The Price Of Justice
To administer justice, is the end for which all human governments are ordained, the circulation of justice in the body politic, being strictly analogous to the circulation of the blood in the body natural. It is the phenomenon upon which its very life momentarily depends ; and its health is indicated by the state of its pulse. The accessibility of justice, or the price at which it is sold in any country, is the only criterion for estimating the merits of its government. If justice be easily accessible, or its price low, the government is good ; if justice be difficult to obtain, or its price high, the government is bad. The rule is universal and infallible, because it is founded on the Word of God. All the other phenomena of the body politic, for example, its national debt, taxes, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the forms of its constitution, ultimately depend upon the MORAL SENSE of the people, as evinced in their ideas regarding the circulation of justice. Accordingly, while the superficial politicians of this world are attracted by ostensible forms and accidental circumstances, the Christian’s eye is fixed on the index, viz. the price of justice ; which shews with unerring certainty, the state of the heart of the body politic, whether it be sound or rotten. It shews the standard of morality upon which the life of the ” beast,” (Art. 412.) or political body, depends, whatever be his shape, or size, or mode of existence; for where the people’s attention is fixed on the distribution of justice, there never can be tyranny ; and where their attention is diverted from it, there never can be freedom.
When a government, forgetful of the end for which it was ordained, and a people, forgetful of the Word of God, permit the price of justice to rise, (according to its natural tendency) we are expressly told, that they shall be “devoured by the sword.” The secondary causes by which this awful threat is executed, though seldom thought of by worldly politicians, are not the less fatally and necessarily connected. The high price of justice invites the rich to defraud the poor ; it encourages every man to be a villain, by assuring him of impunity, provided the victims of his villany be persons who are unable to pay the price ; for all such persons are thereby virtually outlawed, and the great body of the industrious and moral part of the community, instead of being permitted to lead “quiet and peaceable lives,” are subjected to the horrors of civil war, viz violence and rapine, for which there is no redress, while they are insultingly told, that “the law is open to them.” Habituated thus to the daily spectacle of unredressed wrongs, (as in France, before the Revolution) men become callous to moral feeling, and prepared for deeds of horror. Their hearts are hardened, and their consciences seared, by a silent process of demoralisation, the symptoms of which (viz. the increase of crimes, &c.) pass unregarded, until it be too late. For when the moral corruption arrives at a certain pitch, there is no other remedy but the sword.
So long as the courts of law in any country remain open to the great body of the people, its government will always have the support of the better-disposed part of the community. But when the feelings of the patient Christian are tortured every day, by seeing his fellow-creatures robbed, maltreated, defrauded, and demoralized, under the operation of a system directly opposed to the Word of God ; when he see taxes imposed, and fees permitted, which are equivalent to a sentence of outlawry against the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate, how can lie, in his conscience, approve of such things, or pray for their continuance ? Ought he not rather to implore the “powers that be,” to “hear the Word of the Lord,” ere it be too late, and to consider the dreadful end to which such ill-gotten gains are rapidly conducive ? To withhold justice from the poor, is to commit sacrilege. For the word says, ” Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Surely he is neither a patriot nor a Christian, who could wink at such things : ” He is not Caesar’s friend,” who would advise him to disregard them.
During the progress of the moral gangrene, originating in the obstructed circulation of justice, the great majority of politicians, being destitue of true moral piinciple, cannot discern the extent of the danger. They will not “believe” the Word of God, that those small livid spots apparently so trifling, (which are all that appear on the outside of the “beast“) are the symptoms of approaching death. None of the state physicians will believe that any thing serious is the matter with him. For he is in general very quiet ; and when he become feverish and restless, they endeavour to amuse him with gew-gaws, or frighten him with some foreign bugbear ; while others, unaware of his asthenic diathesis, prescribe low diet and copious bleeding. Others, who differ in opinion from the state physicians, are for humouring their patient, in all his most extravagant whims. Some think that his fever is entirely owing to the load of his back ; others impute it to the wounds he received in battle ; others to the swarms of vermin, which are fattening un every part of his body ; and every one proposes his remedies accordingly. Meanwhile, the “beast” is daily growing worse and worse ; the voices of the few “men of understanding,” who perceive the true cause of his distemper, are drowned in the clamour of the empirics, who are at loggerheads about the “mode of treatment ;” till at last their patient expires in strong convulsions, and his loathsome сагcase is speedily decomposed.
Review of “A Theory of the Moral and Physical System of the Universe, demonstrated by Analogy ; in which the Elements of general Science are explained upon a Principle entirely new. By Francis Maximus Macnab, Solicitor of the Supreme Courts of Scotland, 8vo.pp.474 Prince 12s Edinburgh, 1817 , The Eclectic review, vol.12, 1919, p 485-486
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