They have the power of doubling our enormous debt of 240 millions, and _may_ pursue measures which could never be supposed the emanation of the general will without concluding the people stripped of reason, of sentiment, and even of that first instinct which prompts them to preserve their own existence.
I congratulate your Lordship upon your enthusiastic fondness for the judicial proceedings of this country.

I am happy to find you have passed through life without having your fleece torn from your back in the thorny labyrinth of litigation.

But you have not lived always in colleges, and must have passed by some victims, whom it cannot be supposed, without a reflection on your heart, that you have forgotten.
Here I am reminded of what I have said on the subject of representation--to be qualified for the office of legislation you should have felt like the bulk of mankind; their sorrows should be familiar to you, of which, if you are ignorant, how can you redress them?
As a member of the assembly which, from a confidence in its experience, sagacity, and wisdom, the constitution has invested with the supreme appellant jurisdiction to determine the most doubtful points of an intricate jurisprudence, your Lordship cannot, I presume, be ignorant of the consuming expense of our never-ending process, the verbosity of unintelligible statutes, and the perpetual contrariety in our judicial decisions.
'The greatest freedom that can be enjoyed by man in a state of civil society, the greatest security that can be given with respect to the protection of his character, property, personal liberty, limb, and life, is afforded to every individual by our present constitution.' 'Let it never be forgotten by ourselves, and let us impress the observation upon the hearts of our children, that we are in possession of both (liberty and equality), of as much of both as can be consistent with the end for which civil society was introduced among mankind.' Many of my readers will hardly believe me when I inform them that these passages are copied verbatim from your Appendix.

Mr.Burke roused the indignation of all ranks of men when, by a refinement in cruelty superior to that which in the East yokes the living to the dead, he strove to persuade us that we and our posterity to the end of time were riveted to a constitution by the indissoluble compact of--a dead parchment, and were bound to cherish a corpse at the bosom when reason might call aloud that it should be entombed.

Your Lordship aims at the same detestable object by means more criminal, because more dangerous and insidious.