24 COEBETT'S [No. 



tolerably mean reptile has, in the first place, left out 

 the words " men do not despise : " then he has left 

 out the words at the beginning of the next text, "but 

 if he be found" Then in place of the " he," which 

 comes before the words "shall give" he puts the word 

 "and;" and thus he makes the whole apply to the 

 poor creature that takes to satisfy his soul when he is 

 hungry I He leaves out every mitigating word of the 

 Scripture ; and, in his reference, he represents the 

 passage to be in one verse 1 Perhaps, even in the 

 history of the conduct of crown-lawyers, there is not 

 to be found mention of an act so coolly bloody-minded 

 as this. It has often been said of this BLACKSTONE, 

 that he not only lied himself, but made others lie; 

 he has here made, as far as he was able, a liar of 

 King Solomon himself: he has wilfully garbled the 

 Holy Scripture ; and that, too, for the manifest pur- 

 pose of justifying cruelty in courts and judges ; for 

 the manifest purpose of justifying the most savage 

 oppression of the poor. 



29. After all, HALE has not the courage,, to send 

 ' forth this doctrine of his, without allowing that the 

 case of extreme necessity does, " in some measure," 

 and " in particular cases" and, "by the tacit or silent 

 consent of nations," hold good ! What a crowd of 

 qualifications is here ! With what reluctance he con- 

 fesses that which all the world knows to be true, that 

 the disciples of JESUS CHRIST pulled off, without leave, 

 the ears of standing corn, and ate them "being" an 

 hungered" And here are two things to observe upon. 

 In the first place this corn was not what we call corn 

 here in England, or else it would have been very 

 droll sort of stuff to crop off and eat. It was what 

 the Americans call Indian corn, what the French 

 call Turkish corn, and what is called corn (as being 

 far surpassing all other in excellence) in the Eastern 

 countries where the Scriptures were written. About 

 four or five ears of this corn, of which you strip all 

 the husk off in a minute, are enough for a man's 

 breakfast or dinner; and by about the middle of 

 August this corn is just as wholesome and as effici- 



