5
The sighing was heard, the darkness was perceived, the hunger for human pity was satisfied, not for the sake of those especial prisoners, hut because Howard was come. So in Erskine's time; the laws were not more oppressive, nor their operation more unequal, than in a generation foregone; nor were the men who had to abide by the legal decisions of the day, unusually notable and important. They were the common clients of common causes, suffering under common and established grievances, arising from those defects in our patched-up system,which no one yethad cared to examine, or had found sufficient energy to correct. But Erskine came; and when men told him that such defects were part of the law "before he was born," he answered, that it was " because he was not born, that it was law," for that he would see it altered before he died.
So with {{sc|Romilly}: it was no new thing that roused his earnest nature to struggle for reforms in the science of that profession which he at once adorned and detested. Many a prisoner without counsel, had stood wistfully at the bar before {{sc|Romilly}'s time; listening to learned accusations dimly understood, destitute of defence. Many a long-standing blur and blot lay unremoved on the great scroll of our national code; when his warm eloquence, enlarged views, profound thought, and keen comparison with the universal law of nations, worked together for its amendment. He did not plead (for he could not so have pleaded) that the men of his day who found no help from that code, were peculiar martyrs; of higher desert, with more atrocious injuries to redress, and with less chance of redressing them, than heretofore. He knew that this was not the case. AH was common, usual, inevitable; and because being common, usual, and inevitable, it was also unjust, and not for merit in the sufferers, or excess in any one case of suffering, he strove for change, and effected it.
We need the heart of a {{sc|Romilly} amongst us now. That strenuous heart, whose energetic pity made no compromise with custom; nor ever flagged or fainted in the life-long effort
