Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/84

80 offence, and the judge should declare that the old law is still in force. Is the jury not to judge whether we live under the bloody Mary or the constitution of Massachusetts—whether what was once law is so now? If not, then the laws of King Darius or King Pharaoh may be revived whenever Judge Hategood sees fit, and Faithful must hang for it.

Suppose the judge makes a law himself, declaring that if any one speaks against the justice of the court, he shall be whipped with forty stripes save one, and gets a man indicted under it and brought to trial—is the jury not to judge if there be such a law? Then we might as well give up all legislation, and leave all to the “discretion of the court.”

A judge of the United States Court was once displaced on account of mental imbecility. Was Judge Simpleton to determine what was law, what not, for a jury of intelligent men?

Another judge, not long ago, in Boston, in his place in court, gave an opinion in a most important affair, and was drunk when he gave it. I do not mean he was horizontally drunk, but only so that his friends feared “he would break down in court, and expose himself.” Was the opinion of a drunken judge to be taken for law by sober men?

Suppose the judge is not a simpleton nor a drunkard, but is only an ordinary lawyer and a political partisan, and appointed to his office because he is a fawning