GENERAL HISTORY. 



[41 



persons who shoukl compose the 

 committee. No lists liati, ever 

 since he had been in parliament, 

 been made out by the opposition ; 

 nor did the ministers send their 

 lists to all the members, but only 

 to those on whom they could 

 securely rely- It was a committee 

 thus named, it was themselves 

 and their nominees, whom the 

 ministers had satisfied that their 

 conduct had been free from all 

 reproach. 



But suspensions of the Habeas 

 Corpus had always, it was said, 

 been followed by acts of indemni- 

 ty ; and in proof of this, precedents 

 had been resorted to. Of those 

 precedents there was not one, 

 except that of 1801, which could 

 be said to be in point. This, 

 however, was a precedent to be 

 avoided rather than followed. So 

 great was the injustice done by it, 

 that taking away all remedies by 

 a sweeping provision for wTongs 

 that might have been done in the 

 course of the eight preceding 

 years, it reversed judgments re- 

 covered, and punished the injured 

 party by making them pay 

 double costs for having brought 

 actions when it was perfectly 

 legal to bring them, which had 

 been brought months, or even 

 years, before any such retros- 

 pective measure was in contem- 

 plation. 



It was, indeed, with a view to 

 the second object of the bill, the 

 protection of the magistrates for 

 illegal acts of power committed 

 by them, that those precedents 

 could alone be resorted to. It 

 would not, however, with any 

 semblance of truth, be pretended 

 that the country had in the course 

 of the laat year been in any such 



state as could call for the exercise 

 by the magistrates of any thin-jj 

 more than the legal power with 

 whicli they were invested. The 

 acts of Indemnity relied upon had 

 been justified by the state of the 

 country, which had been matter 

 of public notoriety. It was not 

 then necessary to have secret 

 committees, and sealed bags, and 

 a mysterious concealment of evi- 

 dence, to apprize the House that 

 it had been necessary for the 

 public safety that ministers should 

 act with promptitude and deci- 

 sion, and without regard to the 

 strict rules of law. What he 

 complained of principally was, 

 that the House was kept in the 

 dark : they knew nothing of the 

 nature of the acts for which an 

 indemnity was to be given. The 

 operation of the bill was carried 

 back to the 26th of January ; but 

 for what reason, the House had 

 never been told. Some dark and 

 mysterious purpose must be in 

 view which was kept profoundly 

 secret. Surely the House would 

 not vote with so blind a confidence 

 as to extend this denial of justice 

 to a period beyond that which 

 was mentioned in any of the 

 reports on which this proceeding 

 •was founded, merely because 

 ministers had chosen so to frame 

 this bill. It was of most dangerous 

 consequence by such a bill to 

 inform magistrates that whenever 

 the Habeas Corpus was suspended,^ 

 they might exercise what acts of 

 authority they thought would be 

 most agreeable to ministers, and 

 that every thing would be covered 

 by an indemnity. The petitions 

 upon the tal)le furnished evidence 

 how grossly the law might be 

 violated where there seemed some 



invitation 



