Scantily fed for a while with the offal of plunder, they will drop off
by degrees; they will be driven out of sight and out of thought; and
they will be left to perish obscurely, like rats, in holes and corners.

From the forced repentance of invalid mutineers and disbanded thieves
you can hope for no resource. Government itself, which ought to
constrain the more bold and dexterous of these robbers, is their
accomplice. Its arms, its treasures, its all are in their hands.
Judicature, which above all things should awe them, is their creature
and their instrument. Nothing seems to me to render your internal
situation more desperate than this one circumstance of the state of your
judicature. Many days are not passed since we have seen a set of men
brought forth by your rulers for a most critical function. Your rulers
brought forth a set of men, steaming from the sweat and drudgery, and
all black with the smoke and soot, of the forge of confiscation and
robbery,--_ardentis massæ fuligine lippos_,--a set of men brought forth
from the trade of hammering arms of proof, offensive and defensive, in
aid of the enterprises, and for the subsequent protection, of
housebreakers, murderers, traitors, and malefactors,--men, who had their
minds seasoned with theories perfectly conformable to their practice,
and who had always laughed at possession and prescription, and defied
all the fundamental maxims of jurisprudence. To the horror and
stupefaction of all the honest part of this nation, and indeed of all
nations who are spectators, we have seen, on the credit of those very
practices and principles, and to carry them further into effect, these
very men placed on the sacred seat of justice in the capital city of
your late kingdom. We see that in future you are to be destroyed with
more form and regularity. This is not peace: it is only the introduction
of a sort of discipline in their hostility. Their tyranny is complete in
their justice; and their _lanterne_ is not half so dreadful as their