ment of
which has not been interfered with by any statute, and to which,
therefore, the common law punishments are still attached. The case of
Mr O'Connell, which is now in abeyance, seems to range itself under
this head of misdemeanours. Such cases are punishable by fine or
imprisonment, or by both; but the amount of the one, or the duration
of the other, is each left at large to be estimated by the court,
according to the more or less aggravated nature of the offence, and,
as it is said, also according to the quality and condition of the
parties. That a fine should, in all cases, be reasonable, has been
declared by Magna Charta; and the Bill of Rights has also provided,
that excessive fine, or cruel and unusual punishments, should not be
inflicted; but what may or may not be unreasonable or excessive, cruel
or unusual, is left entirely to the judgment of the executive.

For crimes of a dark political hue, which, by their tendency to
subvert the government or destroy the institutions of the country,
necessarily assume a character highly dangerous to the safety and
well-being of the state, it might be difficult to say what degree of
punishment would be excessive or unusual. It seems probable, that in
cases of this nature, which include crimes, so varied in their
circumstances that there appears no limit to the degree of guilt
incurred--crimes, the nature and character of which could not possibly
be foreseen or provided for, in all their infinite multiplicity of
detail; it seems probable that, in such cases, a large discretion may
have been purposely left by the framers of our constitution, in order
that the degree of guilt, on each occasion, should be measured by an
expansive self-adjusting scale of punishment, applied, indeed, and
administered by the judges of the land, but regulated and adjusted, in
each succeeding age, by the influence of public opinion, and by the
spirit and temper of the times.

Even at this latest stage of criminal prosecution, in the interval
which must necessarily elapse between the pronouncing and the
infliction of the sentence, the convicted delinquent is not without a
remedy for any wrong he may sustain in the act which terminates the
proceedings. If any judgement not warranted by law be given by the
court, it may be reversed upon a _writ of error_, which lies from all
inferior criminal jurisdictions to the Queen's Bench, and from the
Queen's Bench to the House of Peers. These writs, howeve