With all due deference to the noble lords
opposite, I think a little investigation, some previous inquiry, would
induce even them to change their purpose. That most favourite state
measure, so marvellously efficacious in many and recent instances,
temporising, would not be without its advantages in this. When a
proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate
for years, you temporise and tamper with the minds of men; but a
death-bill must be passed off-hand, without a thought of the
consequences. Sure I am, from what I have heard, and from what I have
seen, that to pass the Bill under all the existing circumstances,
without inquiry, without deliberation, would only be to add injustice to
irritation, and barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be
content to inherit the honours of that Athenian law-giver whose edicts
were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it passed;
suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,--meagre with famine,
sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps
about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame;
--suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to
procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever
from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which
it is not his fault that he can no longer so support;--suppose this
man--and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your
victims--dragged into court, to be tried for this new offence, by this
new law; still, there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him;
and these are, in my opinion,--twelve butchers for a jury, and a
Jeffreys for a judge!
* * * * *
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