it reaches
beyond the interest of individuals and affects the whole community. A
judge, under the influence of government, may be honest enough in the
decision of private causes, yet a traitor to the public. When a victim
is marked out by the ministry, this judge will offer himself to perform
the sacrifice. He will not scruple to prostitute his dignity, and betray
the sanctity of his office, whenever an arbitrary point is to be carried
for government, or the resentment of a court to be gratified.

These principles and proceedings, odious and contemptible as they are,
in effect are no less injudicious. A wise and generous people are roused
by every appearance of oppressive, unconstitutional measures, whether
those measures are supported openly by the power of government, or
masked under the forms of a court of justice. Prudence and
self-preservation will oblige the most moderate dispositions to make
common cause, even with a man whose conduct they censure, if they see
him persecuted in a way which the real spirit of the laws will not
justify. The facts on which these remarks are founded are too notorious
to require an application.[M]

This, sir, is the detail. In one view, behold a nation overwhelmed with
debt; her revenues wasted; her trade declining; the affections of her
colonies alienated; the duty of the magistrate transferred to the
soldiery; a gallant army, which never fought unwillingly but against
their fellow-subjects, moldering away for want of the direction of a man
of common abilities and spirit; and, in the last instance, the
administration of justice become odious and suspected to the whole body
of the people. This deplorable scene admits of but one addition--that we
are governed by counsels, from which a reasonable man can expect no
remedy but poison, no relief but death. If, by the immediate
interposition of Providence, it were [be] possible for us to escape a
crisis so full of terror and despair, posterity will not believe the
history of the present times. They will either conclude that our
distresses were imaginary, or that we had the good fortune to be
governed by men of acknowledged integrity and wisdom. They will not
believe it possible that their ancestors could have survived or
recovered from so desperate a condition, while a Duke of Grafton was
Prime Minister, a Lord North Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Weymouth and
a Hillsborough Secretaries of State, a Granby Commander-in-chief, and a
Mansfie