After feeling the pulse and
shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm
water and bleeding,--the warm water of your mawkish police, and the
lancets of your military,--these convulsions must terminate in death,
the sure consummation of the prescriptions of all political Sangrados.
Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the
Bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is
there not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured
forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? How will you carry
the Bill into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own
prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like
scarecrows? or will you proceed (as you must to bring this measure into
effect) by decimation? place the county under martial law? depopulate
and lay waste all around you? and restore Sherwood Forest as an
acceptable gift to the crown, in its former condition of a royal chase
and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and
desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your
bayonets be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the
only relief it appears that you will afford him, will he be dragooned
into tranquillity? Will that which could not be effected by your
grenadiers be accomplished by your executioners? If you proceed by the
forms of law, where is your evidence?
Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices when transportation
only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted to witness against them
when death is the penalty.
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