The law, in all vicissitudes of government…will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men…On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace.

argument in defence of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, 4 December 1770