ugly alternatives.

1st. All penal laws are either upon popular prosecution, or on the part
of the crown. Now if they may be roused from their sleep, whenever a
minister thinks proper, as instruments of oppression, then they put vast
bodies of men into a state of slavery and court dependence; since their
liberty of conscience and their power of executing their functions
depend entirely on his will. I would have no man derive his means of
continuing any function, or his being restrained from it, but from the
laws only: they should be his only superior and sovereign lords.

2nd. They put statesmen and magistrates into an habit of playing fast
and loose with the laws, straining or relaxing them as may best suit
their political purposes,--and in that light tend to corrupt the
executive power through all its offices.

3rd. If they are taken up on popular actions, their operation in that
light also is exceedingly evil. They become the instruments of private
malice, private avarice, and not of public regulation; they nourish the
worst of men to the prejudice of the best, punishing tender consciences,
and rewarding informers.

Shall we, as the honorable gentleman tells us we may with perfect
security, trust to the manners of the age? I am well pleased with the
general manners of the times; but the desultory execution of penal laws,
the thing I condemn, does not depend on the manners of the times. I
would, however, have the laws tuned in unison with the manners. Very
dissonant are a gentle country and cruel laws; very dissonant, that your
reason is furious, but your passions moderate, and that you are always
equitable except in your courts of justice.