The truth was, that he stood less in fear of Timms than of Williams; the connection of the last with the reporters being known to be much the most extensive. But Timms knew his man, and understood very well what the committal of counsel had got to be, under the loose notions of liberty that have grown up in the country within the last twenty years. Time was, and that at no remote period, when the lawyer who had been thus treated for indecorum at the bar would have been a disgraced man, and would have appealed in vain to the community for sympathy; little or none would he have received. Men then understood that the law was their master, established by themselves, and was to be respected accordingly. But that feeling is in a great measure extinct. Liberty is every hour getting to be more and more personal; its concentration consisting in rendering every man his own legislator, his own judge, and his own juror. It is monarchical and aristocratic, and all that is vile and dangerous, to see power exercised by any but the people; those whom the constitution and the laws have set apart expressly to discharge a delegated authority being obliged, by clamours sustained by all the arts of cupidity and fraud, to defer to the passing opinions of the hour. No one knew this better than Timms, who had just as lively a recollection as his opponent that this very judge was to come before the people, in the next autumn, as a candidate for re-election. The great strain of American foresight was consequently applied to this man’s conscience, who, over-worked and under-paid, was expected to rise above the weaknesses of humanity, as a sort of sublimated political theory that is getting to be much in fashion, and which, _if true_, would supersede the necessity of any court or any government at all. Timms knew this well, and was not to be restrained by one who was thus stretched, as it might be, on the tenter-hooks of political uncertainty. “Yes, your honour,” retorted this indomitable individual, “I am fully aware of its impropriety, and was just as much so when the counsel for the prosecution was carrying it on to the injury of my client; I might say almost unchecked, if not encouraged.” “The court did its best to stop Mr. Williams, sir; and must do the same to keep you within the proper limits of practice. Unless these improprieties are restrained, I shall confine the counsel for the State to the regular officer, and assign new counsel to the accused, as from the court.” Both Williams and Timms looked amused at this menace, neither having the smallest notion the judge dare put such a threat in execution. What! presume to curb licentiousness when it chose to assume the aspect of human rights? This was an act behind the age, more especially in a country in which liberty is so fast getting to be all means, with so very little regard to the end.