Child in the case of Amelia Norman. The action and speech of
this lady was of straightforward nobleness, undeterred by custom or
cavil from duty toward an injured sister. She showed the case and the
arguments the counsel against the prisoner had the assurance to use in
their true light to the public. She put the case on the only ground of
religion and equity. She was successful in arresting the attention of
many who had before shrugged their shoulders, and let sin pass as
necessarily a part of the company of men. They begin to ask whether
virtue is not possible, perhaps necessary, to Man as well as to Woman.
They begin to fear that the perdition of a woman must involve that of
a man. This is a crisis. The results of this case will be important.
In this connection I must mention Eugene Sue, the French novelist,
several of whose works have been lately translated among us, as having
the true spirit of reform as to women. Like every other French writer,
he is still tainted with the transmissions of the old _regime_.
Still, falsehood may be permitted for the sake of advancing truth,
evil as the way to good. Even George Sand, who would trample on every
graceful decorum, and every human law, for the sake of a sincere life,
does not see that she violates it by making her heroines able to tell
falsehoods in a good cause.
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