Treason

,—any undefinable offence which crown lawyers chuse to call so, provided they can pack accommodating juries to bear them out. In the reign of the Stuarts, corrupt Judges were easily to be procured, and juries were so compliant to the arbitrium of a Judge, that to accuse, was to convict. In more modern times, however well the bench may have been stocked, with Tresilians, Empsons, Dudleys, Jefferies, and Scroggs, yet I have too good an opinion of a modern English Jury, if collected with but tolerably partiality, to suppose, that they would send innocent men out of the world, merely because they oppose the administration for the time being.