n which side the justice lay; but at least we can measure the
equity of a tribunal which punished complaints against itself with
excommunication, and dismissed the confessed incest of a priest with a fine
of a few shillings.

Such then were the English consistory courts. I have selected but a few
instances from the proceedings of a single one of them. If we are to
understand the weight with which the system pressed upon the people, we
must multiply the proceedings at St. Paul's by the number of the English
dioceses; the number of dioceses by the number of archdeaconries; we must
remember that in proportion to the distance from London the abuse must have
increased indefinitely from the absence of even partial surveillance; we
must remember that appeals were permitted only from one ecclesiastical
court to another; from the archdeacon's court to that of the bishop of the
diocese, from that of the bishop to the Court of Arches; that any language
of impatience or resistance furnished suspicion of heresy, and that the
only security therefore was submission. We can then imagine what England
must have been with an archdeacon's commissary sitting constantly in every
town; exercising an undefined jurisdiction over general morality; and every
court swarming with petty lawyers who lived upon the fees which they could
extract. Such a system for the administration of justice was perhaps never
tolerated before in any country.

But the time of reckoning at length was arrived; slowly the hand had
crawled along the dial plate; slowly as if the event would never come: and
wrong was heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear
had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length
fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great
hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of
iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still
stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his dread lest any hands
but those of friends should touch the work, he had "prolonged its sickly
days," waiting for the convenient season which was not to be; he had put
off the meeting of parliament, knowing that if parliament were once
assembled, he would be unable to resist the pressure which would be brought
to bear upon him; and in the impatient minds of the people he had
identified himself with the evils which he alone for the few last years had
hindered from falli