Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/23

15 conceiving, how it could be produced, if not maliciously. ! Gracious Heaven! To make such a law to prevent an idle talker from exciting ! why it is arming a man cap-a-pee with cumbrous steel, to prevent the contingency of a scratch! Is not this a confession, that so bad is the state of his body, that a scratch might eventually terminate in a mortification! Punishment is unjust in proportion as the invective is true; punishment is unnecessary in proportion as the invective is false. For it confutes itself, and striking against a rock flies back, and repeating the diminished calumny proclaims only its own repulse. An abusive fellow followed Pericles home with much panegyrical reviling. Pericles conscious of its injustice, ordered his servants to light the man back again, as one who had chosen a delicate though unusual way of reminding him of his merits. But Pericles was a republican, and therefore it may be objected, not an apposite precedent; but, my friends! if Monarchs would behave like republicans, all their subjects would act as royalists. Secondly, this clause is pernicious as tending to shut out his Majesty from the possibility of hearing truth;—which I hold to be High Treason against the Sovereign's better part—his intellect. For this law