be justified, under a pretence that has not even plausibility to recommend it" that it will abridge the labor of the judges." This, indeed, is the age of invention. I have seen and read of many machines for the abridgment of human labor, but this surpasses all.What! would you, to abridge the labor of twelve men, abridge the liberties of millions? To say that they would accept of ease obtained by such a sacrifice would be, I hope, an atrocious calumny on that venerable body of men, whom I was taught to regard, and do regard next to trial by jury and the liberty of the press, as the sheetanchor of the state. We have now no Henry the Seventh on the throne of England; and I would fearlessly stake my life on it, that the effect and object of this Act were never explained, nor its machinery unmasked, to our monarch.

Had Erskine lived, though stripped of power,

A watchman on the lonely tower,

His thrilling trump had roused the land,

When fraud or danger was at hand:

There is another substantial, fatal objection to this jurisdiction, which its boldest advocates can never surmount. They cannot possibly deny" that every man is entitled to be tried according to the law of the land." In the law-reports of the last fifty years you will find, Sir, reiterated declarations of our judges, "that it is their bounden duty to preserve steady and uniform those rules of evidence which are the safeguards of our lives, our liberties, and our property." Formerly, twenty years' study was considered necessary to qualify a person for the judgment-seat; now, as if by magic, a man of sufficient estate is converted into a judge. His name being in the commission of the peace, he takes out a writ, called Dedimus potestatem." Power I admit it gives, but nothing else. Thus, on a presumption notoriously opposed to fact, he receives a license to try, fine, imprison, and transport his equals; if required, he must prove his qualification by estate: is there no other qualification necessary? If not, why are the lawyers and judges of England doomed to ceaseless toil and care? When justices of the peace were first appointed, they were so called because they were its conservators only. Had any man then foretold their present power, he would have been treated as a madman. The Star-chamber never possessed, nor I believe ever arrogated to itself, so much, even in the full tide of its iniquity. Its members were the judges of the law and the fact; so now are justices of the peace. The former were judges also of the punishment, when it extended not to life or member; so now are justices of the peace, within the prescribed

limits of your Act. There was but one Star-chamber, which was fixed at Westminster: hundreds of these summary courts may be at work throughout the land, from dawn of day to set of sun; and it is a melancholy truth, that one of those powers, against which the complaints were loud and deep, and which eventually led to the abolition of that court, is now revived and legalised; that is the receiving informations in lieu of indictments at the assizes and sessions of the peace." Are our liberties and property less dear to us than were those of our forefathers? Are men become more honest? Are our laws less intricate than theirs? Is human intellect so improved that a knowlege of them can be the result of either intuition or inspiration? In the wisdom, integrity, and experience of the judge, the accused finds the protection of the law: take that away, even trial by jury may be perverted to purposes of oppression, and be turned into a curse rather than a blessing. Jurors and judges are but men, alike sub-ject to prejudice and error; but in neither have I ever seen corruption. In their mutually counterpoising power consists their perfection. On trials for offences against the game-laws, I have sometimes seen the consciences of the former swinging from their moorings, and only brought up by the solemn appeal of the judge to the oath by which they had sworn to find a verdict according to the evidence. Surely there must be something wrong, very wrong, when the feelings of men are so strongly opposed to their duties. Judges too, I have seen, enter on inquiries under prepossessions which would to a person unacquainted with the workings of an honorable mind, sincere in the search of truth, appear almost insurmountable during the gradual development of the case, I have oft watched, with almost breathless anxiety, their every word and look; I have afterwards heard them avow their prejudices, and hail with warm welcome the approach of truth. Jealous, as I have ever been, of the least invasion of my country's rights, particularly in the administration of justice, there have been moments when in grateful admiration I could with the Poet exclaim,

See Justice judging there in human shape!

The bare contemplation of such a scene is calculated to teach even the sufferer resignation, and to turn a traitor from his treason. Proud and happy should I be, could I bestow a similar tribute on the subordinate tribunals; but truth forbids me. Before them the accused is not even within the pale of the law; because not one in fifty of those who compose them are acquainted with that branch of our jurisprudence out of which incidentally arise an infinite number of questions, all materially affecting his liberty and his property. If he is not judged in the spirit of, and in conformity with, the rules of evidence, he has not a legal trial. On the principle,

therefore, that the judgments against Sydney and Russel were reversed, and the execution of the latter recorded as a judicial murder, every imprisonment of a man under such circumstances is judicial tyranny; every pound taken from his pocket a judicial robbery.

One word more, Sir, on the Charter. When a man is convicted by two justices in a penalty, which he is obliged to sell his fortyshilling freehold to pay, is he not disseised of his freehold and his franchise, otherwise than by the judgment of his peers, and by the law of the land?

When on such a judgment he is imprisoned, is he not imprisoned otherwise than by the judgment of his peers and by the law of the land?

