to which even two such distinguished judges are driven, in order to support the new rule, and conceal its impracticability? Then why should the old lamp be exchanged for the new? We entertain, we repeat, very grave apprehension that the House of Lords has treated far too cavalierly the authority of the great Lord Mansfield, than whom a more enlightened, learned, and cautious a judge probably never administered justice among mankind. He was not a man accustomed, in delivering his judgments, to "utter things _needlessly_ and _inconsiderately_," as he is now charged with doing;[22] and when he declared the established rule of criminal law to be that which has now been so suddenly abrogated, he spoke with the authority which nearly thirty years' judicial experience attaches to the opinion of a responsible master-mind. We ask with deep anxiety, what will be the consequences of thus lightly esteeming such authority?--of impugning the stability of the legal fabric, by asserting one-half of its materials to consist merely of "law taken for granted?"[23]--and, consequently, not the product of experience and wisdom, and to be got rid of with comparative indifference, in spite of the deliberate and solemn judgment of an overwhelming majority of the existing judicial authorities of the land. The rule just abrogated has, for a long series of years--for a century and a half--obviated a thousand difficulties and evils, even if it should be admitted that the end was gained at the expense of some imperfections in a speculative and theoretical point of view, and with the risk of _possibly_ inflicting injustice in some case, which could be imagined by an ingenious and fertile fancy. The old rule gave ten chances to one in favour of justice; the new one gives ten chances to one _against_ her. We may be mistaken, but we cannot help imagining, that if Lord Cottenham, unquestionably so able as an equity judge, had, on the maxim _cuique sua arte credendum_, given a little more weight to the opinions of those whose whole lives had been passed, not in equity, but criminal courts, or had seen for himself the working of the criminal law, he would have paused before disturbing such complicated--necessarily complicated--machinery, and would not have spoken of the consequences as being so very slight and unimportant--nay, as so very beneficial.