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come the mere instruments of the Judges; and then, where is freedom?
Since every trivial sentence may be found a libel, if your opinion were adopted, it would be an action worthy to immortalize even all the individuals in both Houses of Parliament, to review, check, and ascertain by statute, the authority of the Judges in all possible constitutional cases whatsoever. Such an act would regulate and confirm the people in their undoubted, though disputed rights; and were even that to happen, it is a melancholy reflection, that an arbitrary Judge would have full sufficient power left in the dogmatical practice of his court, to exercise his tyranny on trivial occasions, owing to the perplexity of our common law; though but without being able materially to injure the liberties of the subject. For is it not the heighth of absurdity and injustice, that a Parliament shall enact laws, which neither the King nor the People dare break, but which a Judge may set aside, or act diametrically opposite to the spirit of the constitutional law with impunity?
