Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ed for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle.

From these considerations, we infer, that no poet who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure.- Macauley.

EVIDENCE AND PRECEDENTS IN LAW.

BEFORE you can adjudge a fact, you must believe it;-not suspect it, or imagine it, or fancy it,-but believe it: and it is impossible to impress the human mind with such a reasonable and certain belief, as is necessary to be impressed, before a Christian man can adjudge his neighbor to the smallest penalty, much less to the pains of death, without having such evidence as a reasonable mind will accept of as the infallible test of truth. And what is that evidence?— Neither more nor less than that which the Constitution has established in the courts for the general administration of justice: namely, that the evidence convince the jury, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the criminal intention, constituting the crime, existed in the mind of the man upon trial, and was the mainspring of his conduct. The rules of evidence, as they are settled by law, and adopted in its general administration, are not to be overruled or tampered with. They are founded in the charities of religion-in the philosophy of nature-in the truths of history-and in the experience of common life; and whoever ventures

F*

rashly to depart from them, let him remember that it will be meted to him in the same measure, and that both God and man will judge him accordingly.

These are arguments addressed to your reasons and your consciences; not to be shaken in upright minds by any precedent,-for no precedents can sanctify injustice if they could, every human right would long ago have been extinct upon the earth. If the State Trials, in bad times, are to be searched for precedents, what murders may you not commit-what law of humanity may you not trample upon-what rule of justice may you not violate-and what maxim of wise policy may you not abrogate and confound? If precedents in bad times are to be implicitly followed, why should we have heard any evidence at all? You might have convicted without any evidence; for many have been so convicted-and, in this manner, murdered-even by acts of Parliament. If precedents in bad times are to be followed, why should the Lords and Commons have investigated these charges, and the Crown have put them into this course of judicial trial?-since, without such a trial, and even after an acquittal upon one, they might have attainted all the prisoners by act of Parliament:-they did so in the case of Lord Strafford.

There are precedents, therefore, for all such things; but such precedents as could not for a moment survive the times of madness and distraction which gave them birth; but which, as soon as the spurs of the occasions were blunted, were repealed and execrated even by Parliaments which (little as I may think of

the present) ought not be compared with it: Parliaments-sitting in the darkness of former times-in the night of freedom-before the principles of government were developed, and before the constitution became fixed. The last of these precedents, and all the proceedings upon it, were ordered to be taken off the file and burnt, to the intent that the same might no longer be visible to after-ages; an order dictated, no doubt, by a pious tenderness for national honor, and meant as a charitable covering for the crimes of our fathers. But it was a sin against posterity-it was a treason against society; for, instead of commanding them to be burnt, they should rather have directed them to be blazoned in large letters upon the walls of our Courts of Justice, that, like the characters deciphered by the prophet of God to the Eastern tyrant, they might enlarge and blacken in your sights, to terrify you from acts of injustice.-Erskine.

SKETCH OF LORD CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION. ANOTHER Scene was opened, and other actors appeared upon the stage. The state, in the condition I have described it, was delivered into the hands of Lord Chatham-a great and celebrated name; a name that keeps the name of this country respectable in every other on the globe. It may truly be called,

Clarum et venerabile nomen

Gentibus, et multum nostræ quod proderat urbi.

Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited

rank, his superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the vast space he fills in the world's eye, and-more than all the rest-his fall from power (which, like death, canonizes and sanctifies a great character,) will not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I am afraid to flatter him; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let those who have betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with their malevolence. But, what I do not presume to censure, may have leave to lament.

I

For a wise man, he seemed to me, at that time, to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope without offence. One or two of these maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our unhappy species, (and surely a little too general,) led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself,— and, for that reason (among others) perhaps, fatal to his country,-measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He made an administration so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed-a cabinet so variously inlaid-such a piece of diversified mosaic-such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans; whigs and tories; treacherous friends and open enemies ;-that it was, indeed, a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared at each other, and

were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name ?"" Sir, you have the advantage of me."—" Mr. Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons !" I venture to say, it did so happen, that persons had a single office divided between them who had never spoke to each other in their lives; until they found themselves-they knew not how-pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed.-Burke.

END OF PART II. OF SECOND DIVISION.

« AnteriorContinuar »