QUOTE: Speech to the House of Lords, on Preventing the Delays of Justice by Privilege of Parliament, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, 1770

"We all know, that the very soul and essence of trade are regular payments: and sad experience teaches us, that there are men, who will not make their regular payments without the compulsive power of the laws. The law then ought to be equally open to all. Any exemption to particular men, or particular ranks of men, is, in a free and commercial country, a solecism of the grossest nature.
[...] Another noble peer said [by way of opposition], That, by this bill, one might lost his most valuable and honest servants. This I hold to be a contradiction in terms: for he can neither by a valuable servant, nor an honest man, who gets into debt which he is neither able nor willing to pay, till compelled by the law. If my servant, by unforseen accidents, has got into debt, and I still wish to retain him, I certainly would pay the demand. But upon no principle of liberal legislation whatever, can my servant have a title to set his creditors at defiance, while for forty shillings only, the honest tradesman may be torn from his family, and locked up in a jail. It is a monstrous injustice!"
Lord Mansfield (William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield), Speech to the House of Lords, On Preventing the Delays of Justice by Privilege of Parliament, 1770

"It has been said by a noble lord on my left hand, that I likewise am running the race of popularity. If the noble lord means by popularity, that applause bestowed by after-ages on good and virtuous actions, I have long been struggling in that race: to what purposes, all-trying Time can alone determine. But if the noble lord means that mushroom popularity, which is raised without merit, and lost without a crime, he is much mistaken in his opinion. I defy the noble lord to point out a single action in my life in which the popularity of the times ever had the smallest influence on my determinations. I thank God I have a more permanent and steady rule for my conduct, -- the dictates of my own breast. They who have forgone that pleasing adviser, and given up their mind to be the slaves of every popular impulse, I sincerely pity. I pity them still more, if their vanity leads them to mistake the shouts of a mob for the trumpet of fame. Experience might inform them, that many, who have been saluted with the huzzas of a crowd one day, have received their execrations the next; and many, who, by the popularity of their times, have been held up as spotless patriots, have, nevertheless, appeared upon the historian's page, when truth has triumphed over delusion, the assassins of liberty."
Lord Mansfield (William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield), Speech to the House of Lords, On Preventing the Delays of Justice by Privilege of Parliament, 1770