Miscellaneous Back Matter [pp. 472A-RD06]

THE BASTILE.
bury had conferred on the people the great gift of the Ia(beas
(,orptu.s Act. It is the mlost brilliant achievement of legislative
wisdom. We know that I)r. Johnson was the most bigoted
tory that ever lived. Yet he said: " The habeas corpus is the
single advantage vwhich our Government has over that of other
countries." It inaugturated modern freedom. It covered its
unwortlhy author with immortal honor. But we should be
wrong to attribute it to a sincere love of liberty in the English
people. The framer was a man who was equally regardless of
king and people as a general rIle, but who hated his own king
with a personal and peculiar hatred. One of the most grifted
statesmen that ever lived, he was the most insatiable schemer
and tile most unprincipled of men. The people he regarded as
his tools, the king as his ellemiy. If he could disconcert the
plans of the foirmer, he cared not what became of the latter.
In a foirttuate tlour, lhis enmity suggested to him the Jlabeas
(C,orpus Act. It seemned just the thing to mortify thte Court. It
placed the judicial tribunals above the king. lie may not have
seen it then, but ini fact it entirely revolutionized the Goovernnient. But it is not to the intelligence of the statesmen of the
period, nor to their love of liberty, that we owe the passage of
the bill. This Act, above all other Acts, passed the English parliament by an accident, or rather it never was passed at all.
Bishop Burnet says that, after the third reading in the House
of Lords,
" - Lords Gray and Norris were named to be tellers.
Lord Norris being a man subject to vapors, was not at all times
attentive to what he was doing. So, a very fat lord coming in,
Lord Gray counted him as ten, as a jest at first; but seeing
Lord Norris had not observed it, he went on with his misrecek oning of ten, so it was reported in the House, and declared that
they who were for the bill were the majority, though it indeed
went (n the other side."
This statement is confirmed by the journal of the House of
Lords, which shows more votes oni the bill than members
present. Had it not been for the accidental appearance of this
fat lord and for this idle jest, the plans of the Stuarts might
have been accomplished, the early horrors of the tower might
have been perpetuated, and the progress of human liberty
mnight have been retarded for centuries. Upon such incon siderable circumstances does the destiny of our race depend.
When the Parisians destroyed the Bastile, they perhaps
fondly conceived that such an institution would never again
exist. But they erred. The Bastile exists in the heart of the
tyrant. It will always be found, under some modification, in
every land ruled by despotism. Like causes produce like
effects. The footprints of oppression are the same in all ages
and countries. A mighty structure, world-defying in appear ance, may not lift its gloomy walls above the capital; but
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