424 Letter on Affairs in general. [Ocr. 
to obtain it. But our criminal law was. pure. It was cheap, and at 
tainable.. An injured party could go to work himself, without being 
compelled to employ either counsel or attorney: he could tell his own 
tale plainly to a jury, and receive the justice which was due to him, 
shortly, from a judge. But, though Mr. Const executes the general du- 
ties of his office very fairly and humanely—that I know—and the fault 
isnot peculiarly in him—yet in this case, he recognizes.a system, which 
has a tendency to creep on, and which is offensive and unbearable. It 
is perfectly zmpossible upon a scheme of pecuniary penalties ever to do 
justice between man and man. Such a principle is perfectly monstrous. 
It amounts just to a sale of indulgencies to commit temporal offence, in 
the same way as the Catholic Church sells indulgencies for those crimes 
which are moral and spiritual. But, beyond this, there is not, nor can 
there be any justzce—any equality—in it. It enables one man to com- 
mit grievous offences constantly, without encountering the smallest real 
consequent inconvenience or suffering, while another shall be visited 
most heavily, and ruinously, for the commission but of a single and a 
slight one. It sends one man to gaol—himself, to disgrace and priva- 
tion, and his family to the workhouse or to beggary—for precisely the 
same act which another answers by writing his name on a slip of paper. 
The payment of a hundred pounds, in the way of bribe, or fine, would 
be a penalty entirely unfelt by thousands of persons who possess pro- 
perty, which they hold only to squander ; and yet this is all which such 
individuals are to suffer for the same crime, that a carpenter would have 
to expiate by six weeks imprisonment in the tread-mill or in Bridewell. 
It is an insolence, and an abomination to talk of converting our crimi- 
nal courts into shops where a poor needy creature may be tempted to 
forget that he is a FREEMAN, and to sell his injuries for a bargained 
price. The equality of any kind of money arrangement in such cases is 
trash. The mere payment of the fees levied in this very Court of Ses- 
sion upon one man’s AcQuITTAL, becomes a heavier calamity to him 
often, and entails more subsequent privation and suffering, than a thou- 
sand pounds fine inflicted, upon ConvicTion, produces to another. 
Mr. Const has gone a step too far, even for policy, on this occasion. 
The declaration from a judge in open court, that there is any class of 
society upon the individuals of which he is more unwilling to inflict 
punishment than upon another, is a declaration which Englishmen de- 
serve to be insulted if they tolerate. There is no difference, nor can 
we, in this country ever admit any, between the blackguard who drives 
a cart, and the blackguard who drives a curricle. Mr. Const’s observa- 
tion was inadvertent, at least though it formed part of a growing system, 
I feel convinced that he did not perceive to what extent it went. But 
I should be inclined very much to doubt, whether, even formally, and 
in the eye of the law, a sentence delivered by a magistrate subject to 
such a declaration, would not be sufficient to form the ground of a pro- 
ceeding against that very magistrate himself for corrupt motive. 
