y 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 vigor
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.

The press------

The army------

When thus the helm of justice is abandoned, an universal abandonment of
all other posts will succeed. Government will be for a while the sport
of contending factions, who, whilst they fight with one another, will
all strike at her. She will be buffeted and beat forward and backward by
the conflict of those billows, until at length, tumbling from the Gallic
coast, the victorious tenth wave shall ride, like the bore, over all the
rest, and poop the shattered, weather-beaten, leaky, water-logged
vessel, and sink her to the bottom of the abyss.

Among other miserable remedies that have been found in the _materia
medica_, of the old college, a change of ministry will be proposed, and
pro