Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/177

No. 52] perished ? It will perish when the legislative power shall be more corrupt than the executive.

It is not my business to examine whether the English actually enjoy this liberty, or not. Sufficient it is for my purpose to observe, that it is established by their laws ; and I inquire no farther.



52. "The Law in all our Provinces" (1757) BY EDMUND BURKE

T has been an old complaint, that it is not easy to bring American governors to justice for mismanagements in their province, or to make them refund to the injured people the wealth raised by their extortions. Against such governors at present there are three kinds of remedy ; the privy council, the king s bench, and the parliament. The council on just cause of complaint may remove the governor ; the power of the council seems to extend no further. The king s bench may punish the governors for their offences committed in America, as if done in England. The power of parliament is unlimited in the ways of enquiry into the crime, or of punishing it. The first of these remedies can never be sufficient to terrify a governor grown rich by iniquity, and willing to retire quietly, though dishonourably, to enjoy the fruits of it. The king's bench, or any other merely law court, seems equally insufficient for this purpose, because offences in government, though very grievous, can hardly ever be so accurately defined as to be a proper object of any court of justice, bound up by forms and the rigid letter of the law. The parliament is equal to every thing ; but whether party, and other bars to a quick and effectual proceeding may not here leave the provinces as much unredressed as in the other courts, I shall not take upon me to determine.

The law in all our provinces, besides those acts which from time to time they have made for themselves, is the common law of England, the old statute law, and a great part of the new, which in looking over their laws I find many of our settlements have adopted, with very little