certain rules are to be followed: Quicquid judicis authoritati subjicitur, novitati non subjicitur;" and this sound doctrine is applied to the Star-chamber, a court confessedly arbitrary. If you will abide by the authority of this great man, you shall have all the advantage of his opinion, wherever it appears to favour you. Excepting the plain, express meaning of the legislature, to which all private opinions must give way, I desire no better judge between as than Lord Coke.
III. I affirm that, according to the obvious, indisputable meaning of the legislature, repeatedly expressed, a person positively charged with feloniously stealing, and taken in flagrante delicto, with the stolen goods upon him, is not bailable. The law considers him as differing in nothing from a convict, but in the form of conviction; and (whatever a corrupt judge may do) will accept of no security, but the confinement of his body within four walls. I know it has been alleged, in your favour, that you have often bailed for murders, rapes, and other manifest crimes. Without questioning the fact, I shall not admit that you are to be justified by your own example. If that were a protection to you, where is the crime, that, as a
