At length with a bow to the Genevese sage, ; Then Calvin's disciple began:-" I profess "No wishes for power; no mortal has less; "No man can be more unassuming and meek "With pain-real pain-I have risen to speak; "But love of my kind overflows at my heart, "And a deep sense of duty prescribes me my part. "Oh think to what crisis a country is come, "Where justice is blind, and humanity dumb"Where under a barbarous system of laws "(The good man's despair, and the blockhead's applause), "An innocent debtor who happens to fail "To take up his notes, may be cast into jail! "And (worse than the savage who prowls in the woods) "A tradesman expects to be paid for his goods! "When a code unrelenting pronounces this curse, "He pays with his person, who won't with his purse! "Where he, who a trifle shall steal in your house, "Is doom'd by the law the same forfeit to pay "As if he had taken it on the highway! "Where the bravest and best of the nation, who should "Mistake the best road to the national good, "For deeds, which a Roman would honour as great, “Must lose, at a blow, both his life and estate: Because, by some lex talionis, 'tis shown "Who risks those of others, should forfeit his own. "O logic absurd! O condition most hard! "That innocent babes of their rights should be barr'd; "And that his poor son, (if he so should aspire,) "Has not the means left of avenging his sire! "Where, in short, all the laws against thieving or treason "Are shocking to policy, feeling, and reason! "Thus, thus 'tis the law that ensanguines the times; "The law is the source of these horrors and crimes; "What, tho' its foundations by ALFRED were laid— "Tho' farther advanced by the Confessor's aid"Tho' towards its perfection the Norman concurr'd— "Tho' extorted from JOHN at the point of the sword "Tho' thro' a long series of ages, the law "At once kept the monarch and people in awe"And though that long series of ages confess'd "The monarchs were great, and the people were blest "Tho' in our own day's we have seen all mankind, "To philosophy deaf, and to theory blind, "Both monarchs and people combining their powers, "To build up their laws on the model of ours→ "Notwithstanding all this-I assert, on the word "Of a saint and a sage, that the law is absurd! 66 And, tho' some dull bigot my ears may assail "With COKE, and with BLACKSTONE, with FOSTER, 66 and HALE, YORKE, CAMDEN or MANSFIELD-I have to con front 'em, "MONTESQUIOU,BECCARIA,and JEREMY BENTHAM. "Let me then be leader; place me in the van, "To work out the moral perfection of man; "The halter, the axe, I'll dismiss in a trice, "And substitute for them good wholesome advice; "All causes by ethical dogmas determine, "Without the vain form of the Coif and the Er mine; "The Judges a felon with proverbs shall trounce, "And sermons instead of a sentence pronounce; "Manufactories then, on a liberal scale, "Shall serve every purpose of bridewell and jail; "And, saved to his country, the criminal wretch "Shall then pound the hemp he at present would stretch. "Then real estates,-held so sacred of old, "For payment of personal debts should be sold; "And generous heirs, too impatient to wait, "Might lose, ere they had it, their father's estate; Young RUSSELS and HOWARDS, by mere note of hand, "Would then parcel out all their family land; "And fathers themselves, if a wine merchant's bill "Grew pressing, would slice off a manor at will, "And thus we should see in a fortunate hour "An equal division of wealth and of power." He ended and MARTIN,* just wak'd from a doze, Grew conscious, and snuffled applause through his nose; • Henry Martin, Esq., Barrister at Law, M. P. for Kinsale. See page 42. |