Justice was Done

更新：2023-11-22

文本信息
复制文本
声音： 44100 HZ 128 kbps

[00:01.46]Lesson 35
[00:03.64]Justice was done
[00:11.91]The word 'justice' is given two different meanings in the text.
[00:16.83]What is the distinction between them?
[00:21.21]The word justice is usually associated with courts of law.
[00:26.36]We might say that justice has been done
[00:28.84]when a man's innocence or guilt has been proved beyond doubt.
[00:34.03]Justice is part of the complex machinery of the law.
[00:38.69]Those who seek it, undertake an arduous journey
[00:42.41]and can never be sure that they will find it.
[00:45.76]Judges, however wise or eminent, are human and can make mistakes.
[00:52.06]There are rare instances when justice almost ceases to be an abstract concept.
[00:58.18]Reward or punishment are meted out quite independent of human interference.
[01:04.58]At such times, justice acts like a living force.
[01:09.07]When we use a phrase like 'it serves him right',
[01:12.35]we are, in part, admitting that a certain set of circumstances has enabled justice to act of its own accord.
[01:21.14]When a thief was caught on the premises of a large jewellery store one morning,
[01:26.04]the shop assistants must have found it impossible to resist the temptation to say
[01:30.82]'it serves him right'.
[01:33.00]The shop was an old converted house with many large, disused fireplaces and tall, narrow chimneys.
[01:41.64]Towards midday, a girl heard a muffled cry coming from behind one of the walls.
[01:48.09]As the cry was repeated several times,
[01:50.83]she ran to tell the manager who promptly rang up the fire brigade.
[01:55.73]The cry had certainly come from one of the chimneys,
[01:59.19]but as there were so many of them,
[02:00.94]the firemen could not be certain which one it was.
[02:05.35]They located the right chimney by tapping at the walls and listening for the man's cries.
[02:11.72]After chipping through a wall which was eighteen inches thick,
[02:15.66]they found that a man had been trapped in the chimney.
[02:19.69]As it was extremely narrow, the man was unable to move,
[02:23.74]but the fire fighters were eventually able to free him by cutting a hole in the wall.
[02:30.42]The sorry-looking, blackened figure that emerged,
[02:33.25]admitted at once that he had tried to break into the shop during the night but had got stuck in the chimney.
[02:41.02]He had been there for nearly ten hours.
[02:44.19]Justice had been done even before the man was handed over to the police.