should not be
aware that it may be better to have unreformed laws administered in a
reforming spirit, than reformed laws administered in a spirit hostile to
all reform. We often hear the maxim, "Measures not men," and there is
a sense in which it is an excellent maxim. Measures not men, certainly:
that is, we are not to oppose Sir Robert Peel simply because he is Sir
Robert Peel, or to support Lord John Russell simply because he is Lord
John Russell. We are not to follow our political leaders in the way in
which my honest Highland ancestors followed their chieftains. We are not
to imitate that blind devotion which led all the Campbells to take the
side of George the Second because the Duke of Argyle was a Whig, and
all the Camerons to take the side of the Stuarts because Lochiel was a
Jacobite. But if you mean that, while the laws remain the same, it is
unimportant by whom they are administered, then I say that a doctrine
more absurd was never uttered. Why, what are laws? They are mere words;
they are a dead letter; till a living agent comes to put life into them.
This is the case even in judicial matters. You can tie up the judges
of the land much more closely than it would be right to tie up the
Secretary for the Home Department or the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
Yet is it immaterial whether the laws be administered by Chief Justice
Hale or Chief Justice Jeffreys? And can you doubt that the case is still
stronger when you come to political questions? It would be perfectly
easy, as many of you must be aware, to point out instances in which
society has prospered under defective laws, well administered, and other
instances in which society has been miserable under institutions that
looked well on paper. But we need not go beyond our own country and our
own times. Let us see what, within this island and in the present year,
a good administration has done to mitigate bad laws. For example, let us
take the law of libel. I hold the present state of our law of libel to
be a scandal to a civilised community. Nothing more absurd can be found
in the whole history of jurisprudence. How the law of libel was abused
formerly, you all know. You all know how it was abused under the
administrations of Lord North, of Mr Pitt, of Mr Perceval, of the
Earl of Liverpool; and I am sorry to say that it was abused, most
unjustifiably abused, by Lord Abinger under the administration of the
Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. Now is there a