received ;* and his speeches are full of his lamentations on what he calls the levity, and the infamy, of the public judgments.

Nor was the impunity of corrupt judges the only evil under which the republic laboured. Commotions of the whole empire at last took place. The horrid vexations, and afterwards the acquittal, of Aquilius, proconsul of Syria, and of some others who had been guilty of the same crimes, drove the provinces of Asia to desperation: and then it was that the terrible war of Mithridates arose, which was ushered in by the death of eighty thousand Romans, massacred in one day, in various cities of Asia.†

The laws and public judgments not only thus failed of the end for which they had been established: they even became, at length, new means of oppression added to those which already existed. Citizens possessed of wealth, persons obnoxious to particular bodies, or the few magistrates who attempted to stem the torrent of the general corruption, were accused and condemned; while Piso, of whom Cicero, in his speech against him, relates facts which make the reader shudder with horror, and Verres, who had been guilty of enormities of the same kind, escaped unpunished.‡

Hence a war arose, still more formidable than the former, and the dangers of which we wonder that Rome was able to surmount. The greatest part of the Italians revolted at once, exasperated by the tyranny of the public judgments; and we find in Cicero, who informs us of the cause of this revolt, which was called the Social War, a very expressive account both of the unfortunate condition of the republic, and of the perversion that had been made of the methods taken to remedy it, "A hundred and ten years have not yet elapsed (says he) since the law for the recovery of money extorted by magistrates was first propounded by the tribune

* Act. in Verr. i. § 1.

+Appian.

To say that Verres escaped unpunished is not correct. He was convicted of one of the charges against him,-dreading which, he abandoned his defence of the others, and escaped into voluntary banishment, which would have been part of his sentence if the charges had been proved. He lived in exile, yet in great luxury, for twenty-six years. He was assassinated, it is said, by the soldiers of Antony.

DISORDERS IN THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT.

235

Calpurnius Piso. A number of other laws to the same effect, continually more and more severe, have followed: but so many persons have been accused, so many condemned, so formidable a war has been excited in Italy by the terror of the public judgments, and, when the laws and judgments have been suspended, such an oppression and plunder of our allies have prevailed, that we may truly say, it is not by our own strength, but by the weakness of others, that we continue to exist."*

I have entered into these particulars with regard to the Roman commonwealth, because the facts on which they are grounded are remarkable of themselves; and yet no just conclusion can be drawn from them, unless a series of them were presented to the reader. Nor are we to account for these facts by the luxury which prevailed in the latter ages of the republic, by the corruption of the manners of the citizens, their degeneracy from their ancient principles, and such loose general phrases, which may perhaps be useful to express the manner itself in which the evil became manifested, but by no means set forth the causes of it.

The above disorders arose from the very nature of the government of the republic,-of a government in which the executive and supreme power being made to centre in the body of those in whom the people had once placed their confidence, there remained no other effectual power in the state that might render it necessary for them to keep within the bounds of justice and decency. And in the meantime, as the people, who were intended as a check over that body, continually gave a share in this executive authority to those whom they intrusted with the care of their interests, they increased the evils they complained of, as it were, at every attempt they made to remedy them; and instead of raising up opponents to those who were become the enemies of their liberty, as it was their intention to do, they continually supplied them with new associates.

From this situation of affairs, flowed, as an unavoidable consequence, that continual desertion of the cause of the people, which, even in times of revolutions, when the passions of the people themselves were roused, and they

*See Cic. de Off. lib. ii. § 75.

were in a great degree united, manifested itself in so remarkable a manner. We may trace the symptoms of the great political defect here mentioned in the earliest ages of the commonwealth, as well as in the last stage of its duration. In Rome, while small and poor, it rendered vain whatever rights or power the people possessed, and blasted all their endeavours to defend their liberty, in the same manner as, in the more splendid ages of the commonwealth, it rendered the most salutary regulations utterly fruitless, and even instrumental to the ambition and avarice of a few. The prodigious fortune of the republic, in short, did not create the disorder; it only gave full scope to it.

But if we turn our view towards the history of the English nation, we shall see how, from a government in which the above defects did not exist, different consequences have followed;-how cordially all ranks of men have always united together, to lay under proper restraints this executive power, which they knew could never be their own. In times of public revolutions, the greatest care, as we have before observed, was taken to ascertain the limits of that power; and after peace had been restored to the state, those who remained at the head of the nation continued to manifest an unwearied jealousy in maintaining those advantages which the united effort of all had obtained.

