case--if it be not meant that the intention is that a law shall be made with apparently one meaning, and to be used for a quite different purpose--when the perversion which it seems to authorise shall have been discovered, sharpened by the application of the right of private prosecution, and in the form of a secretly procured indictment, which destroys before it convicts--there is only one of these honest courses left--_either let the law--a clearer law--be substituted for that which exists, or let it be clearly explained; and, at all events, let the right of prosecution be placed exclusively in hands, and limited to a course of proceeding, which will afford some guarantee for its right use_. Let us cast away from us the worst features of the Inquisition. It cannot be meant to leave matters so--that the nation shall be deriving all the benefits of commercial intercourse with the countries already mentioned, trusting to our desire for profit as merchants to get the better of our prudence as reasonable men--that we shall be content to run the risk of private prosecution, and secretly procured indictments, of arrest, imprisonment, ruin, disgrace, transportation, the sacrifice of all that is dear to a man on earth; and, therefore, that the nation will go on prospering by our labour, whilst we ourselves may be told that we need _only be a little more_ careful. And all this, as if it was meant to be insinuated that if a victim is now and then made, it is expedient that it should be so; that it is not extremely harsh, since merchants are to be thought of only as men accustomed to risks, and therefore who get obdurate against adversity--as if it were assumed, that as to the victim so made, it is sure to be some one who has deserved his fate by a more than ordinary degree of temerity, by going a _little_ too far, or by an act of rebellion against the attempt to fix the brand on his forehead, which really, when once we have suffered ourselves to be so far stigmatised, there can be little doubt will be designated as a degree of fastidiousness to which an exclusively money-making and money-loving race can have no just pretensions. You may trust to their rapacity (it would seem to be argued by this defamatory process, which before it is openly avowed must work its way by implying as much in action, as, if it were not too revolting, would be stated in as many words)--you may trust to their rapacity for any necessary amount of risk being encountered, and therefore no fear of trade being given up, because we make it a _little_--only just take care that it shall not appear too dangerous. This is not, I am sure, the position which is meant to be taken by the country towards a profession heretofore deemed honourable, and which has become interwoven with the highest ranks of our society. It is not, it cannot be meant, that such be the state of things at home, as between the merchant and the country.