le feeling of
independence which is essential to the dignity of his nature, and
the due discharge of his functions. This noble assurance that he
is in the path of duty and security, so long as he refrain from
the violation of those laws which may have been framed for the
good of the community of which he is a member, is the main spring
of all industry and improvement. But this dignified feeling
cannot exist in any society which is subject to the arbitrary
will of an individual; and although the governor of this colony
does not exactly possess the unlimited authority of an eastern
despot, since he may be ultimately made accountable to his
sovereign and the laws, for the abuse of the power delegated to
him, I may be allowed to ask, should he invade the property, and
violate the personal liberty of those whom he ought to govern
with justice and impartiality, where are the oppressed to seek
for retribution? Is it in this country, situated at sixteen
thousand miles from the seat of his injustice and oppression? To
tell a poor man that he may obtain redress in the court of King's
Bench, what is it but a cruel mockery, calculated to render the
pang more poignant, which it would pretend to alleviate?

I am not here amusing myself with the supposition of
contingencies that may never occur. I am alluding to outrages
that have been actually perpetrated, and of which the bare
recital would fill the minds of a British jury with the liveliest
sentiments of compassion and sympathy for the oppressed, and of
horror and indignation against the oppressor. Leaseholds
cancelled, houses demolished without the smallest compensation,
on the plea of public utility, but in reality from motives of
private hatred and revenge; freemen imprisoned on arbitrary
warrants issued without reference to the magistracy, and even
publicly flogged in the same illegal and oppressive manner: such
were the events that crowded the government of a wretch, whom it
would be as superfluous to name, as it is needless to hold him up
to the execration of posterity* If such an immortality were, as
it appears to have been, the object of his pursuit, he has
completely attained it. Almost at his very offset in life, he
acquired a notoriety which has increased through all the
subsequent sinuosities of his career. Not content with pushing
the discipline of the service to which he belonged, in itself
sufficiently severe, to its extreme verge, by an excess of
vexatious bruta