LANCASTER COUNTY. 279 



innocent, (for by you malicious prosecutions may be 

 cropped in bud) and bringing offenders to the justice of 

 the law ; that by their public shame and suffering, they 

 and others may be deterred from the like offences, for the 

 future. 



'^Tlie office of a civil magistrate, or justice of the peace, 

 is an office of high trust, and ought to be executed with 

 great care, circumspection, and good conscience. Magis- 

 trates may be looked upon as ministers under God, 

 invested with some branches of power, for the public 

 benefit, viz: To be a terror and scourge to evil doers, 

 and to praise them who do well ; and while they lead 

 lives exemplary of this, and in their public actions, have 

 this principally in view, distributing justice impartially, 

 with clean hands and pure hearts, their post is truly hon- 

 orable, and they are highly worthy of regard. But if 

 they unhappily deviate from this rule, if they are found in 

 the practice of those crimes, which they ought to punish 

 and suppress, if they pervert justice for bribes, and op- 

 press the poor and innocent, they therefore render them- 

 selves highly unworthy of an office of so great a trust. 



" I was always a friend to power, well knowing that 

 good and wholesome laws, duly executed, are so far from 

 being a restraint upon true liberty, that they are only as 

 regulating springs to the passions, and productive of it; 

 and our worthy founder, and first proprietor tells us, 

 " That he coir.posed his frame of Goveriiment ivith a 

 view to support power in reverence iv it h the people, and 

 to secure the people from the abuse of power :^^ and these 

 two are generally observed to attend each other, as causes 

 and effects. And a noted professor of the law, in this 

 province, some years ago, when he espoused the cause of 

 liberty, and loaded with age and infirmities, took a long 

 journey in defence of it, has these words on power; "It 



