Page:Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America.djvu/134

 severally, or of the Colony in which the said Chief Justice and other Judges have exercised the said offices"

The next Resolution relates to the Courts of Admiralty. It is this.

"That it may be proper to regulate the Courts of Admiralty or Vice Admiralty authorized by the fifteenth Chapter of the Fourth of George the Third, in such a manner as to make the same more commodious to those who sue, or are sued, in the said Courts, and to provide for the more decent maintenance of the Judges in the same."

These courts I do not wish to take away, they are in themselves proper establishments. This court is one of the capital securities of the Act of Navigation. The extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased, but this is altogether as proper, and is indeed on many accounts more eligible, where new powers were wanted, than a court absolutely new. But courts incommodiously situated, in effect, deny justice, and a court partaking in the fruits of its own condemnation is a robber. The Congress complain, and complain justly, of this grievance.

These are the three consequential propositions I have thought of two or three more, but they come rather too near detail, and to the province of