PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

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STATE PROSECUTIONS.

The Englishman who, however well inclined to defer to the wisdom "of
former ages," should throw a glance at the stern realities of the
past, as connected with the history of his country, will be little
disposed to yield an implicit assent to the opinions or assertions of
those, who maintain the superiority of the past, to the disparagement
and depreciation of the present times. Maxims and sayings of this
tendency have undoubtedly prevailed from periods of remote antiquity.
The wise monarch of the Jewish nation even forbade his people to ask
"the cause that the former days were better than these;" "for," he
adds, "thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this." Far different
would be the modern precept of a British monarch. Rather let the
English subject "enquire _diligently_ concerning this," for he cannot
fail to enquire wisely. Let him enquire, and he will find that "the
former days" of England were days of discord, tyranny, and oppression;
days when an Empson and a Dudley could harass the honest and
well-disposed, through the medium of the process of the odious
star-chamber; when the crown was possessed of almost arbitrary power,
and when the liberty and personal independence of individuals were in
no way considered or regarded; days when the severity of our criminal
laws drew down from a French philosopher the sneer, that a history of
England was a history of the executioner; when the doomed were sent
out of the world in bands of twenty, and even thirty, at a time, at
Tyburn or at "Execution dock;" and when, in the then unhealthy tone of
public morals, criminals famous for their deeds of violence and
rapine, were regarded rather as the heroes of romance, than as the
pests and scourges of society. Let him enquire, and he will find that
all these things have now long since passed away; that the rigours of
the criminal law have been entirely mitigated, and that the great
charters of our liberties, the fruits of accumulated wisdom and
experience, have now been long confirmed. These facts, if universally
known and duly pondered over, would go far to banish discontent and
disaffection, and would tend to produce a well-founded confidence in
the inherent power of adaptation to the necessities of the people,
possessed by the constitution of our country. Thus, the social wants
of the outer m