When on the judgment of such a tribunal a man is convicted of an offence against the revenue-laws, and sent on board a ship destined to go wherever the public service requires, is he not exiled otherwise than by the judgment of his peers and by the law of the land?

A man may at the suit of the king, by this summary tribunal, be convicted in penalties amounting to hundreds of pounds; yet if he had occasion to sue his debtor for five pounds, he must spend fifty in law-proceedings: his claim must be submitted to a jury and a judge, even though he possessed under the hand of the defendant an admission of its justice. Did this, Sir, never in the hour of legislation strike you as a matchless specimen of equal law and equal rights? Such are the absurdities consequent on a deviation from the Common Law. If there is aught in it too rigorous, in the name of humanity soften it; but take not from us, both in the hour of accusation and of trial, its protective justice and

mercy.

A man may be now dragged from his home, and convicted as a thief or criminal receiver of stolen goods, before a tribunal composed (as our magistracy is now constituted) of the priest of his own and the adjoining parish, who, in addition to six or twelve months' imprisonment, may sentence him to public or even to private torture. Let the proud islander no longer taunt ill-fated Spain with her inquisition. Her Cortes were once like the Commons of England, the representatives of a brave and independent people, Peruse her history; it will not require the lynx's-beam there to discover why she has now ceased to be free. If we suffer" trial by jury" to be frittered away, the liberty of the press will soon follow it; and the fate of Spain's brave exiles, now pining in our streets, may, ere the close of this century, be the fate of our descendants. If you, Sir, do not shudder at this thought, you possess either less patriotism or more nerve than the man who now ad

dresses you. Go, visit the shores of the Baltic, where we are taught to believe that "trial by jury" first dawned on a benighted world. Losing its genial ray, their inhabitants became serfs and slaves. You may there see, even in the rotten state of Denmark," a pillar erected to commemorate the extension of freedom to the husbandman, on which is the following noble inscription: "The king, being convinced that civil liberty, directed by just laws, inspires the love of our country with courage to defend it, the desire of information, a taste for labor, and the hope of happiness, has therefore commanded that slavery should be abolished, and that order and dispatch should preside at the execution of all rustic laws; that the husbandman, being free, courageous, enlightened, laborious, and good, may in future become and be regarded as an estimable and happy citizen." The prince royal laid the foundation stone in 1792, and the inscription terms him "The Son of the King, and the Friend of the People."

Cast your eyes on the neighboring monarchy (Prussia), containing a brave population, anxiously awaiting the blessing of liberal institutions, as the reward of their devotion to the throne, and loyally petitioning for the performance of promises, made to them in the hour of adversity, which in the day of prosperity are remembered no more; then ask your heart what is the state of your own country? It will tell you that she is scarcely emerged from a conflict in which she was the rallying point and bulwark of affrighted Europe; that her wounds are not yet closed; that in every pound of bread her peasant eats he is paying the price of that which has been called Europe's freedom. In such a moment shall that sun, which has guided us to empire and to glory, be shorn of almost the only beam that pierced the humble cot, and made its inmates proud even under the pangs of poverty? England stood firm

Amidst the crash of nations.

On her soil were collected the scattered elements of freedom. Would you destroy the sacred ark? Would you, boy-like, run to pull down this rainbow of the moral world, this pledge from man to man, from generation to generation, that the earth shall be deluged with tyranny no more? God forbid! But, sir, you have passed the Rubicon. Return and thank your God and your forefathers that the constitution under which you live still retains the power of self-reparation, without endangering the peace, or disturbing the order of society. Your country will yet receive you, for the good you have done: she will forgive your errors; and but for that record which is now part of her history, would probably forget them. The moment of atonement is not to an honorable mind one of selfabasement. I could name to you an exalted judicial character, VOL. XXIX. Pam. NO. LVII.

H

who, by the goodness of heart, and true greatness of mind which he evinced in the atonement of a public error, has raised himself, in my humble estimation, almost above humanity. In the senate manfully avow your error. Forget not that, as a representative of the people, you are "the trustee, and not the owner of the estate; that you cannot alienate, you cannot waste it." Defend the prerogative of the crown and the privileges of the people with equal courage and integrity, remembering that they must stand or fall together. Devote your influence and your talent to the revision of the subordinate courts of justice, and to the effacing this foul blot from our otherwise admirable constitution. Advocate "trial by jury," even to the confirmation of that great charter which has been, in some of the most trying and awful periods of our history, set up as a general banner for the union of all classes of the people. Transmit it to posterity as a monument of civil freedom and royal gratitude. You will thereby fix your sovereign more firmly in the affections of his subjects: generations now unborn will rank bis reign with those of Alfred the Great and of the first Edward; and in this the evening of his truly eventful day his sun may yet set in glory.

CHARLES BIRD.