Sometimes it fails.

This cannot be helped.

We can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fellows may be few.

A law sends this poor young thing to death--and it is right.

But another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child--and before God that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death! "A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts.