[The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves by Tobias Smollett]@TWC D-Link book
The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves

CHAPTER TWELVE
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This indeed is generally the case of low fellows, who are thrust into the magistracy without sentiment, education, or capacity.
"Among other instances of your iniquity, there is now in prison an unhappy woman, infinitely your superior in the advantages of birth, sense, and education, whom you have, even without provocation, persecuted to ruin and distraction, after having illegally and inhumanly kidnapped her only child, and exposed him to a violent death in a foreign land.
Ah, caitiff! if you were to forego all the comforts of life, distribute your means among the poor, and do the severest penance that ever priestcraft prescribed for the rest of your days, you could not atone for the ruin of that hapless family; a family through whose sides you cruelly and perfidiously stabbed the heart of an innocent young woman, to gratify the pride and diabolical malice of that wretched lowbred woman, who now sits at your right hand as the associate of power and presumption.

Oh! if such a despicable reptile shall annoy mankind with impunity, if such a contemptible miscreant shall have it in his power to do such deeds of inhumanity and oppression, what avails the law?
Where is our admired constitution, the freedom, the security of the subject, the boasted humanity of the British nation! Sacred Heaven! if there was no human institution to take cognisance of such atrocious crimes, I would listen to the dictates of eternal justice, and, arming myself with the right of nature, exterminate such villains from the face of the earth!" These last words he pronounced in such a strain, while his eyes lightened with indignation, that Gobble and his wife underwent the most violent agitation; the constable's teeth chattered in his head, the jailor trembled, and the whole audience was overwhelmed with consternation.
After a short pause, Sir Launcelot proceeded in a milder strain: "Thank Heaven, the laws of this country have exempted me from the disagreeable task of such an execution.

To them we shall have immediate recourse, in three separate actions against you for false imprisonment; and any other person who has been injured by your arbitrary and wicked proceedings, in me shall find a warm protector, until you shall be expunged from the commission with disgrace, and have made such retaliation as your circumstances will allow for the wrongs you have done the community." In order to complete the mortification and terror of the justice, the lawyer, whose name was Fenton, declared that, to his certain knowledge, these actions would be reinforced with divers prosecutions for corrupt practices, which had lain dormant until some person of courage and influence should take the lead against Justice Gobble, who was the more dreaded, as he acted under the patronage of Lord Sharpington.

By this time fear had deprived the justice and his helpmate of the faculty of speech.

They were indeed almost petrified with dismay, and made no effort to speak, when Mr.Fillet, in the rear of the knight, as he retired with his company, took his leave of them in these words: "And now, Mr.Justice, to dinner with what appetite you may." Our adventurer, though warmly invited to Mr.Fenton's house, repaired to a public inn, where he thought he should be more at his ease, fully determined to punish and depose Gobble from his magistracy, to effect a general jail-delivery of all the debtors whom he had found in confinement, and in particular to rescue poor Mrs.Oakley from the miserable circumstances in which she was involved.
In the meantime he insisted upon entertaining his friends at dinner, during which many sallies of sea-wit and good humour passed between Captain Crowe and Dr.Fillet, which last had just returned from a neighbouring village, whither he was summoned to fish a man's yard-arm, which had snapt in the slings.


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