Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons — John Shaqi
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the MormonsRobinson, Phil
General
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Robinson, Phil
Latter Day Saint churches; Utah -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
Six swine and a calf belonging to her Majesty found themselves, the
other day, impounded by the Slough magistrates for coming to market
without a licence. Slough, from geographical circumstances over which
it has no control, happens to be in Buckinghamshire, and this country
has been declared "an infected district," so that the bailiff who
brought his sovereign's pigs to market, without due authority to do
so, transgressed the law. Two majesties thus came into collision
over the calf, and that of the law prevailed. Such a constitutional
triumph as this goes far to clear away the clouds that appeared to be
gathered upon the political horizon, and the shadows of a despotic
dictatorship which seemed to be falling across England begin to
vanish. The written law, contained probably in a very dilapidated
old copy in the possession of these rural magistrates, a dogs'-eared
and, it may be, even a ragged volume, asserted itself supreme over a
monarch's farmyard stock, and dared to break down that divinity which
doth hedge a Sovereign's swine. There are some who say that in the
British Isles men are losing their reverence for the law, and that
justice wears two faces, one for the rich and another for the poor.
They would have us believe that only the parasites of princes sit in
high place, and that the scales of justice rise or fall according to
the inclinations of the sceptre, with the obsequious regularity of the
tides that wait upon the humours of the moon. But such an incident
as this, when the Justices of Slough, those intrepid Hampdens, sate
sternly in their places, and, fearless of Royal frowns and all the
displeasure of Windsor, dispensed to the pigs, born in the purple, and
to the calf that had lived so near a throne, the impartial retribution
of a fine--with costs--gives a splendid refutation to these calumnies.
Where shall we look in Republican history for such another incident?
or where search for dauntless magistrates like those of Slough, who
shut their eyes against the reflected glitter of a Court, who fined the
Royal calf for risking the health of Hodge's miserable herd, and gave
the costs against the Imperial pigs for travelling into Buckinghamshire
without a licence? Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. There was no truckling
here to borrowed majesty, no sycophant adulation of Royal ownership;
but that fine old English spirit of courageous independence which has
made tyrants impossible in our island and our law supreme. It was of
no use before such men as these, the stout-hearted champions of equal
justice, for the bailiff to plead manorial privilege, or to threaten
the thunders of the House of Brunswick. They were as implacable as a
bench of Rhadamanthuses, and gave these distinguished hogs the grim
choice between paying a pound or going to one. Nor, to their credit
be it said, did either bailiff, calf, or pigs exhibit resentment. On
the contrary, they accepted judgment with that respectful acquiescence
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