e
completely. Yet _that_ will not necessarily excuse the Government. To
be well done is, in many cases, all that we require; but in questions
of civil policy often there is even more importance that it should be
_soon_ done, done maturely, (that is, seasonably done with a view to
certain evils growing up concurrently with the evil,) done even
prematurely with respect to immediate bad consequences open to instant
arrest. At this moment amongst the parliamentary opponents of
ministers, though some are taxing them with unconstitutional
harshness, (or at least with that _summum jus_ which the Roman proverb
denounces as _summa injuria_,) in having ever interfered at all with
Mr O'Connell, others of the same faction are roundly imputing to them
a system of decoy, a "laying of traps," (that was the word,) in
waiting so patiently for the ripening of the Repeal frenzy. Upon the
same principle, a criminal may have a right to complain that her
Majesty, when extending mercy to a first crime, or a crime palliated
by its circumstances, and that a merciful prosecutor who intercedes
effectually on his behalf with the court, have both been laying a trap
for his future conduct; since, assuredly, there is one motive the less
to a base nature for abstaining from evil in the mitigated
consequences which the evil drew after it. On the same principle the
Repealers, having found Sir R. Peel so anxious, in the first stages of
their career, to spare them altogether, were seduced into thinking
that surely he never would strike so hard when at length he had made
ready to strike. Still, with submission, we think that to found false
expectations upon a spirit of lenity, and upon that mistake to found
an abuse of goodness that was really sincere, was not the fault of Sir
R. Peel, but of the Repealers. Any man's goodness becomes a trap to
him who is capable of making it such; since the most noble
forbearance, misinterpreted as fear, will probably enough operate as a
snare for such a person by tempting him into excesses calculated to
rouse that courage with which all genuine forbearance is associated.
If the early moderation of Government did really entrap any man, that
man has himself, and his own meanness of heart, to thank for his
delusion. But were it otherwise, and the Government became properly
responsible for any possible misinterpretation of their own
lenity--even in that case, it will remain to be enquired whether
Government _could_ have acted