6] 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1818. 



Attorney-general had argued in 

 his opening, that fr(^ the situa- 

 tion in which Brandreth was 

 found on the 8th of June, it was 

 evident that prior meetings must 

 have taken place. If such meet- 

 ings could have been shown to 

 have happened at which the agents 

 of government were present, ex- 

 citing the conspirators to rebel- 

 lion, why had not this been noticed 

 by the prisoners and their learned 

 counsel? Was it to be contended, 

 because sufficient evidence was 

 procured to satisfy a jury that 

 high treason had been committed, 

 that the prosecutor Avas bound to 

 prove in evidence all that had 

 passed among the parties before 

 the crime was committed ? 



The learned gentleman next 

 remarked upon the case of Hone's 

 trial ; but this having been first 

 taken up by lord Althorp, and 

 only improved upon by Sir S. 

 Romilly, we shall say nothing 

 further on the subject, especially 

 as the Attorney-general appears 

 to have come off rather lamely 

 upon the business. 



Several other gentlemen joined 

 in the debate, but little passed 

 beyond slight skirmishing between 

 the members on both sides. 



On January 28 Viscount Sid- 

 mouth presented to the House of 

 Lords a bill for repealing an act 

 passed in the last session of par- 

 liament to empower his Majesty 

 to secure and detain persons sus- 

 pected of conspiring against his 

 Majesty's person and government. 

 The title of the bill being read, 

 his lordship moved that it be now 

 read a first timj ; which was ac- 

 cordingly done. After which, 

 on the noble lord's motion, the 

 standing order relative to the 



progress of public bills was sus- 

 pended. 



Lord Holland said, that though 

 he certainly did not arise to op- 

 pose the motion, yet he could 

 not avoid saying a few words on 

 the circumstances which had led 

 to it. The king's ministers had 

 dwelt upon the difficulties they 

 had experienced from the dan- 

 gerous situation of the country; 

 but whatever might have been 

 the difficulties of the times, the 

 bill now about to be repealed had 

 been, he wot\ld assert, one of the 

 greatest calamities the country 

 had experienced. Believing, as 

 he did, that the whole of their 

 lordships' proceedings, in passing 

 the act for suspending the Habeas 

 Corpus^ had rested upon garbled 

 and unfair evidence, he could not 

 be satisfied with the mere repeal 

 of that act, but thought that an 

 inquiry into the grounds on which 

 it had passed ought to have been 

 instituted. The right which had 

 been suspended, he wished to re- 

 mind their lordships, was not one 

 Avhich had been granted by any 

 act of parliament whatever. The 

 personal liberty of the people was 

 no concession : it was a right an- 

 tecedent to any statute, and equal 

 to that of their lordships to vote in 

 that House, or to the right of the 

 king to sit on the throne. The 

 invasion of this right of the peo- 

 ple could only be justified by the 

 clearest evidence of the most 

 overwhelming necessity. It was 

 their lordships duty to show that 

 a law which deprived the people 

 of their most important right was 

 not to be inflicted without proof, 

 or without some subsequent pro- 

 ceechng which would demonstrate 

 to the latest posterity that they 

 considered 



