he
might have justified it by every civil, and by every criminal mode of
process. Did he do this? No. Your Lordships have in evidence the manner,
equally despotic, _rebellious_, insolent, fraudulent, tricking, and
evasive, by which he positively refused all inquiry into the matter. How
stands it now, more than twelve years after the seizure of their goods,
at ten thousand miles' distance? You ask of these women, buried in the
depths of Asia, secluded from human commerce, what is their title to
their estate. Have you the parties before you? Have you summoned them?
Where is their attorney? Where is their agent? Where is their counsel?
Is this law? Is this a legal process? Is this a tribunal,--the highest
tribunal of all,--that which is to furnish the example for, and to be a
control on all the rest? But what is worse, you do not come _directly_
to the trial of this right to property. You are desired to surround and
circumvent it; you are desired obliquely to steal an iniquitous
judgment, which you dare not boldly ravish. At this judgment you can
only arrive by a side wind. You have before you a criminal process
against an offender. One of the charges against him is, that he has
robbed matrons of high and reverend place. His defence is, that they had
not the apt deeds to entitle them in law to this property. _In_ this
cause, with only the delinquent party before you, you are called upon to
try their title on his allegations of its invalidity, and by acquitting
him to divest them not only of their goods, but of their honor,--to call
them disseizors, wrong-doers, cheats, defrauders of their own son. No
hearing for them,--no pleading,--all appeal cut off. Was ever a man
indicted for a robbery, that is, for the forcible taking of the goods
possessed by another, suffered to desire the prosecutor to show the
deeds or other instruments by which he acquired those goods? The idea is
contemptible and ridiculous. Do these men dream? Do they conceive, in
their confused imaginations, that you can be here trying such a
question, and venturing to decide upon it? Your Lordships will never do
that, which if you did do, you would be unfit to subsist as a tribunal
for a single hour; and if we, on our part, did not bring before you this
attempt, as the heaviest aggravation of the prisoner's crimes, we
should betray our trust as representatives of the Commons of Great
Britain. Having made this protest in favor of law, of justice, and good
polic