our Constitution is not usually, I think, carried higher than the point from which the right of Appeal hath here been deduced. Or, do you think you may safely make free with the Constitution of an University, though it were dangerous meddling with that of the State itself? This may be true, indeed; but where is your generosity in the mean time? Why should the thoughts of impunity encourage you to such an attack on the rights and privileges of a body of men, who, though unable to punish such offences against themselves as they deserve, have yet been generally secured from all outrage, by the very regard and reverence which the public hath ever paid to them? In a word (for I would not hold you longer from your necessary avocations), it may be worth your inquiry, when you shall think fit to sally forth on another adventure, what the Learned of Great Britain have done, that they should have their liberties written and inveighed against in so outrageous a manner; and, amidst the securest enjoyment of every civil right, under the justest and most equal Government in the world, what peculiar circumstances of offence have so inflamed the guilt of the scholars of this land, that they, of all his Majesty's good subjects, should deserve to be the only slaves. |