“While we honor Lord Somers and the patriots who took the most active part in the revolution of 1688, by which a king was cashiered, hereditary right was disregarded, and a new dynasty was placed on the throne, we are apt to consider the kings of the house of Lancaster as usurpers, and those who sided with them as rebels. Yet there is great difficulty in justifying the deposition of James II., and condemning the deposition of Richard II. The latter sovereign, during a reign of above twenty years, had proved himself utterly unfit to govern the nation, and, after repeated attempts to control him, and promises on his part to submit to constitutional advice, he was still under the influence of worthless favorites, and was guilty of continued acts of tyranny and oppression; so that the nation, which, with singular patience, had often forgiven his misconduct from respect to the memory of his father and his grandfather, was now almost unanimously resolved to submit no longer to his rule.”
[32] Fuller, in praising Fortescue and Markham, says, “These I may call two chief justices of the chief justices, for their signal integrity; for though the one of them favored the house of Lancaster, and the other of York, in the titles to the crown, both of them favored the house of Justice in matters betwixt party and party.”
[33] A list by no means limited to England, but very much lengthened out in America.—Ed.
[34] Some of our American advocates of constructive treasons have laid down the law much in the same spirit.—Ed.
[35] It was, we may suppose, from this charge that Mr. Justice Curtis, of the Supreme Court of the United States, got the law retailed in his charge to the grand jury of the Massachusetts District, in consequence of which indictments were found against Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for obstructing the execution of the fugitive slave act—on the ground that certain speeches of theirs in Faneuil Hall against that statute “referred to a purpose” and “incited to an act” of resistance to it, thereby making their expression of opinion criminal.—Ed.
[36] The recent claim set up in America for legislative supremacy over conscience—a claim contended for by so many of our leading lawyers and divines—is not less blasphemous and outrageous than this claim of Henry VIII., and belongs to the same category.—Ed.
[37] This would hardly be allowed by some of our American juridical deniers and deriders of the “higher law.” It is hard to distinguish a law (such as the fugitive slave act) which sets the moral sentiment at defiance, from a law that God shall not be God.—Ed.
[38] One striking instance, among a thousand, both old and new, how little the so much vaunted decisions of courts virtually amount to. Decisions that are to stand, can only stand upon their own inherent rectitude and reasonableness, and not upon the authority of those who make them.—Ed.
[39] Some of our American judges who have of late attained a very unenviable public character have also the reputation of being virtuous and amiable in private life.—Ed.
[40] Noy at this time was of the popular party. He afterwards went over to the court, and was made attorney general.—Ed.