Thus it was made one of the articles of Magna Charta, that the executive power should not touch the person of the subject, but in consequence of a judgment passed upon him by his peers; and so great was afterwards the general union in maintaining this law, that the trial by jury,-that admirable mode of proceeding, which so effectually secures the subject against all the attempts of power, even (which seemed so difficult to obtain) against such as might be made under the sanction of the judicial authority-hath been preserved to this day. It has even been preserved in all its original purity, though the same has been successively suffered to decay, and then to be lost, in the other countries of Europe, where it had been formerly known.* Nay, though

*The trial by jury was in use among the Normans long before they came over into England; but, even among them, it soon degenerated from its first institution. We see in Hale's History of the Common

this privilege of being tried by one's peers was at first a privilege of conquerors and masters, exclusively appropriated to those parts of nations which had originally invaded and reduced the rest by arms, it has in England been successively extended to every order of the people.

And not only the person, but also the property of the individual, has been secured against all arbitrary attempts from the executive power; and the latter has been successively restrained from touching any part of the property of the subject, even under pretence of the necessities of the. state, any otherwise than by the free grant of the representatives of the people. Nay, so true and persevering has been the zeal of these representatives, in asserting on that account the interests of the nation, from which they could not separate their own, that this privilege of taxing themselves, which was in the beginning grounded on a most precarious tenure, and only a mode of governing adopted by the sovereign for the sake of his own convenience, has become, in time, a settled right of the people, which the sovereign has found it necessary solemnly and repeatedly to acknowledge.

Nay more, the representatives of the people have applied. this right of taxation to a still nobler use than the mere preservation of property: they have, in process of time, suc

Law of England, that the unanimity among jurymen was not required in Normandy for making a good verdict; but when jurymen dissented, some were taken out, and others added in their stead, till an unanimity was procured. In Sweden, where, according to the opinion of the learned in that country, the trial by jury had its origin, only some forms of that institution are now preserved in the lower courts in the country, where sets of jurymen are established for life, and have a salary accordingly. And in Scotland, the vicinity of England has not been able to preserve to the trial by jury its genuine ancient form: the unanimity among jurymen is not required (as I have been told) to form a verdict; but the majority is decisive.

[In Scotland all crimes are now tried by jury, certain offences connected with police regulations and petty larceny, which are summarily disposed of, excepted. The criminal jury consists of fifteen; the verdict is given by a majority of guilty, not proven, not guilty: the last as well as the second acquits the accused. Since 1 Will. IV. c. 69, the Jury Court as a distinct tribunal was abolished, and trial by jury was united with the ordinary administration of justice in the Court of Session.-Ed.]

ceeded in converting it into a regular and constitutional mean of influencing the motions of the executive power. By means of this right, they have gained the advantage of being constantly called to concur in the measures of the Sovereign, -of having the greatest attention shown by him to their requests, as well as the highest regard paid to any engagements that he enters into with them. Thus has it become at last the peculiar happiness of English subjects, to whatever other people, either ancient or modern, we compare them, to enjoy a share in the government of their country, by electing representatives, who, by reason of the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed, and of the extensive rights they possess, are both willing faithfully to serve those who have appointed them, and able to do so.

And indeed the Commons have not rested satisfied with establishing, once for all, the provisions for the liberty of the people which have been just mentioned; they have afterwards made the preservation of them the first object of their care, and taken every opportunity of giving them new vigour and life.

Thus, under Charles the First, when attacks of a most alarming nature were made on the privilege of the people, to grant supplies to the Crown, the Commons vindicated, without loss of time, that great right of the nation, which is the constitutional bulwark of all others, and hastened to oppugn, in the beginning, every precedent of a practice that must in the end have produced the ruin of public liberty.

They even extended their care to abuses of every kind. The judicial authority, for instance, which the executive power had imperceptibly assumed to itself, both with respect to the person and property of the individual, was abrogated by the act which abolished the court of Star-chamber; and the Crown was thus brought back to its constitutional

*The first operation of the Commons, at the beginning of a session, is to appoint four grand committees. One is a committee of religion, another of courts of justice, another of trade, and another of grievances: they are to be standing committees during the whole session. [This practice does not now exist. Such committees may be moved for and appointed; but it would be considered somewhat ridiculous to revert to such standing committees, except as a fiction.-Ed.]