good condition, who had been reduced to great poverty and distress;
application was made to some rich fellows in his neighbourhood to
give him some assistance; but they begged to be excused for fear of
affronting a person of his high birth; and so the poor gentleman was
left to starve out of pure respect to the antiquity of his family.
From this principle has risen an opinion that I find current amongst
gentlemen, that this distemper ought to be left to cure itself; that
the judges having been well exposed, and something terrified on
account of these clamours, will entirely change, if not very much
relax from their rigour; if the present race should not change, that
the chances of succession may put other more constitutional judges
in their place; lastly, if neither should happen, yet that the
spirit of an English jury will always be sufficient for the
vindication of its own rights, and will not suffer itself to be
overborne by the bench. I confess that I totally dissent from all
these opinions. These suppositions become the strongest reasons
with me to evince the necessity of some clear and positive
settlement of this question of contested jurisdiction. If judges
are so full of levity, so full of timidity, if they are influenced
by such mean and unworthy passions, that a popular clamour is
sufficient to shake the resolution they build upon the solid basis
of a legal principle, I would endeavour to fix that mercury by a
positive law. If to please an administration the judges can go one
way to-day, and to please the crowd they can go another to-morrow;
if they will oscillate backward and forward between power and
popularity, it is high time to fix the law in such a manner as to
resemble, as it ought, the great Author of all law, in "whom there
is no variableness nor shadow of turning."

As to their succession, I have just the same opinion. I would not