22. SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE agrees, in substance, with HALE; but he is, as we shall presently see, much more eager to establish his doctrine; and, we shall see besides, that he has not scrupled to be guilty of misquoting, and of very shamefully _garbling_, _the Scripture_, in order to establish his point. We shall find him flatly contradicting the laws of England; but, he might have spared the Holy Scriptures, which, however, he has not done.
23. To return to HALE, you see he is compelled to begin with acknowledging that there are great authorities against him; and he could not say that GROTIUS was not one of the most virtuous as well as one of the most learned of mankind. HALE does not know very well what to do with those old sayings about the justification which hard necessity gives: he does not know what to do with the maxim, that, "in case of extreme necessity all things _are owned in common_." He is exceedingly puzzled with these ancient authorities, and flies off into prattle rather than argument, and tells us a story about "_jesuitical_" casuists in France, who advised apprentices and servants to rob their masters, and that they thus "let loose the ligaments of property and civil society." I fancy that it would require a pretty large portion of that sort of faith which induced this Protestant judge to send witches and wizards to the gallows; a pretty large portion of this sort of faith, to make us believe, that the "_casuists_ of France," who, doubtless, _had servants of their own_, would teach servants to rob their masters! In short, this prattle of the judge seems to have been nothing more than one of those Protestant effusions which were too much in fashion at the time when he wrote.
24. He begins his second paragraph, or paragraph B., by saying, that he "_takes it_" to be so and so; and then comes another qualified expression; he talks of civil government "_as here in England_." Then he says, that the rule of GROTIUS and others, against which he has been contending, "he takes _to be false_, at _least_," says he, "_by the laws of England_." After he has made all these qualifications, he then proceeds to say that _such taking is theft_; that it is _felony_; and it is a crime which the laws of England punish with _death_! But, as if stricken with remorse at putting the frightful words upon paper; as if feeling shame for the law and for England itself, he instantly begins to tell us, that the judge who presides at the trial is intrusted, "_by the laws of England_," with power to _reprieve_ the offender, in order to the obtaining of the _King's mercy_! Thus he softens it down. He will have it to be LAW to put a man to death in such a case; but he is ashamed to leave his readers to believe, that an English judge and an English king WOULD OBEY THIS LAW!