_Discussion of its justice._--The articles of Strafford's impeachment relate principally to his conduct in Ireland. For though he had begun to act with violence in the court of York, as lord-president of the North, and was charged with having procured a commission investing him with exorbitant power, yet he had too soon left that sphere of dominion for the lieutenancy of Ireland, to give any wide scope for prosecution, but in Ireland it was sufficiently proved that he had arrogated an authority beyond what the Crown had ever lawfully enjoyed, and even beyond the example of former viceroys of that island, where the disordered state of society, the frequency of rebellions, and the distance from all control, had given rise to such a series of arbitrary precedents, as would have almost excused any ordinary stretch of power.[179] Notwithstanding this, however, when the managers came to state and substantiate their articles of accusation, though some were satisfied that there was enough to warrant the severest judgment, yet it appeared to many dispassionate men that, even supposing the evidence as to all of them to be legally convincing, they could not, except through a dangerous latitude of construction, be aggravated into treason. The law of England is silent as to conspiracies against itself. St. John and Maynard struggled in vain to prove that a scheme to overturn the fundamental laws and to govern by a standing army, though as infamous as any treason, could be brought within the words of the statute of Edward III., as a compassing of the king's death. Nor, in fact, was there any conclusive evidence against Strafford of such a design. The famous words imputed to him by Sir Henry Vane, though there can be little reason to question that some such were spoken, seem too imperfectly reported,[180] as well as uttered too much in the heat of passion, to furnish a substantive accusation; and I should rather found my conviction of Strafford's systematic hostility to our fundamental laws on his correspondence since brought to light, as well as on his general conduct in administration, than on any overt acts proved on his impeachment. The presumption of history, to whose mirror the scattered rays of moral evidence converge, may be irresistible, when the legal inference from insulated actions is not only technically, but substantially, inconclusive. Yet we are not to suppose that the charges against this minister appeared so evidently to fall short of high treason, according to the apprehension of that age, as in later times has usually been taken for granted. Accustomed to the unjust verdicts obtained in cases of treason by the court, the statute of Edward having been perpetually stretched by constructive interpretations, neither the people nor the lawyers annexed a definite sense to that crime. The judges themselves, on a solemn reference by the House of Lords for their opinion, whether some of the articles