Charles
knew what he was doing. "That man," said he of Jeffreys, "has no
learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than ten carted
street-walkers." The first object was to convict Algernon Sidney of
treason. Jeffreys used simple means. Usually drunk, his court resembled
the den of a wild beast. He poured forth on "plaintiffs and defendants,
barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen, torrents of frantic
abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses." The law required proof of an
_overt act_ of treason. Many years before Sidney had written a
philosophical treatise touching resistance by the subject to the
sovereign, as a constitutional principle. But, though the fragment
contained nothing more than the doctrines of Locke, Sidney had
cautiously shown it to no one, and it had only been found by searching
his study. Jeffreys told the jury that if they believed the book to be
Sidney's book, written by him, they must convict for _scribere est
agere_, to write is to commit an overt act.
A revolution followed upon this and other like convictions, as
revolutions have usually followed such uses of the judicial power.
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