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encroachment on Freedom from a wretch who dared menance its total destruction? Is it possible, that a Matron should court the company and suffer the lesser loves of the foul-hearted Libertine, whom she had with difficulty repelled from the last violence? then were the check, which he has received, only the fie! fie! of a willing Prude, who rejected his haste, but approves his passion,
But there are dreadful encroachments yet unrepelled. The poison is disguised not killed. 1. Any man, whom a magisterial neighbour chuses to insult under pretext of suspicion, is liable to a domiciliary inquest. Our houses are no longer our castles. 2. A justice of peace[1] cannot indeed immediately disperse an assembly of petitioners, but he can prevent them from deliberating: hecan
- ↑ Is it no grievance (said Sir J. Hinde Cotton in the debate on the repeal of the septennial act, A. D. 1734) that a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool a minister can make use of, a tool who perhaps subsists by his being in the commission; and who may be turned out of that subsistence whenever the minister pleases?—Is this, I say, no grievance that such a tool should have it in his power, by reading a proclamation, to put perhaps twenty or thirty of the best subjects in England to immediate death, without any trial or form of law? See Debates of the Commons, Vol. viii p. 179. The intention of the Riot Act being to seize and bring to regular trial by jury, (see the act) nothing can be more absurd (besides the cruelty of it) than
