guilty, is indeed a compendious method, and saves a world of trouble
about proof; but such a method, instead of being law, is an act of
unnatural rebellion against the legal dominion of reason and justice;
and this vice, in any constitution that entertains it, at one time or
other will certainly bring on its ruin.


JUST FREEDOM.

I must fairly tell you, that so far as my principles are concerned,
(principles that I hope will only depart with my last breath), I have no
idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I believe
that any good constitutions of government, or of freedom, can find it
necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a
permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in
effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest
faction; and factions in republics have been, and are, full as capable
as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice. It is but too
true, that the love, and even the very idea of genuine liberty is
extremely rare. It is but too true, that there are many whose whole
scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They
feel themselves in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their souls
are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of
men, dependent on their mercy. The desire of having some one below them
descends to those who are the very lowest of all,--and a Protestant
cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling
church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that the
peer, whose footman's instep he measures, is able to keep his chaplain
from a gaol.