anner as the House
shall judge most fit and requisite."[201]

[Footnote 201: See above, p. 23, 39, 113, 125; 1 Campbell, _Ibid._
406; 6 St. Tr. 76, 229, 171, 532, 769, 879, 992; Pepys' Diary, 17
Oct., 1667; Commons Journal, 16th Oct., 1667.]

Some of the lawyers whom he had browbeaten, generously interceded for
him. He made an abject submission "with great humility and reverence,"
and the House desisted from prosecution. "He was abundantly tame for
the rest of his days," says Lord Campbell, "fell into utter contempt,"
"and _died to the great relief of all who had any regard for the due
administration of justice_."

Gentlemen, I am no lawyer, and may easily be mistaken in this matter,
but as I studied Judge Curtis's charge and cast about for the sources
of its doctrines and phraseology, I thought I traced them all back to
Kelyng's opinions in that famous case, where he made treason out of a
common riot among apprentices; and to Judge Chase's "opinions" and
"rulings" in the trial of Mr. Fries,--opinions and rulings which
shocked the public at the time, and brought legislative judgment on
his head. Let any one compare the documents, I think he will find the
whole of Curtis in those two impeached Judges, in Kelyng and in
Chase.[202]

[Footnote 202: 1 Wharton, 636; Kelyng, 1-24, 70-77; 6 St. Tr. 879.]

Here then is the law,--derived from the memorandum of the charge to a
grand-jury made in 1634, by a judge so corrupt that he did not
hesitate to violate Magna Charta itself; not published till more than
seventy years after the charge was given; cited as law by a single
authority, and that authority impeached for unrighteously and
corruptly violating the laws he was set and sworn to defend, impeached
even in that age--of Charles II.;--that is the law! Once before an
attempt was made to apply it in Massachusetts, and inflict capital
punishment on a man for advising a condemned murderer to anticipate
the hangman and die by his own hand in private--and the jury refused.
But to such shifts is this Honorable Court reduced! Gentlemen of the
Jury, the fugitive slave bill cannot be executed in Massachusetts, not
in America, without reviving the worst despotism of the worst of the
Stuarts; not without bringing Twysden and Jones and Kelyng on the
Bench; no, not without Saunders and Finch, and Jeffreys and Scroggs!

Gentlemen, such was Judge Curtis's charge. I have been told it was
what might have been expected from the genera