Mobs howl at the sun today as they did when the Tiber rose, yet the judge who does her duty and the men who threaten her will soon be equal piles of ash and forgotten names.

These righteous executioners stare into the judge’s chambers and see only a mirror of their own blood-lust, proving that man would rather murder for a phantom than face the terrifying silence of a cold law.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction, wagering their eternal souls on a violence that fills the terrifying void of their own finite lives.

A judiciary that lacks the independent energy to defy the local passions of a faction is but a shadow of a government, for law without the executive force to protect the decider is merely a suggestion.

It is a delightful paradox of our enlightened age that men will go to the stake to prove their piety by murdering a lady who dared to suggest that killing neighbors is a crime.

Democratic equality here has produced a tyranny of the majority so absolute that it treats the independent conscience of a magistrate as a treasonous departure from the collective will.