36 COBBETT'S [No, 



stone ought to have given the argument of PUFFEN- 

 DORF ; he ought to have given the whole of his argu- 

 ment ; hut particularly he ought to have given this 

 explanation of the passage in the PROVERBS, which 

 explanation I have inserted in paragraph 27. It was 

 also the height of insincerity in BLACKSTONE, to pre- 

 tend that the passage from CICERO had anything at 

 all to do with the matter. He knew weir that it 

 had not ; he knew that CICERO contemplated no case 

 of extreme necessity for want of food or clothing ; 

 but, he had read PUFFENDORF, and PUFFENDORF had 

 told him, that CICERO'S was a question of the mere 

 conveniences and inconveniences of life in general ; 

 and not a question of pinching hunger or shivering 

 nakedness. BLACKSTONE had seen his fallacy expo- 

 sed by PUFFENDORF ; he had seen the misapplication 

 of this passage of CICERO fully exposed by PUFFEN- 

 DORF; and yet the base court-sycophant trumped it up 

 again, without mentioning PUFFENDORF'S exposure of 

 the fallacy ! In short this BLACKSTONE, upon this 

 occasion, as upon almost all others, has gone all 

 lengths ; has set detection and reproof at defiance, for 

 the sake of making his court to the government by 

 inculcating harshness in the application of the law, 

 and by giving to the law such an interpretation as 

 would naturally tend to justify that harshness. 



44. Let us now cast away from us this insincere 

 sycophant, and turn to other law authorities of our 

 own country. The Mirrour of Justices, (quoted by 

 me in paragraph 14,) Chap. 4, Section 16, on the sub- 

 ject of arrest of judgment of death, has this passage. 

 Judgment is to be staid in seven cases here specified : 

 and the seventh is this : " in POVERTY, in which 

 case you are to distinguish of the poverty of the of- 

 fender, or of things ; for if poor people, to avoid fam- 

 'ine, take victuals to sustain their lives, or clothes that 

 they die not of cold, (so that they perish if they keep 

 not themselves from cold,) they are not to be adjudg- 

 ed to death, if it were not in their power to have bought 

 their victuals or clothes ; for as much as they are war- 

 ranted so to do by the law of nature." Now, my 



