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Show 398 ACTS RELATING Part III. Seét.VI. TO THE COLONXES. 3.99 " pallions of the multitude are inflamed; other county in Scotland *. And if the whole kingdom of Scotland had been as warmly attached to the interefls of the " that one party is popular, and the other Pretender, or as refolute to deny all obe- " a firanger, and obnoxious *‘é: " it is the confiant practice under our law, by means dience to the lawful fovereign as thofe faction for fome petty perfonal injury; if it appear, that " a cry is railed; that the of fome expedient or other, by the authority of fome court or other, to change the fcene of trial, and the perfons ofthe triers. Can there be lefs reafon for fuch a praé‘tice in a cafe of blood, where the caufe of one man is the caufe of the very people, who, were it not for fuch provilion, would be to try it? Nor even in capital caufes is a provilion of this nature without example in our fia- tute book. counties were, who can doubt but that the legiflature would have gone further, and fliifted even into England the {cone of trial? Nor let it be forgotten, that in the cafe of Scotland, the legiflature exert~ ed its power for the Item purpofe of infiié'ting punifhment on the guilty: whereas in the ac‘t before us, the fame power is exerted for the benign end of faving the innocent from undeferved, or the guilty from excellive punifhment. Murders and felonies, com- It may be laid indeed that America is mitted in any part of Wales, may be tried in the next Englifh county 1‘. By a fla- removed at fuch a diflancc from Eng- tute of George the Second, ofl'ences of this local difterence was neither created by parliament, nor is it changeable by it. Parliament can neither {wallow the wa- high treafon committed in certain counties in Scotland might be tried in any * Blackflone's Comm. III. 384. 1~ I Strange 553. land, that the cafes are not parallel. & 21 Geo. II. c. 19. But |
