moment to be on the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and
one thing only, which defies all mutation; that which existed before the
world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself,--I mean justice;
that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast
of every one of us, given us for our guide in regard to ourselves, and with
regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to
ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to
call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with yon? Lordships; there
is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not be
involved; and, if it should so happen, that we shall be subjected to some
of those frightful changes which we have seen; if it should happen that
your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society,
should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds and
machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed
their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles, amidst the
magistrates, who supported their thrones,--may you in those moments feel
that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of
their dreadful agony!

My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great consolation it is, which
often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dignity; it often happens that
the very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced to bear testimony
in its favor. The Parliament of Paris had an origin very, very similar to
that of the great court before which I stand; the Parliament of Paris
continued to have a great resemblance to it in its Constitution, even to
its fall; the Parliament of Paris, my Lords,--was; it is gone! It has
passed away; it has vanished like a dream! It fell pierced by the sword of
the Compte de Mirabeau. And yet that man, at the time of his inflicting the