that ever was made by a great magistrate. Where was your firmness, where was that vindictive spirit, of which we have seen so many examples, when a man, so inconsiderable as Bingley, could force you to confess, in the face of this country, that, for two years together, you had illegally deprived an English subject of his liberty, and that he had triumphed over you at last? Yet, I own, my Lord, that your's is not an uncommon character. Women, and men like women, are timid, vindictive, and irresolute. Their passions counteract each other, and make the same creature at one moment hateful, at another contemptible. I fancy, my Lord, some time will elapse before you venture to commit another Englishman for refusing to answer interrogatories[1].
The doctrine you have constantly delivered, in cases of libel, is another powerful
- ↑ Bingley was committed for contempt, in not submitting to be examined: He lay in prison two years until the Crown thought the matter might occasion some serious complaint, and therefore he was let out, in the same contumelious state he had been put in, with all his sins about him, unanointed and unanealed.—There was much coquetry between the Court and the Attorney General, about who should undergo the ridicule of letting him escape.—Vide another Letter to Almon, p. 189.
