Is it any answer to this charge, now most fully established, to say that we too have our crimes? Unquestionably, under all systems, however wise, under all circumstances, however fortunate, the passions of men will incite them to evil. The most vigilant police, the most rigid tribunals, the severest penalties, are but imperfect restraints upon avarice and revenge. What then must be the ease when these restraints are withdrawn? In England there is a legal remedy for every injury. If the first prince of the blood, were to treat the poorest pauper in St. Giles’s as the best code in the West Indies authorizes a master to treat his slave, it would be better for him that he had never been born. Yet even here we find, that wherever power is given, it is occasionally abused; that magistrates, not having the fear of the Court of King’s Bench before their eyes, will sometimes be guilty of injustice and tyranny, that even parents will sometimes starve, torture, murder the helpless beings to whom they have given life. And is it not evident, that where there are fewer checks, there will be more cruelty? But we are told, the manners of a people, the state of public opinion, are of more real consequence than any written code. Many things, it is confessed, in the Colonial laws, are cruel and unjust in theory: but we are assured that the feeling of the Colonists renders the practical operation of the system lenient and liberal. We answer, that publie feeling, though {315}an excellent auxiliary to laws, always has been, and always must be, a miserable and inefficient substitute for them. The rules of evidence on which public opinion proceeds are defective, and its decisions are capricious. Its condemnation frequently spares the guilty, and falls on the innocent. It is terrible to sensitive and generous minds; but it is disregarded by those whose hardened depravity most requires restraint. Hence its decrees, however salutary, unless supported by the clearer definitions and stronger sanctions of legislation, will be daily and hourly infringed; and with principles which rest only on public opinion, frequent infraction amounts to a repeal. Nothing that is very common can be very disgraceful. Thus public opinion, when not strengthened by positive enactment, is first defied, and then vitiated. At best it is a feeble check to wickedness, and at last it becomes its most powerful auxiliary.