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The hall of justice, which they oppose to our Westminster-hall, but between which there is no resemblance, is two hundred and fifty-six feet long, and eighty-six broad; the form, of it a rhomboid: the walls richly ornamented by Pietro d'Abano, who originally designed, and began to paint the figures round the sides: they have however been retouched by Giotto, who added the signs of the Zodiac to Peter's mysterious performances, which meant to explain the planetary influences, as he was a man deeply dipped in judicial astrology; and there is his own portrait among them, dressed like a Zoroastrian priest, with a planet in the corner.
It will sometimes happen, I know not how in the course of human affairs, that a man shall be made liable to legal animadversions, where he has nothing to answer for, either to God or his country; and condemned at Westminster-hall for what he will never be charged with at the Day of Judgment.
The identity of his person being proved, a rule was made for his execution; and on the eighth day of December he suffered decapitation, with the most perfect composure and serenity. Lord Lovat, now turned of four-score, was impeached by the commons, and tried in Westminster-hall before the lord high-steward.
Howe asserted that to do a thing of this nature, because the parliament had power to do it, was a strange way of reasoning; that what was justice and equity at Westminster-hall, was justice and equity every where; that one bad precedent in parliament was of worse consequence than an hundred in Westminster-hall, because personal or private injuries did not foreclose the claims of original right; whereas the parliament could ruin the nation beyond redemption, because it could establish tyranny by law.
The earl of Nottingham, after having opposed every article separately, concluded with words to this effect; "As sir John Maynard said to the late king at the revolution, that having buried all his contemporaries in Westminster-hall, he was afraid, if his majesty had not come in that very juncture of time, he might have likewise outlived the very laws; so, if this union do pass, as I have no reason to doubt but it will, I may justly affirm I have outlived all the laws, and the very constitution of England: I, therefore, pray to God to avert the dire effects which may probably ensue from such an incorporating union."
LONDON, December 30, O. S. 1751 MY DEAR FRIEND: The parliaments are the courts of justice of France, and are what our courts of justice in Westminster-Hall are here. They used anciently to follow the court, and administer justice in presence of the King. Philip le Bel first fixed it at Paris, by an edict of 1302.
Bentham has not been prosecuted for the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He might wrap up high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and it would never find its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of Manuscript author he writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key to.
Many of these gentlemen, from despair, perhaps, of ever rising to the bench in Westminster-hall, have placed themselves on the benches at the playhouse, where they have exerted their judicial capacity, and have given judgment, i.e., condemned without mercy.
The demonstrative faculty; the capacity to analyze and open any proposition so as to identify its separate elements with the very consciousness of the reader's or hearer's mind; this, which is the lawyer's peculiar power, had not been particularly developed in Burke, but exists in Webster in greater expansion and force than in any one since Doctor Johnson, who, it always appeared to us, had he been educated for the bar, would have made the greatest lawyer that ever led the decisions of Westminster-Hall.
'Give me leave to tell you, friend Trottman, you know nothing of the matter; and I should be very glad I could provoke you to meet me in Westminster-hall. If I had you but in the Courts, damn me if you should easily get out! 'I tell you once more I would not leave you a coat to your back. 'You! Lord help you!
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