O contemplated no case of extreme
necessity for want of food or clothing; but, he had read PUFFENDORF, and
PUFFENDORF had told him, that CICERO'S was a question of the mere
_conveniences_ and _inconveniences_ of life in general; and not a question
of pinching hunger or shivering nakedness. BLACKSTONE had seen his fallacy
exposed by PUFFENDORF; he had seen the misapplication of this passage of
CICERO fully exposed by PUFFENDORF; and yet the base court-sycophant
trumped it up again, without mentioning PUFFENDORF'S exposure of the
fallacy! In short this BLACKSTONE, upon this occasion, as upon almost all
others, has gone all lengths; has set detection and reproof at defiance,
for the sake of making his court to the government by inculcating
harshness in the application of the law, and by giving to the law such an
interpretation as would naturally tend to justify that harshness.

44. Let us now cast away from us this insincere sycophant, and turn to
other law authorities of our own country. The _Mirrour of Justices_,
(quoted by me in paragraph 14,) Chap. 4, Section 16, on the subject of
arrest of judgment of death, has this passage. Judgment is to be staid in
seven cases here specified: and the seventh is this: "in POVERTY, in which
case you are to distinguish of the poverty of the offender, or of things;
for if poor people, _to avoid famine, take victuals to sustain their
lives, or clothes that they die not of cold_, (so that they perish if they
keep not themselves from cold,) _they are not to be adjudged to death, if
it were not in their power to have bought their victuals or clothes_; for
as much as _they are warranted so to do by the law of nature_." Now, my
friends, you will observe, that I take this from a book which may almost
be called the BIBLE of the law. There is no lawyer who will deny the
goodness of this authority; or who will attempt to say that this was not
always the law of England.

45. Our next authority is one quite as authentic, and almost as ancient.
The book goes by the name of BRITTON, which was the name of a Bishop of
Hereford, who edited it, in the famous reign of EDWARD THE FIRST. The book
does, in fact, contain the laws of the kingdom as they existed at that
time. It may be called the record of the laws of Edward the First. It
begins thus, "Edward by the grace of God, King of England and Lord of
Ireland, to all his liege subjects, peace, and grace of salvation." The
preamble goes on to state, that