date

[clx. 202] 1821. April 19.
[clx. 202]

1821. April 19.

First Lines

Distributive Law.

A body thus transcendant was too

/Exercised/ /Made/ By subjects not commissioned for that purpose by their sovereign, capture thus made, would have given /gives/ to the act by which it was made, the denomination of an act of piracy, /and/ to the agents, the name of pirates. But, /as we have seen/ among the attributes which Blackstone's God upon Earth shares with that God which is in Heaven, is the incapacity of doing wrong. As, in the hands of Midas, dirt became gold, so, in the hands of this god, wrong becomes right. Committing to any extent those acts which, if committed by a subject, would render the agent a pirate, a King of England never is, never can be, a pirate. The profits of piracy may be his: but, when they are thus reaped, the legal guilt - let others say whether the moral guilt be - whether the religious guilt be - the legal guilt is nobody's.

Calling these his profits droits of Admiralty, the Arch-pirate by whom they were reaped - I mean he who, but for the poweer of converting wrong into right, would have been arch-pirate - giving to these his profits the name of droits of admiralty he gave them the colour of law, but what is certain is, he did not do away or lessen the suffering issuing from that same source whatsoever he may have done by the guilt attached to the production of it. Whether, in converting wrong into right, he converts sin into merit, must be left to the decision of that most excellent church of which he is the most gracious and religious head.
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