But a wicked Judge, Gentlemen, may do great harm to mankind, as I have already most abundantly shown. For we have inherited a great mass of laws,--customary or statutory; the legislature repeals, modifies, or adds to them; the Judge is to expound them, and suggest their application to each special case. The Jury is to apply or refuse to apply the Judge's "law." In all old countries, some of these laws have come from a barbarous, perhaps even from a savage period; some are the work of tyrants who wrought cruelly for their own advantage, not justly, or for the good of mankind; some have been made in haste and heat, the legislature intending to do an unjust thing. Now an unjust Judge has great power to select wicked statutes, customs, or decisions; and in no country has he more power for evil than in the federal courts of the United States. For as in England, when the King-power makes a wicked law, the Judge, who is himself made by that same power, may declare it just, and execute the heinous thing; so in America, when the Slave power enacts a wicked statute, contrary to the purpose of the constitution and to the natural justice of God, the Judge, who is the creature of that same power, may declare it constitutional and binding on all the People who made the constitution as their Power of Attorney. Thus all the value of the constitution to check despotism is destroyed, and the Fortress of Freedom is betrayed into the hands of the enemies of liberty! But barbarous laws must not be applied in a civilized age; nor unjust laws enforced by righteous men. While left unrepealed, a fair and conscientious Jury will never do injustice, though a particular statute or custom demand it, and a wicked Judge insist upon the wrong; for they feel the moral instinct of human nature, and look not merely to the letter of a particular enactment, but also to the spirit and general purpose of law itself, which is justice between man and man. The wicked Judge, looking only to the power which raised him to his place, and may lift him higher still,--not to that other Hand which is over all,--or consulting his own meanness of nature, selects the wicked laws, and makes a wicked application thereof. Thus in America, under plea of serving the people, he can work most hideous wrong.