Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/770

 76o R. G. Usher the standards of the time, he committed a serious offence and dis- played considerable disrespect for authority. Still, every one who pleads against injustice couched in the forms of law must appear as a disorderly and factious person. On the other hand, many seem to feel that the High Commission was at liberty to decide whether or not it would proceed against Fuller. Yet it is clear that it had no choice, for if it was legally a court, it had no other re- course than to proceed against a man who denied its right to exist. To have tamely allowed Fuller to go unchallenged after three such public offenses, would have meant that the High Commissioners themselves believed their powers illegal. It is one of the funda- mental maxims of law that no court can entertain any plea against its own legality, nor under any circumstances fail to do its utter- most to punish the offender, for its own existence is at stake. In reality there comes at such times an irreconcilable clash between the conscience of the man pleading for liberty and the undoubted duty of the court he questions. He feels himself impelled by the forces within him to cry in the spirit of Luther at Worms, " I cannot do otherwise." But the court at whose bar he stands owes a duty to society which is not less plain : the judges may sympathize with his plea, but they know that their only duty is to apply the rules of the institution as they find them. Xot on them but upon the past gen- erations that created the institution rests the responsibility. Whether or not the nation would have been happier had that insti- tution never been evolved, time alone can prove, and at any rate they have no right to decide so momentous a question. As against the sanction of the whole community, comes the cry of this one indi- vidual, with nothing to prove him a herald of a great future and not a harbinger of evil. The safety of society demands that the burden of proof rest upon him who desires a change. The barrister of Gray's Imi was tlierefore in the wrong ; yet if he sinned, he sinned gloriously. He did oppose the wishes of the king in a truly constitutional manner, claiming the laws of the land as his defence ; the cause he espoused became in later years the pop- ular standard ; his ringing words heartened the members of the Long Parliament in their belief in the righteousness of their cause. The name of Nicholas Fuller thus deserves to live not as that of a victim of the petty t^rann}' of a querulous government, but as one of the earliest of those great men who freed Parliament from the yoke of the Crown. RoL.-ND G. Usher.