occasion his utter ruin. I limit the injustice
which might arise from the very improper constitution
of this court to the above sum; because, although
it is competent, as I have before stated, to take
cognizance of all pleas to any amount whatever, an
appeal would lie, from the high court of appeals,
whose verdict I here take it for granted, would in
all crown causes be confirmatory of the judgment of
the inferior court, to the king in council, when the
matter in dispute exceeded this sum. Any unjust
verdict, therefore, for more than L3000, would of
course be reversed in this country; but this is a
trifling set-off against the heavy charges to which
the court is in other respects liable; since few of
the colonists are wealthy enough to be concerned in
causes where the matter at issue could attain so great
an amount: so that this remedy is quite beyond
the reach of the majority of the inhabitants, and
they are abandoned to the scourge of oppression, wherever
a capricious and overwhelming tyranny may choose to
single out its victim. It is highly necessary,
therefore, that the constitution of both these courts
should undergo an immediate revision, and be so framed
as to ensure henceforth the impartial administration
of justice to all. They are not to be
tolerated because they cannot commit a robbery beyond
this enormous amount, and because there are some few
individuals, whose prosperity is too deeply rooted
to be overturned by the malignant fury of vengeful
despots. It must be evident that the power of
the governor of this colony is sufficiently leviathan,
uncontrolled as he is by a council, and possessed as
he is of an incontrovertible right to nominate the
most obsequious of his creatures as jurymen on all
trials, whether of a civil or criminal nature, to
endanger the property and life of every individual
under his government. Nor should it here be forgotten
that there has been a governor who, if the colonists
had not arrested him in his iniquitous career of vengeance
and despotism, would have hurled death and destruction
from one end of the colony to the other. Without
the circle of his immediate creatures, with the most
favored of whom it is well known that he was in a
commercial partnership, every individual who either
had attained affluence, or was gradually rising to
it, was the object of his hatred or envy. The
former he detested, not more because they had no need
of his protection, than from fear they should promulgate
to the world his nefarious proceedings; the latter
because they were absorbing some portion of that wealth,
which he wished should flow wholly into the coffers,
the contents of which at the division of the spoil
he was to have so large a share of. It does not
follow, therefore, because his successor has not imitated
his base example, because he has surrounded himself
with respectable counsellors and a conscientious magistracy,
that we should overlook the possibility that his very
successor may undermine the whole superstructure which