stood--that the project of an administrative reform had not, at least, been wholly laid aside--that there was something which did not fully come out on that trial, any one who looks at this report of it will be apt to infer. It was a project which had not yet proceeded to any overt act; there was no legal evidence of its existence produced on the trial; but suppose there were here, then, already, men 'who loved the _fundamental part of state_,' more than in such a crisis 'they _doubted_ the change of it'--men 'who preferred a noble life before a long'--men, too, '_who were more discreet_' than they were '_fearful_,' who thought it good practice to 'jump a body with a dangerous medicine _that was sure of death_ without it;' suppose there _was_ a movement of that kind arrested here then, and the evidence of it were produced, what Englishman, or who that boasts the English lineage to-day, can have a word to say about it? Who had a better right than those men themselves, those statesmen, those heroes, who had waked and watched for their country's weal so long, who had fought her battles on land and sea, and planned them too, not in the tented field and on the rocking deck only, but in the more 'deadly breach' of civil office, whose _scaling_-ladders had entered even the tyrant's council chamber,--who had a better right than those men themselves to say whether they would be governed by a government of laws, or by the will of the most despicable 'one-only-man power,' armed with sword and lash, that ever a nation of Oriental slaves in their political imbecility cowered under? Who were better qualified than those men themselves, instructed in detail in all the peril of that crisis,--men who had comprehended and weighed with a judgment which has left no successor to its seat, all the conflicting considerations and claims which that crisis brought with it,--who better qualified than these to decide on the measures by which the hideous nuisances of that time should be abated; by which that axe, that sword, that rack, that stake, and all those burglar's tools, and highwayman's weapons, should be taken out of the hands of the mad licentious crew with which an evil time had armed them against the common-weal--those weapons of lawless power, which the people had vainly, for want of leaders, refused before-hand to put into their hands. Who better qualified than these natural chiefs and elected leaders of the nation, to decide on the dangerous measures for suppressing the innovation, which the Tudor and his descendants had accomplished in that ancient sovereignty of laws, which was the sovereignty of this people, which even the Norman and the Plantagenet had been taught to acknowledge? Who better qualified than they to call to an account--'the thief,' the 'cut-purse of the empire and the rule,' who 'found the precious diadem _on a shelf_, and stole and put it in his pocket'?