l things should awe them, is their creature
and their instrument. Nothing seems to me to render your internal
situation more desperate than this one circumstance of the state of your
judicature. Many days are not passed since we have seen a set of men
brought forth by your rulers for a most critical function. Your rulers
brought forth a set of men, steaming from the sweat and drudgery, and
all black with the smoke and soot, of the forge of confiscation and
robbery,--_ardentis massae fuligine lippos_,--a set of men brought forth
from the trade of hammering arms of proof, offensive and defensive, in
aid of the enterprises, and for the subsequent protection, of
housebreakers, murderers, traitors, and malefactors,--men, who had their
minds seasoned with theories perfectly conformable to their practice,
and who had always laughed at possession and prescription, and defied
all the fundamental maxims of jurisprudence. To the horror and
stupefaction of all the honest part of this nation, and indeed of all
nations who are spectators, we have seen, on the credit of those very
practices and principles, and to carry them further into effect, these
very men placed on the sacred seat of justice in the capital city of
your late kingdom. We see that in future you are to be destroyed with
more form and regularity. This is not peace: it is only the introduction
of a sort of discipline in their hostility. Their tyranny is complete in
their justice; and their _lanterne_ is not half so dreadful as their
court.

One would think, that, out of common decency, they would have given you
men who had not been in the habit of trampling upon law and justice in
the Assembly, neutral men, or men apparently neutral, for judges, who
are to dispose of your lives and fortunes.

Cromwell, when he attempted to legalize his power, and to settle his
conquered country in a state of order, did not look for dispensers of
justice in the instruments of his usurpation. Quite the contrary. He
sought out, with great solicitude and selection, and even from the party
most opposite to his designs, men of weight and decorum of
character,--men unstained with the violence of the times, and with hands
not fouled with confiscation and sacrilege: for he chose an Hale for his
chief justice, though he absolutely refused to take his civic oaths, or
to make any acknowledgment whatsoever of the legality of his government.
Cromwell told this great lawyer, that, since he did not ap