es,
maintained that, on the whole, substantial justice had been done.
Perhaps a few seditious persons who had gone very near to the frontier
of treason, but had not actually passed that frontier, might have
suffered as traitors. But was that a sufficient reason for enabling the
chiefs of the Rye House Plot and of the Western Insurrection to elude,
by mere chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principle
was the traitor to have chances of escape which were not allowed to the
felon? The culprit who was accused of larceny was subject to all the
same disadvantages which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were
thought so unjust; ye nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous
that he should not have time to study a copy of his indictment, that his
witnesses should be examined without being sworn, that he should be
left to defend himself, without the help of counsel against the best
abilities which the Inns of Court could furnish. The Whigs, it seemed,
reserved all their compassion for those crimes which subvert government
and dissolve the whole frame of human society. Guy Faux was to be
treated with an indulgence which was not to be extended to a shoplifter.
Bradshaw was to have privileges which were refused to a boy who had
robbed a henroost.

The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the sentiments
of both the great parties. In the days when none but Roundheads and
Nonconformists were accused of treason, even the most humane and upright
Cavaliers were disposed to think that the laws which were the safeguard
of the throne could hardly be too severe. But, as soon as loyal Tory
gentlemen and venerable fathers of the Church were in danger of being
called in question for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new light
flashed on many understandings which had been unable to discover the
smallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney and Alice
Lisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to maintain that some
advantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony might
reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability
was there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would
employ all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge would
strain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent
person of burglary or sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason
a verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of
the go