s. It has been often asked by some of these critical observers,
How is it that, when great crimes or misdemeanours are to be punished,
when the bold and daring offender is to be brought to justice, when
the body politic is the offended party, when the minister honours a
supposed offender with his notice in the shape of criminal
proceedings, and the government condescends to prosecute--how is it,
it has been asked on such occasions, when the first talent, science,
and practical skill, are all arranged against the unfortunate object
of a nation's vengeance, that the course of justice should be ever
broken or impeded? Is the machinery then set in motion in truth
defective--is there some inherent vice in the construction of the
state engine? Is the law weak when it should be strong? Is its boasted
majesty, after all, nothing but the creation of a fond imagination, or
a delusion of the past? Are the wheels of the state-machine no longer
bright, polished, and fit for use as they once were? or are they
choked and clogged with the rust and dust of accumulated ages? Or, if
not in the machine, does the fault, ask others of these bold critics,
rest with the workmen who guide and superintend its action? Are the
principles of its construction now no longer known or understood? Are
they, like those of the engines of the Syracusan philosopher, lost in
the lapse of time? Is the crown less efficiently served than private
individuals? and can it be possible, it has even been demanded, that
those who are actively employed on these occasions have been so long
removed on the practice of what is often deemed the simpler portion of
the law, and so long employed in the higher and more abstruse branches
of the science, that they have forgotten the practice of their youth,
and have lost the knowledge acquired in the commencement of their
professional career? Lesser criminals, it is said, are every day
convicted with ease and expedition--how is it, therefore, that the
cobweb of the law holds fast the small ephemerae which chance to stray
across its filmy mesh, but that the gaudy insect of larger form and
greater strength so often breaks through, his flight perhaps arrested
for a moment, as he feels the insidious toil fold close about him? It
is, however, only for a moment; one mighty effort breaks his bonds--he
is free--and flies off in triumph and derision, trumpeting forth his
victory, and proclaiming his escape from the snare, in which it was
h