law of Fact: if you discover not that, Fact, who already knows
it, will let you also know it by and by!

What is justice? that, on the whole, is the question of the
Sphinx to us. The law of Fact is, that justice must and will be
done. The sooner the better; for the Time grows stringent,
frightfully pressing! "What is justice?" ask many, to whom cruel
Fact alone will be able to prove responsive. It is like jesting
Pilate asking, What is Truth? Jesting Pilate had not the
smallest chance to ascertain what was Truth. He could not have
known it, had a god shewn it to him. Thick serene opacity,
thicker than amaurosis, veiled those smiling eyes of his to
Truth; the inner _retina_ of them was gone paralytic, dead. He
looked at Truth; and discerned her not, there where she stood.
"What is justice?" The clothed embodied justice that sits in
Westminster Hall, with penalties, parchments, tipstaves, is very
visible. But the unembodied justice, whereof that other is
either an emblem, or else is a fearful indescribability, is not
so visible! For the unembodied Justice is of Heaven; a Spirit,
and Divinity of Heaven,--invisible to all but the noble and pure
of soul. The impure ignoble gaze with eyes, and she is not
there. They will prove it to you by logic, by endless Hansard
Debatings, by bursts of Parliamentary eloquence. It is not
consolatory to behold! For properly, as many men as there are in
a Nation who _can_ withal see Heaven's invisible Justice, and
know it to be on Earth also omnipotent, so many men are there who
stand between a Nation and perdition. So many, and no more.
Heavy-laden England, how many hast thou in this hour? The
Supreme Power sends new and ever new, all _born_ at least with
hearts of flesh and not of stone;--and heavy Misery itself, once