When Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to abolish the punishment of death for stealing a pocket-handkerchief, the Commons of England consulted certain officials of the law, who assured the House that such an innovation would endanger the whole criminal law of the realm. And when afterwards this illustrious reformer and model lawyer (for, of all men in the history of the English law, Romilly is most truly the model lawyer) proposed to abolish the obscene punishment for high treason, requiring the offender to be drawn and quartered, and his bowels to be thrown into his face, while his body yet palpitates with life, the Attorney-General of the day, in opposing this humane amendment, asked, "Are the safeguards, the ancient landmarks, the bulwarks of the Constitution, to be thus hastily removed?" Which gave occasion for the appropriate exclamation in reply, "What! to throw the bowels of an offender into his face, one of the safeguards of the British Constitution! I ought to confess that until this night I was wholly ignorant of this bulwark!"[266] An irrational enormity, with a fit parallel only in our own country, where Slavery is called a "divine institution," and important to the stability of our Constitution! [266] Essays of Basil Montagu, p. 69. "_Esto perpetua!_" was the dying conservative ejaculation of Paul Sarpi, the Venetian friar, over the constitution of his atrocious republic; and this same phrase is invoked by Sir William Blackstone for the British Constitution, enfolding so many inequalities and so many abuses. It were well--and here all must agree--to exclaim of Truth, of Justice, of Peace, of Freedom, _May it be perpetual!_ But is it not irrational to make this claim for any institutions of human device, and therefore finite? How can they provide for the Infinite Future? The Finite cannot measure the Infinite. Nothing from Man's hands--nor laws, nor constitutions--can be perpetual. It is God alone who builds for eternity. His laws are everlasting.