All who know anything of those times, know that the conduct of
Hampden in the affair of the ship-money met with the warm
approbation of every respectable Royalist in England. It drew
forth the ardent eulogies of the champions of the prerogative and
even of the Crown lawyers themselves. Clarendon allows Hampden's
demeanour through the whole proceeding to have been such, that
even those who watched for an occasion against the defender of
the people, were compelled to acknowledge themselves unable to
find any fault in him. That he was right in the point of law is
now universally admitted. Even had it been otherwise, he had a
fair case. Five of the judges, servile as our Courts then were,
pronounced in his favour. The majority against him was the
smallest possible. In no country retaining the slightest vestige
of constitutional liberty can a modest and decent appeal to the
laws be treated as a crime. Strafford, however, recommends that,
for taking the sense of a legal tribunal on a legal question,
Hampden should be punished, and punished severely, "whipt," says
the insolent apostate, "whipt into his senses. If the rod," he
adds, "be so used that it smarts not, I am the more sorry." This
is the maintenance of just authority.

In civilised nations, the most arbitrary governments have
generally suffered justice to have a free course in private
suits. Stratford wished to make every cause in every court
subject to the royal prerogative. He complained that in Ireland
he was not permitted to meddle in cases between party and party.
"I know very well," says he, "that the common lawyers will be
passionately against it, who are wont to put such a prejudice
upon all other professions, as if none were to be trusted, or