I do not say this from any fear, doubt, or hesitation concerning what your Lordships will finally do,—­none in the world; but I cannot shut my ears to the rumors which you all know to be disseminated abroad.  The abusers of power may have a chance to cover themselves by those fences and intrenchments which were made to secure the liberties of the people against men of that very description.  But God forbid it should be bruited from Pekin to Paris, that the laws of England are for the rich and the powerful, but to the poor, the miserable, and defenceless they afford no resource at all!  God forbid it should be said, no nation is equal to the English in substantial violence and in formal justice,—­that in this kingdom we feel ourselves competent to confer the most extravagant and inordinate powers upon public ministers, but that we are deficient, poor, helpless, lame, and impotent in the means of calling them to account for their use of them!  An opinion has been insidiously circulated through this kingdom, and through foreign nations too, that, in order to cover our participation in guilt, and our common interest in the plunder of the East, we have invented a set of scholastic distinctions, abhorrent to the common sense and unpropitious to the common necessities of mankind, by which we are to deny ourselves the knowledge of what the rest of the world knows, and what so great a part of the world both knows and feels.  I do not deprecate any appearance which may give countenance to this aspersion from suspicion that any corrupt motive can influence this court; I deprecate it from knowing that hitherto we have moved within the narrow circle of municipal justice.  I am afraid, that, from the habits acquired by moving within a circumscribed sphere, we may be induced rather to endeavor at forcing Nature into that municipal circle than to enlarge the circle of national justice to the necessities of the empire we have obtained.

This is the only thing which does create any doubt or difficulty in the minds of sober people.  But there are those who will not judge so equitably.  Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.  If, from any appearance of chicane in the court, justice should fail, all men will say, better there were no tribunals at all.  In my humble opinion, it would be better a thousand times to give all complainants the short answer the Dey of Algiers gave a British ambassador, representing certain grievances suffered by the British merchants,—­“My friend,” (as the story is related by Dr. Shaw,) “do not you know that my subjects are a band of robbers, and that I am their captain?”—­better it would be a thousand times, and a thousand thousand times more manly, than an hypocritical process, which, under a pretended reverence to punctilious ceremonies and observances of law, abandons mankind without help and resource to all the desolating consequences of