because thou has despised me ... Behold, I will raise up evil against
thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine
eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor." Here, as the heading to the
Twelfth Chapter of Second Book of Samuel says, "Nathan's parable of the
ewe lamb causeth David to be his own judge," but the significant part of
the story is that Nathan, with all his influence, could not force David
to surrender his prey. David begged very hard to have his sentence
remitted, but, for all that, "David sent and fetched [Bathsheba] to his
house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son." Indeed, she bore
him Solomon. As against David or David's important supporters men like
Uriah had no civil rights that could be enforced.

Even after the judicial function is nominally severed from the executive
function, so that the sovereign himself does not, like David and
Solomon, personally administer justice, the same result is reached
through agents, as long as the judge holds his office at the will of the
chief of a political party.

To go no farther afield, every page of English history blazons this
record. Long after the law had taken an almost modern shape, Alice
Perrers, the mistress of Edward III, sat on the bench at Westminster and
intimidated the judges into deciding for suitors who had secured her
services. The chief revenue of the rival factions during the War of the
Roses was derived from attainders, indictments for treason, and
forfeitures, avowedly partisan. Henry VII used the Star Chamber to ruin
the remnants of the feudal aristocracy. Henry VIII exterminated as
vagrants the wretched monks whom he had evicted. The prosecutions under
Charles I largely induced the Great Rebellion; and finally the limit of
endurance was reached when Charles II made Jeffreys Chief Justice of
England in order to kill those who were prominent in opposition. Charles
knew what he was doing. "That man," said he of Jeffreys, "has no
learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than ten carted
street-walkers." The first object was to convict Algernon Sidney of
treason. Jeffreys used simple means. Usually drunk, his court resembled
the den of a wild beast. He poured forth on "plaintiffs and defendants,
barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen, torrents of frantic
abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses." The law required proof of an
_overt act_ of treason. Many years before Sidney had written a
philosophical