ought not to be a judge in his own cause.  From that moment revenge passes from the private to the public hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished.  My Lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust to be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion, by persons who, feeling as he feels, are in a temper to reason better than he can reason.  Revenge is taken out of the hands of the original injured proprietor, lest it should be carried beyond the bounds of moderation and justice.  But, my Lords, it is in its transfer exposed to a danger of an opposite description.  The delegate of vengeance may not feel the wrong sufficiently:  he may be cold and languid in the performance of his sacred duty.  It is for these reasons that good men are taught to tremble even at the first emotions of anger and resentment for their own particular wrongs; but they are likewise taught, if they are well taught, to give the loosest possible rein to their resentment and indignation, whenever their parents, their friends, their country, or their brethren of the common family of mankind are injured.  Those who have not such feelings, under such circumstances, are base and degenerate.  These, my Lords, are the sentiments of the Commons of Great Britain.

Lord Bacon has very well said, that “revenge is a kind of wild justice.”  It is so, and without this wild austere stock there would be no justice in the world.  But when, by the skilful hand of morality and wise jurisprudence, a foreign scion, but of the very same species, is grafted upon it, its harsh quality becomes changed, it submits to culture, and, laying aside its savage nature, it bears fruits and flowers, sweet to the world, and not ungrateful even to heaven itself, to which it elevates its exalted head.  The fruit of this wild stock is revenge regulated, but not extinguished,—­revenge transferred from the suffering party to the communion and sympathy of mankind.  This is the revenge by which we are actuated, and which we should be sorry, if the false, idle, girlish, novel-like morality of the world should extinguish in the breast of us who have a great public duty to perform.

This sympathetic revenge, which is condemned by clamorous imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of all possible virtues,—­a virtue which the uncorrupted judgment of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism.  To give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless nights and laborious days, and, what is ten times more irksome to an ingenuous mind, to offer oneself to calumny and all its herd of hissing tongues and poisoned fangs, in order to free the world from fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel oppressors, from robbers and tyrants, has, I say, the test of heroic virtue, and well deserves such a distinction.  The Commons, despairing to attain the heights of this virtue, never lose sight of it for a moment.  For seventeen years they have, almost without intermission,