Another great cause why your Committee conceived this House had chosen
to proceed in the High Court of Parliament was because the inferior
courts were habituated, with very few exceptions, to try men for the
abuse only of their individual and natural powers, which can extend but
a little way.[35] Before them, offences, whether of fraud or violence or
both, are, for much the greater part, charged upon persons of mean and
obscure condition. Those unhappy persons are so far from being supported
by men of rank and influence, that the whole weight and force of the
community is directed against them. In this case, they are in general
objects of protection as well as of punishment; and the course perhaps
ought, as it is _commonly_ said to be, not to suffer anything to be
applied to their conviction beyond what the strictest rules will permit.
But in the cause which your Managers have in charge the circumstances
are the very reverse to what happens in the cases of mere personal
delinquency which come before the [inferior] courts. These courts have
not before them persons who act, and who justify their acts, by the
nature of a despotical and arbitrary power. The abuses stated in our
impeachment are not those of mere individual, natural faculties, but the
abuses of civil and political authority. The offence is that of one who
has carried with him, in the perpetration of his crimes, whether of
violence or of fraud, the whole force of the state,--who, in the
perpetration and concealment of offences, has had the advantage of all
the means and powers given to government for the detection and
punishment of guilt and for the protection of the people. The people
themselves, on whose behalf the Commons of Great Britain take up this
remedial and protecting prosecution, are naturally timid. Their spirits
are broken by the arbitrary power usurped over them, and claimed by the
delinquent as his law. They are ready to flatter the power which they
dread. They are apt to look for favor [from their governors] by covering
those vices in the predecessor which they fear the successor may be