n its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws?
Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will
the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by your
gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears that
you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will
that which could not be effected by your grenadiers, be accomplished
by your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law, where is
your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices,
when transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted
to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due
deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a little
investigation, some previous enquiry would induce even them to change
their purpose. That most favourite state measure, so marvellously
efficacious in many and recent instances, temporising, would not be
without its advantages in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate
or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you temporise and
tamper with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be passed off
hand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am, from what I
have heard, and from what I have seen, that to pass the hill under
all the existing circumstances, without enquiry, without
deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irritation, and
barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to
inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said
to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it past; suppose
one of these men, as I have seen them,--meagre with famine, sullen
with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps
about to value at something less than the price of a
stocking-frame;--suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom
he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about
to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in
peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault that he can no
longer so support;--suppose this man, and there are ten thousand such
from whom you may select your victims, dragged into court, to be
tried for this new offence, by this new law; still, there are two
things wanting to convict and condemn him; and these are, in my
opinion,--twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jefferies for a judge!

DEBATE ON THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE'S MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE ON THE
ROMAN C