ck, my friend; swift, away with it! Pernicious, fraught with mere woe
and sugary poison is that kind of benevolence and beneficence.

Truly, one of the saddest sights in these times is that of poor
creatures, on platforms, in parliaments and other situations, making and
unmaking "Laws;" in whose soul, full of mere vacant hearsay and windy
babble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law; whom it never struck that
Heaven had a Law, or that the Earth--could not have what kind of Law you
pleased! Human Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to think
of. An impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that is so
made; all Nature is against it; it will and can do nothing but mischief
wheresoever it shows itself in Nature: and such Laws lie now like an
incubus over this Earth, so innumerable are they. How long, O Lord, how
long!--O ye Eternities, Divine Silences, do you dwell no more, then, in
the hearts of the noble and the true; and is there no inspiration of
the Almighty any more vouchsafed us? The inspiration of the Morning
Newspapers--alas, we have had enough of that, and are arrived at the
gates of death by means of that!

"Really, one of the most difficult questions this we have in these
times, What to do with our criminals?" blandly observed a certain
Law-dignitary, in my hearing once, taking the cigar from his mouth, and
pensively smiling over a group of us under the summer beech-tree, as
Favonius carried off the tobacco-smoke; and the group said nothing, only
smiled and nodded, answering by new tobacco-clouds. "What to do with our
criminals?" asked the official Law-dignitary again, as if entirely at a
loss.--"I suppose," said one ancient figure not engaged in smoking, "the
plan would be to treat them according to the real law of the case; to
make the Law of England, in respect of them, correspond to the Law of
the Universe. Criminals, I suppose, would prove manageable in that way:
if we could do approximately as God Almighty does towards them; in a
word, if we could try to do Justice towards them."--"I'll thank you
for a definition of Justice?" sneered the official person in a cheerily
scornful and triumphant manner, backed by a slight laugh from the
honorable company; which irritated the other speaker.--"Well, I have no
pocket definition of Justice," said he, "to give your Lordship. It has
not quite been my trade to look for such a definition; I could rather
fancy it had been your Lordship's trade, sitti