THE REVIVAL OF ARBITRARY TRIBUNALS.
[To THE Norroit Or TAN •• Sig/ow:ma:1
was glad to see Mr. Lowe's letter in your last issue. The danger he refers to is very serious. You will recall the fact that the Star Chamber was first set up to curb the great nobles ; but what an instrument of tyranny it became!
As Mr. Lowell says— "The plough, the axe, the mill,
All kin's o' labour an' all kin's o' skill, Would be a rabbit in a wile cat's claw Ef't warn't for thet slow critter, 'stablished law"
A despotic Cabinet is as dangerous as a despotic Monarch,
and requires as much watching. We do not want to come back to the times complained of by Cromwell, when "poor men under this arbitrary power were driven, like flocks of sheep, by forty in a morning to the confiscation of goods and estates without any man being able to give a reason why two of them had deserved to forfeit a shilling."—I am, Sir, &c.,