seek for the priest, kill him wherever he might find him, and escape if he could; but if he failed in escaping, he was to allow himself to be taken, and leave the rest to him. The man found the murderer engaged in a religious procession, killed him on the spot, and was immediately apprehended. Pedro sent orders that the case must not be tried till he was present; meantime he directed the widow to supply the prisoner with food, and his own almoner to give her money for that purpose. The clergy prest for justice, as the King intended they should do: the matter accordingly was brought into court in his presence, and after the whole evidence had been heard, and the fact proved upon the mason, Pedro asked whether the priest who had been murdered had been an inoffensive peaceable man, or if he had done any thing which might probably have provoked the fate he had met with; for it was hardly to be supposed that he should have been killed in this public manner without some cause. It was replied that some time ago he had killed a man, but that that affair had been regularly settled. And how settled? the King inquired. He had been suspended, they said, from saying mass, or officiating as a priest. The King then pronounced that the mason should be punished

in the same manner, and passed sentence upon him that he should never again work at his trade. And then he married him to the widow, and settled a pension upon them sufficient for their support. The magistrates of Padua carried this sort of wild justice farther. Finding that the ecclesiastical authorities never inflicted any adequate punishment upon offenders of their own body, they made a decree that whoever killed a priest should be fined one penny, and it is said that many persons availed themselves of this invitation to execute justice for themselves. You have yourself stated that the contest in its first stage turned wholly upon these immunities: but you affirm that they were an acknowledged bulwark § of the English constitution. A bulwark of the constitution, Sir! Say rather a strong hold for criminals, erected in defiance of it. ..You call them also rights, Sir, which seems rather an unfortunate denomination for the privilege of doing wrong.

* Fernam Lopes, Chronica del Rey D. Pedro, c. x.

+ Modern Universal History, vol. ix. p. 648. The authorities referred to are Spond. Annal. 1282. Jacob. Cavac. 1. iii. Hist. Cœnob. S. Justin. Patav.

These rights, however, as you say, "most certainly at that time made a part of the law of England." I have just shown when and in what manner they became so; and that because they were inconsistent with the spirit of that law, and had been found injurious in practice, by impeding the course of justice and lessening the security of the subject, the Judges, in the exercise of their duty, represented them as a grievance to the King, in order that the privilege might be withdrawn by the same authority which had conferred it.

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But let us listen to Montesquieu," you say." "I am not," says that great man, violently in love with the privileges of the clergy; but I wish that their jurisdiction should once be well established. After that the question is not, whether it was right to establish it, but whether it is established; whether it makes part of the laws of the land, and whether it is connected with them throughout." So far, Sir, I accord with him and with you. When he says, "as much as the power of the Church is dangerous in a republic, so much is it useful in a monarchy, particularly in those which tend to despotism,".. I hesitate; for it appears to

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me that under any form of government it is expedient, both for the state and the people, that the Church should possess due power; but that any degree of power or influence which would be injurious under the one form, must be equally so under the other. And when he proceeds to say, "where would Spain and Portugal be since the loss of their laws, without this power,.. which is the only check on arbitrary sway?"...I perceive that Montesquieu would never have written thus if he had been well acquainted with the state of those countries, and had made their history his study. For to that power it is that the loss of their laws and liberties was owing: through the assistance of that power it was that the despotism was established; and then the degradation was induced, which, in spite of all the virtues of the

* L'Esprit des Loix, 1. ii. c. iv. I have used Mr. Butler's translation of the passage; ..but I must carry on the quotation here to the end of the paragraph, and show that Montesquieu speaks of this power as an evil becoming only incidentally good when it acts as a check upon something worse:... Où en seroient l'Espagne et le Portugal depuis la perte de leurs loix sans ce pouvoir qui arrête seul la puissance arbitraire? Barrière toujours bonne, lorsqu'il n'y en a point d'autre: car comme le despotisme cause à la nature humaine des maux effroyables, le mal même qui le limite est un bien."

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national character, have made those countries what we see them!

"Now all history informs us," you say, "that long before the commencement of this celebrated contest, the immunities of the clergy had been established and become part of the law of England. Does not this decide the question? Must we not conclude, on the principles of Montesquieu, that the monarch's attack upon them was altogether wrong? that Becket, in defending them, was altogether right?"..What history informs us is, that these immunities began in William the Conqueror's time, about fourscore years before. And I am inclined to think, Sir, neither you nor Montesquieu would dissent from the principle, that when any thing becomes manifestly and notoriously an evil and a nuisance, it ought to be abated, whatever prescription may be pleaded for it.

It is even questionable whether any further prescription could be pleaded for this than a custom which had grown up among other abuses during the troubled reign of Stephen. For in the dispute which ensued, it was not Becket, but the King, who appealed to the law of the land.

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