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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Now, of these Mintons the reader ought to know something before Peregrine's visit. Min- ton was, as old Noll has told us, a retired merchant from London, and although certainly not a native, and to the manor born, a man exceedingly respected and esteemed in his very genteel retreat. He was in the commission of the peace, aud had been strongly urged by his wife and daughters, ever since the uniform of the deputy lieutenants was decorated, adorned, and illustrated with silver epaulettes, to endeavour to procure that most honourable office. Vol. i. c Minton cared not for epaulettes, ?being a justice was quite enough for him, and for all his acquaintance; for the whole of his after-dinner conversation was made up of a running report of the proceedings of the tribunal of which he was one of the judges, and to whom, day by day, the rights and liberties of the subject are being gradually confided, by the agreeable and convenient process of abolishing, or at least superseding, that which in less liberal days than ours has always been reckoned the palladium of the constitution, ?the trial by jury. Anybody who heard Mr. Minton converse judicially, and lay down the law according to his own particular individual notion, in his own house, where nobody could with decency stop his oratory, might have easily appreciated the advantages derivable from the decision of one such man as affecting the liberty of the subject, not to speak of tread-milling, private-whipping, and the silent-system, in preference to the impartial judgment of twelve ordinary men, all unbiassed and unprejudiced with regard to the criminal or his offence; the Solon of the bench under the new system being perhaps at once the accuser, the judge, the sentencer, and by deputy the executioner. Le...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217269360 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217269362 |
| Weight | 1.02 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.70 In |
| List Price | $23.00 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 314 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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