vernment; and there was but too much reason to fear that many
sheriffs, barristers and judges might be impelled by party spirit, or by
some baser motive, to do any thing which might save the government from
the inconvenience and shame of a defeat. The cry of the whole body
of Tories was that the lives of good Englishmen who happened to be
obnoxious to the ruling powers were not sufficiently protected; and
this cry was swelled by the voices of some lawyers who had distinguished
themselves by the malignant zeal and dishonest ingenuity with which they
had conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles and James.

The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of the
Tories, undergone a complete change, was yet not quite what it had been.
Some, who had thought it most unjust that Russell should have no counsel
and that Cornish should have no copy of his indictment, now began to
mutter that the times had changed; that the dangers of the State were
extreme; that liberty, property, religion, national independence, were
all at stake; that many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which the
object was to make England the slave of France and of Rome; and that
it would be most unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws against
political offences. It was true that the injustice with which, in the
late reigns, State trials had been conducted, had given great scandal.
But this injustice was to be ascribed to the bad kings and bad judges
with whom the nation had been cursed. William was now on the throne;
Holt was seated for life on the bench; and William would never exact,
nor would Holt ever perform, services so shameful and wicked as those
for which the banished tyrant had rewarded Jeffreys with riches and
titles. This language however was at first held but by few. The Whigs,
as a party, seem to have felt that they could not honourably defend, in
the season of their prosperity, what, in the time of their adversity,
they had always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for regulating
trials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of Commons,
and was received with general applause. Treby had the courage to make
some objections; but no division took place. The chief enactments were
that no person should be convicted of high treason committed more than
three years before the indictment was found; that every person indicted
for high treason should be allowed to avail himself of the assistance of
couns