The history of England, and of every free country, abounds with the example
of statutes enacted when the people or their representatives assembled, but
never executed when the crown or the executive was left to itself. The most
equitable laws on paper are consistent with the utmost despotism in
administration. Even the form of trial by juries in England had its
authority in law, while the proceedings of courts were arbitrary and
oppressive.
We must admire, as the key stone of civil liberty, the statute which forces
the secrets of every prison to be revealed, the cause of every commitment
to be declared, and the person of the accused to be produced, that he may
claim his enlargement, or his trial, within a limited time. No wiser form
was ever opposed to the abuses of power. But it requires a fabric no less
than the whole political constitution of Great Britain, a spirit no less
than the refractory and turbulent zeal of this fortunate people, to secure
its effects.
If even the safety of the person, and the tenure of property, which may be
so well defined in the words of a statute, depend, for their preservation,
on the vigour and jealousy of a free people, and on the degree of
consideration which every order of the state maintains for itself; it is
still more evident, that what we have called the political freedom, or the
right of the individual to act in his station for himself and the public,
cannot be made to rest on any other foundation.
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