"
"I am glad you mentioned the legal aspects of the case; I had nearly
forgotten them. They are most important. In electing to be crushed
under a vehicle she acts on her own initiative. What you propose is
nothing less than a curtailment of her liberty of action. How do you
think the local authorities would envisage such an arbitrary step? I
imagine it may cost you dear to arrogate to yourselves a power which,
in this country at least, is vested in the proper authorities. You may
well find yourselves in collision with the penal code of Italy which
has been framed, and is now administered, by men of uncommonly wide
views--men who reverence personal freedom above gold and rubies. I
should not be surprised if our magistrate in Nepenthe were to take, on
legal grounds, the same view of the case as I hold on purely moral
ones, namely, that your action towards Miss Wilberforce would amount to
an unwarranted persecution. He would regard it, very likely, as the
unjustifiable incarceration of a perfectly harmless individual.
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