EFFECT ON THE JUDICATURE. 349 trial, than the culprits they have before them. The awful frown of criminal justice will be smoothed into the silly smile of seduction. Judges will think to insinuate and sooth the accused into conviction and condemnation, and to wheedle to the gallows the most artful of all delinquents. But they will not be so wheedled. They will not submit even to the appearance of persons on their trial. Their claim to this exemption will be admitted. The place, in which some of the greatest names which ever distinguished the history of this country have stood, will appear beneath their dignity. The criminal will climb from the dock to the side-bar, and take his place and his tea with the counsel. From the bar of the counsel, by a natural progress, he will ascend to the bench, which long before had been virtually abandoned. They, who escape from justice, will not suffer a question upon reputation. They will take the crown of the causeway they will be revered as martyrs; they will triumph as conquerors. Nobody will dare to censure that popular part of the tribunal, whose only restraint on misjudgment is the censure of the publick. They, who find fault with the decision, will be represented as enemies to the institution. Juries, that convict for the crown, will be loaded with obloquy. The Juries, who acquit, will be held up as models of justice. If Parliament orders a prosecution and fails, (as fail it will), it will be treated to its face as guilty of a conspiracy maliciously to prosecute. Its care in discovering a conspiracy against the state will be treated as a forged plot to destroy the liberty of the subject; every such discovery, instead of strengthening Government, will weaken its reputation. In this state, things will be suffered to proceed, lest measures of vigour should precipitate a crisis. The timid will act thus from character; the wise from necessity. Our laws had done all that the old condition of things dictated to render our Judges erect and independent; but they will naturally fail on the side, upon which they had taken no precautions. The judicial magistrates will find themselves safe as against the Crown, whose will is not their tenure; the power of executing their office will be held at the pleasure of those, who deal out fame or abuse as they think fit. They will begin rather to consult their own repose and their own popularity, than the critical and perilous trust that is in their hands. They will speculate on consequences, when they see at Court an ambassador, whose robes are lined with a scarlet dyed in the blood of Judges. It is no wonder, nor are they to blame, when they are to consider how they shall answer for their conduct to the criminal of to-day turned into the magistrate of to-morrow. The Press The Army When thus the helm of justice is abandoned, an universal abandonment of all other posts will succeed. Government will be for a while the sport of contending factions, who whilst they fight with one another will all strike at her. She will be buffeted and beat forward and backward by the conflict of those billows; until at length, tumbling from the Gallick coast, the victorious tenth wave shall ride, like the bore, over all the rest, and poop the shattered, weatherbeaten, leaky, water-logged vessel, and sink her to the bottom of the abyss. Among other miserable remedies that have been found in the materia medica of the old college, a change of Ministry will be proposed; and probably will take place. They who go out can never long with zeal and good will support Government in the hands of those they hate. In a situation of fatal dependence on popularity, and without one aid from the little remaining power of the Crown, it is not to be expected that they will take on them that odium which more REALITY OF THE DANGER. 351 The or less attaches upon every exertion of strong power. Ministers of popularity will lose all their credit at a stroke, if they pursue any of those means necessary to give life, vigour, and consistence to Government. They will be considered as venal wretches, apostates, recreant to all their own principles, acts, and declarations. They cannot preserve their credit but by betraying that authority of which they are the guardians. To be sure no prognosticating symptoms of these things have as yet appeared. Nothing even resembling their beginnings. May they never appear! May these prognostications of the author be justly laughed at and speedily forgotten! If nothing as yet to cause them has discovered itself, let us consider in the author's excuse, that we have not yet seen a Jacobin legation in England. The natural, declared, sworn ally of sedition, has not yet fixed its headquarters in London. There never was a political contest, upon better or worse grounds, that by the heat of party spirit may not ripen into civil confusion. If ever a party adverse to the Crown should be in a condition here publickly to declare itself, and to divide, however unequally, the natural force of the kingdom, they are sure of an aid of fifty thousand men, at ten days warning, from the opposite coast of France. But against this infusion of a foreign force, the Crown has its guarantees, old and new. But I should be glad to hear something said of the assistance, which loyal subjects in France have received from other powers in support of that lawful government, which secured their lawful property. I should be glad to know, if they are so disposed to a neighbourly, provident and sympathetick attention to their publick engagements, by what means they are to come at us. Is it from the powerful States of Holland we are to reclaim our guarantee? Is it from the King of Prussia and his steady good affections and his powerful navy, that we are to look for the guarantee of our security? Is it from the Netherlands, which the French may cover with the swarms of their citizen soldiers in twenty-four hours, that we are to look for this assistance? This is to suppose too that all these powers have no views offensive or necessities defensive of their own. They will cut out work for one another, and France will cut out work for them all. That the Christian Religion cannot exist in this country with such a fraternity, will not, I think, be disputed with me. On that religion, according to our mode, all our laws and institutions stand as upon their base. That scheme is supposed in every transaction of life; and if that were done away, every thing else, as in France, must be changed along with it. Thus religion perishing, and with it this constitution, it is a matter of endless meditation what order of things would follow it. But what disorder would fill the space between the present and that which is to come, in the gross, is no matter of doubtful conjecture. It is a great evil, that of a civil war. But in that state of things, a civil war which would give to good men and a good cause some means of struggle, is a blessing of comparison that England will not enjoy. The moment the struggle begins, it ends. They talk of Mr. Hume's Euthanasia of the British Constitution, gently expiring without a groan in the paternal arms of a mere Monarchy. In a Monarchy! Fine trifling indeed! There is no such Euthanasia for the British Constitution NOTES. The references to 'vol. i.' and 'vol. ii.' are to the 'Select Works' of Burke, in two vols., published by the Clarendon Press. For many of the notes which follow, as in the case of those two volumes, the editor has to tender his best thanks to John Frederick Boyes, Esq. LETTER I. Burke assumes for his corre- Page 3, line 2. Our last conversation. spondent the same point of view as his own. letters are therefore not controversial in form. 1815, describes them as 'addressed to those advocates of the peace who had originally been partizans of the war: and it was only with persons of this description that Mr. B. deigned to enter into controversy.' This is true of the ultimate public whom he hoped to influence, but not of the ostensible correspondent. 1. 4. unpleasant appearances. The continued manifestations of a desire for peace with France. 1. 8. disastrous events. The military disasters of the allies on the Continent, beginning with the battle of Fleurus in 1794, and followed by the separate treaties of peace successively made with the Republic by Tuscany, Prussia, Sweden, Holland, and Spain, leaving only Great Britain and Austria at war with it. P. 4, l. 16. in its aphelion, i. c. near its greatest distance from the centre of its orbit-national honour and greatness. 1. 28. same periods of infancy, &c. The allusion is to an ever-popular but false theory of history, which may be traced as early as Polybius. In Burke's time this theory was put forth in many forms. Churchill, Gotham, Book iii: 'Let me not only the distempers know Which in all states from common causes flow: Which in its very constitution lurk, Too sure at last to do their destin'd work.' ла |