1023. BURR'S (A.) TRIAL, Judiciary Partisanship.—[further continued] .
The scenes which have been acting at Richmond are sufficient to fill
us with alarm. We had supposed we possessed
fixed laws to guard us equally against treason
and oppression. But it now appears we have no
law but the will of the judge. Never will chicanery
have a more difficult task than has been
now accomplished to warp the text of the law
to the will of him who is to construe it. Our
case, too, is the more desperate, as the attempt
to make the law plainer by amendment is only
throwing out new amendments for sophistry.—
To William Thompson.
Ford ed., ix, 143.
(M.
Sep. 1807)