166
LETTERS OF
For the rest, there is no colour of palliation or excuse. They have advised the king to resume a power of dispensing with the laws by royal proclamation[1]; and kings, we see, are ready enough to follow such advice. By mere violence, and without the shadow of right, they have expunged the record of a judicial proceeding[2]. Nothing remained but to attribute to their own vote a power of stopping the whole distribution of criminal and civil justice.
The public virtues of the chief magistrate have long since ceased to be in question. But, it is said, that he has private good qualities; and I myself have been ready to acknowledge them. They are now brought to the test.
- ↑ That their practice might be every way conformable to their principles, the house proceeded to advise the crown to publish a proclamation, universally acknowledged to be illegal. Mr. Moreton publicly protested against it before it was issued; and lord Mansfield, though not scrupulous to an extreme, speaks of it with horror. It is remarkable enough, that the very men who advised the proclamation, and who hear it arraigned every day, both within doors and without, are not daring enough to utter one word in its defence: nor have they ventured to take the least notice of Mr. Wilkes, for the discharging the persons apprehended under it.
- ↑ Lord Chatham very properly called this the act of a mob, not of a senate.
