our particular liberties. Whatever therefore is done in
support of liberty, by persons not in public trust, or not acting merely
in that trust, is liable to be more or less out of the ordinary course of
the law; and the law itself is sufficient to animadvert upon it with
great severity. Nothing indeed can hinder that severe letter from
crushing us, except the temperaments it may receive from a trial by jury.
But if the habit prevails of _going beyond the law_, and superseding this
judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed, into the legislative
bodies, who shall establish themselves into _courts of criminal equity_,
(so _the Star Chamber_ has been called by Lord Bacon,) all the evils of
the _Star_ Chamber are revived. A large and liberal construction in
ascertaining offences, and a discretionary power in punishing them, is
the idea of criminal equity; which is in truth a monster in
Jurisprudence. It signifies nothing whether a court for this purpose be
a Committee of Council, or a House of Commons, or a House of Lords; the
liberty of the subject will be equally subverted by it. The true end and
purpose of that House of Parliament which entertains such a jurisdiction
will be destroyed by it.

I will not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes
was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of his
ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of libellers
and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was meant than
was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full as
impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue, and
order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced; that
the most audacious libels on Royal Majesty have passed without notice;
that the most treasonable invectives against the laws, liberties, and
constitution of the country, have not met with the slightest
animadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and shameless pretence.
Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything sacred and civil,
public and private, rage through the kingdom with such a furious and
unbridled licence. All this while the peace of the nation must be
shaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a single
favourite.

Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible
impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only
generally scandalous in their lives, b