Note 163 — Chapter LVIII

— Jardine thinks that Oldcorne manifests a disposition “to hesitate and argue about the moral complexion” of the Gunpowder Treason; and this disposition Jardine regards as exhibiting in Oldcorne, “apparently a man of humane and quiet character,” a “distorted perception of right and wrong.” — See “Criminal Trials,” pp. 232, 233.

But it is evident that, for the nonce, the London Magistrate’s judicial temper of mind had deserted him, when he sniffed too closely the moral air breathed by a Jesuit. For manifest is it that, e.g., all acts of insubordination against an established government are not treasons and rebellions when that government is hopelessly tyrannical, inhuman, and corrupt. Nor are all acts of slaughter of human beings acts of wilful murder. They may be acts of justifiable tyrannicide, as, possibly, in the case of “the man Charles Stuart, King of England;” and acts of justifiable homicide, as in the case of every just war, or of every legitimate slaying upon the gallows.