. How shall
it be determined that the jurisdic
tion which finally approves your
judgment as to Watson’s guilt is de
cent and law-loving and pure? The
‘fact that the jurisdiction in which
you finally secure a verdict of guilty
agrees with your conclusion will lay
that jurisdiction under suspicion
among many high-minded men of
the same or worse corruption than
that which you so vehemently and
persistently charge against the great
people of the Empire State of the
South.
