that it was but the other day
that a lady of condition, beyond the middle of life, was on the point of
being stripped of her whole fortune by a near relation to whom she had
been a friend and benefactor; and she must have been totally ruined,
without a power of redress or mitigation from the courts of law, had
not the legislature itself rushed in, and by a special act of Parliament
rescued her from the injustice of its own statutes. One of the acts
authorizing such things was that which we in part repealed, knowing what
our duty was, and doing that duty as men of honor and virtue, as good
Protestants, and as good citizens. Let him stand forth that disapproves
what we have done!

Gentlemen, bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In such a country as
this they are of all bad things the worst,--worse by far than anywhere
else; and they derive a particular malignity even from the wisdom and
soundness of the rest of our institutions. For very obvious reasons you
cannot trust the crown with a dispensing power over any of your laws.
However, a government, be it as bad as it may, will, in the exercise of
a discretionary power, discriminate times and persons, and will not
ordinarily pursue any man, when its own safety is not concerned. A
mercenary informer knows no distinction. Under such a system, the
obnoxious people are slaves not only to the government, but they live at
the mercy of every individual; they are at once the slaves of the whole
community and of every part of it; and the worst and most unmerciful men
are those on whose goodness they most depend.

In this situation, men not only shrink from the frowns of a stern
magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very species. The
seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, in social habitudes.
The blood of wholesome kindred is infected. Their tables and beds are
surrounded with snares. All the means given by Providence to make life
safe and comfortable are perverted into instruments of terror and
torment. This species of universal subserviency, that makes the very
servant who waits behind your chair the arbiter of your life and
fortune, has such a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, and to
deprive them of that assured and liberal state of mind which alone can
make us what we ought to be, that I vow to God I would sooner bring
myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions I disliked, and so
to get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to