Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/104

 or not.—While the party is alive, a surgeon will be cautious of pronouncing; whereas, by the death of the patient, he is enabled to consider both cause and effect in one view, and to speak with a certainty confirmed by experience.

we are to thank your Grace for the establishment of a new tribunal. Your inquisitio post mortem is unknown to the laws of England, and does honour to your invention. The only material objection to it is, that if Mr. Foot's evidence was insufficient, because he did not examine the wound till after the death of the party, much less can a negative opinion, given by gentlemen who never saw the body of Mr. Clarke, either before or after his decease, authorise you to supersede the verdict of a jury, and the sentence of the law.

, my Lord, let me ask you, Has it never occurred to your Grace, while you were withdrawing this desperate wretch from that justice which the laws had awarded, and which the whole people of England demanded against him, that there is another man, who is the favourite of his country,