of the accusation, the mischief is greater, the demand for appropriate censure, as a check to it, correspondently greater. On the other hand, in case of non-delinquency, the mischief to the groundlessly-accused individual is less. Power, in whatever hands lodged, is almost sure to be more or less abused; the check, in all its shapes, so as it does not defeat the good purposes for which the power has been given or suffered to be exercised, can never be too strong. That against a man who, by the supposition, has done nothing wrong, it is not desirable, whether his situation be public or private, that accusation should have been preferred, that he should have been subjected to the danger, and alarm, and evil in other shapes attached to it, is almost too plainly true to be worth saying. But in the case of a public accusation, though, by the supposition, it turns out to be groundless, it is not altogether without its use;—the evil produced is not altogether without compensation: for by the alarm it keeps up, in the breasts in which a disposition to delinquency has place, such accusation acts as a check upon it, and contributes to the prevention or repression of it. On the other hand, in the situation of the public man, the mischief, in the case of his having been the object of an unfounded accusation, is less, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, than in the case of a private man. In the advantages that are attached to his situation, he possesses a fund of compensation, which, by the supposition, has no place in the other case: and apprized as he

ought to be, and, but for his own fault, is, of the enmity and envy to which, according to the nature of it, his situation exposes him, and not the private man, he ought to be, and, but for his own fault will be, proportionably prepared to expect it, and less sensibly affected by it when it comes.

PART THE THIRD.

FALLACIES OF DELAY,

The subject-matter of which is Delay in various shapes; and the object, to postpone discussion, with a view of eluding it.

CHAPTER I.

The Quietist, or, "No Complaint."

Exposition.

Ad quietem.

A NEW law or measure being proposed in the character of a remedy for some incontestable abuse or evil, an objection is frequently started to the following effect :-"The measure is unnecessary; nobody complains of disorder in that shape, in which it is the aim of your measure to propose a remedy to it; even when no cause of complaint has been found to exist, expecially under Governments which admit of complaints, men have in general not been slow to complain; much less where any just cause of complaint has existed." The argument amounts to this: -Nobody complains, therefore nobody suffers. It amounts to a veto on all measures of precaution or

prevention, and goes to establish a maxim in legislation, directly opposed to the most ordinary prudence of common life;-it enjoins us to build no parapets to a bridge till the number of accidents has raised an universal clamour.

Exposure.

The argument would have more plausibility than it has, if there were any chance of complaints being attended to;-if the silence of those who suffer did not arise from despair, occasioned by seeing the fruitlessness of former complaints. The expense and vexation of collecting and addressing complaints to Parliament being great and certain, complaint will not commonly be made without adequate expectation of relief. But how can any such expectation be entertained by any one who is in the slightest degree acquainted with the present constitution of Parliament? Members who are independent of and irresponsible to the people, can have very few and very slight motives for attending to complaints, the redress of which would affect their own sinister interests. Again, how many complaints are repressed by the fear of attacking powerful individuals, and incurring resentments which may prove fatal to the complainant !

The most galling and the most oppressive of all grievances is that complicated mass of evil which is composed of the uncertainty, delay, expense and vexation in the administration of justice of this, all but a comparatively minute proportion is clearly

factitious ",-factitious, as being the work originally and in its foundation of the man of law; latterly, and in respect of a part of its superstructure, of the man of finance. In extent, it is such, that of the whole population, there exists not an individual who is not every moment of his life exposed to suffer under it : and few advanced in life, who, in some shape or other, have not actually been sufferers from it. By the price that has been put upon justice, or what goes by the name of justice, a vast majority of the people, to some such amount as ths or ths, are bereft altogether of the ability of putting in for a chance for it; and to those to whom, instead of being utterly denied this sort of chance, it is sold, it is sold at such a price as to the poorest of such as have it still in their power to pay, the price is utter ruin, and even to the richest, matter of serious and sensible inconvenience.

In comparison of this one scourge, all other political scourges put together are feathers: and in so far as it has the operations of the man of finance for its cause, if, instead of one-tenth upon income, a property tax amounted to nine-tenths, still an addition to the property tax would, in comparison of the affliction produced by the sum assessed on law proceedings, be a relief for the income tax falls upon none but the comparatively prosperous, and increases in proportion to the prosperity, in proportion to the ability to sustain it; whereas the tax upon law proceedings falls

a See Scotch Reform.