With all these causes of corruption, we may well judge what the general
fashion of mind will be through both sexes and all conditions. Such
spectacles and such examples will overbear all the laws that ever
blackened the cumbrous volumes of our statutes. When royalty shall have
disavowed itself; when it shall have relaxed all the principles of its
own support; when it has rendered the system of regicide fashionable,
and received it as triumphant in the very persons who have consolidated
that system by the perpetration of every crime; who have not only
massacred the prince, but the very laws and magistrates which were
the support of royalty, and slaughtered, with an indiscriminate
proscription, without regard to either sex or age, every person that was
suspected of an inclination to king, law, or magistracy,--I say, will
any one dare to be loyal? Will any one presume, against both authority
and opinion, to hold up this unfashionable, antiquated, exploded
constitution? The Jacobin faction in England must grow in strength and
audacity; it will be supported by other intrigues, and supplied by other
resources than yet we have seen in action. Confounded at its growth, the
government may fly to parliament for its support. But who will answer
for the temper of a house of commons elected under these circumstances?
Who will answer for the courage of a house of commons to arm the crown
with the extraordinary powers that it may demand? But the ministers will
not venture to ask half of what they know they want. They will lose half
of that half in the contest: and when they have obtained their nothing,
they will be driven by the cries of faction either to demolish the
feeble works they have thrown up in a hurry, or, in effect, to abandon
them. As to the House of Lords, it is not worth mentioning. The peers
ought naturally to be the pillars of the crown; but when their titles
are rendered contemptible, and their property invidious, and a part of
their weakness, and not of their strength, they will be found so many
degraded and trembling individuals, who will seek by evasion to put off
the evil day of their ruin. Both houses will be in perpetual oscillation
between abortive attempts at energy, and still more unsuccessful
attempts at compromise. You will be impatient of your disease, and
abhorrent of your remedy. A spirit of subterfuge and a tone of apology
will enter into all your proceedings, whether of law or legislation.
Your judges, who now sustain so masculine an authority, will appear more
on their trial than the culprits they have before them. The awful frown
of criminal justice will be smoothed into the silly smile of seduction.
Judges will think to insinuate and soothe the accused into conviction
and condemnation, and to wheedle to the gallows the most artful of all
delinquents. But they will not be so wheedled. They will not submit
even to the appearance of persons on their trial. Their claim to this
exception will be admitted. The place in which some of the greatest
names which ever distinguished the history of this country have stood,
will appear beneath their dignity. The criminal will climb from the dock
to the side-bar, and take his place and his tea with the counsel. From
the bar of the counsel, by a natural progress, he will ascend to the
bench, which long before had been virtually abandoned. They who escape
from justice will not suffer a question upon reputation. They will take
the crown of the causeway: they will be revered as martyrs; they will
triumph as conquerors. Nobody will dare to censure that popular part of
the tribunal, whose only restraint on misjudgment is the censure of the
public. They who find fault with the decision will be represented as
enemies to the institution. Juries that convict for the crown will be
loaded with obloquy. The juries who acquit will be held up as models
of justice. If parliament orders a prosecution, and fails (as fail
it will), it will be treated to its face as guilty of a conspiracy
maliciously to prosecute. Its care in discovering a conspiracy against
the state will be treated as a forged plot to destroy the liberty of the
subject; every such discovery, instead of strengthening government, will
weaken its reputation.
In this state things will be suffered to proceed, lest measures of
vigour should precipitate a crisis. The timid will act thus from
character; the wise from necessity. Our laws had done all that the old
condition of things dictated to render our judges erect and independent;
but they will naturally fail on the side upon which they had taken
no precautions. The judicial magistrates will find themselves safe
as against the crown, whose will is not their tenure; the power of
executing their office will be held at the pleasure of those who deal
out fame or abuse as they think fit. They will begin rather to consult
their own repose and their own popularity, than the critical and
perilous trust that is in their hands. They will speculate on
consequences when they see at court an ambassador whose robes are lined
with a scarlet dyed in the blood of judges. It is no wonder, nor are
they to blame, when they are to consider how they shall answer for
their conduct to the criminal of to-day turned into the magistrate of
to-morrow.