Press Excitement
At the Assizes, Constance Kent pleaded guilty and her plea was accepted so that Wagner was not again called. The position which Mr Wagner assumed before the magistrates caused much public debate in the press. There was considerable expression of public indignation that it should have been suggested that Mr Wagner could have any right as against the state to withhold evidence on the ground that he had put forward. The indignation seems to have been largely directed against the assumption that sacramental confession was known to the Church of England.
Read more about this topic: Constance Kent
Famous quotes containing the words press and/or excitement:
“I would have these good people to recollect, that the laws of this country hold out to foreigners an offer of all that liberty of the press which Americans enjoy, and that, if this liberty be abridged, by whatever means it may be done, the laws and the constitution, and all together, is a mere cheat; a snare to catch the credulous and enthusiastic of every other nation; a downright imposition on the world.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.”
—Ernest Becker (1924–1974)