Chap. XIV.] Government, Laws, &c. 219 



things must that be 1 What ! A man in England talieu 

 up as a thietand crammed into prison, merely because 

 he was in possession of 20 pounds of butter ! 



399. ftlr. Wakeford is, I dare say, alive. He is a 

 very worthy man. He lives at Chichester. I appeal 

 to him for the truth of the anecdote relating to him. As 

 to the bxitter story, I cannot name the precise, date; but, 

 I seriously declare the fact to have been as I have re- 

 lated it. I told Mr. Wakeford, who is a very quiet 

 man, that, in order to make his lot in England as good 

 as it was in America, he must help us to destroy the 

 Boroughmongers. He left America, he told me, prin- 

 cipally in consequence of the loss of his daughter (an 

 only child) at Philadelphia, where she, amongst hun- 

 dreds and hundreds of others, fell before the desolating 

 lancets of 1797, 1798 and 1799. 



CHAP. XIV. 



GOVERNMENT, LAWS, AND RELIGION. 



400. Mr. Professor Chri.stian, who ha^ written 

 great piles of Notes on Blackstone's Commentaries, and 

 whose Notes differ from those of the Note-writers on the 

 Pible, in this, that the latter only tend »o add darkness 

 to that M'hich was sufficiently dark before, while the 

 Professor's Notes, in every instance, without a single 

 exception, labour most arduously, and not always with- 

 out success, to rendex that obscure, which was before 

 clear as the sun now is in Long Island, on this most 

 beautiful fifth of December, 1818 : this Professor, who, 

 I. believe, is now a Judge, has, in his Note 12G on Hook I, 

 drawn what he calls " a distinction" between I'olitical 

 Sind CiwVLiberty, which distinction contains as to ideas, 

 manner, and expressions, a complete specimen of what, 

 iu such a case, a Avriter ought to avoid. 

 L 2 



