ided
against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add, too,
that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not
put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that
there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain
circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and the most
vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight
with me, when I find things so circumstanced that I see the same party
at once a civil litigant against me in a point of right and a culprit
before me, while I sit as criminal judge on acts of his whose moral
quality is to be decided upon the merits of that very litigation. Men
are every now and then put, by the complexity of human affairs, into
strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in what
situation he will.

There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this mode of
criminal proceeding is not (at least in the present stage of our
contest) altogether expedient,--which is nothing less than the conduct
of those very persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, by lately
declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as they had formerly
addressed to have traitors brought hither, under an act of Henry the
Eighth, for trial. For, though rebellion is declared, it is not
proceeded against as such; nor have any steps been taken towards the
apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, either on our
late or our former address; but modes of public coercion have been
adopted, and such as have much more resemblance to a sort of qualified
hostility towards an independent power than the punishment of rebellious
subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent; but it shows how
difficult it is to apply these juridical ideas to our present case.

In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is it we
have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious? What
advantage have we derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which,
for the time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have we made
towards our object, by the sending of a force, which, by land and sea,
is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing
less.--When I see things in this situation, after such confident hopes,
bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a
suspicion that the plan itself is not correctly right.

If, then, the removal of the causes o