time when the constitution and liberty of the country were most peculiarly guarded and respected; and such a suspension was more particularly called for at this crisis, when attempts were made to disseminate through the realm, principles and means of action that might endanger that constitution, for the preservation of which that law had been made, and which might produce much more lamentable effects, and at last require a remedy greater in extent and more dreadful, than the one now proposed. This was not his opinion alone, but the sentiments of all those respectable gentlemen of the committee who had investigated the matter. He should therefore move "for leave to bring in a bill to empower his Majesty to secure and detain all such persons as should be suspected of conspiring against his person and government."

and, after another, division on a motion made by Mr. Grey, "for a Call of the House," which was negatived, the bill was presented, read a first and second time, and voted into the committee; where its various clauses being adjusted and agreed to, the report was received, and the bill ordered to be engrossed and read a third time the next day.

May 17, 1794.

On a motion for the third reading of the bill, which had been introduced the preceding day, "for suspending the operation of the Habeas Corpus Act," the measure was strenuously opposed, particularly by Mr. Grey, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Fox.

Mr. PITT, in defence of the motion, observed, that from the lateness of the hour, and having but little inclination to go much at length into a question which had been already so fully discussed, it was not his intention to detain the house for any great length of time; and, indeed, the very able manner in which his honourable friends had already argued it, rendered it

unnecessary for him to say much. The right honourable gentleman* commenced, and had concluded, his speech, by holding out, as an incontrovertible argument, that the measures at present necessarily adopted by administration, would impair materially, if not totally destroy, the constitution of this coun try; a mode of reasoning that he could never suffer to pass without a reply. Pursuing that strain of argument, the honourable gentleman had pronounced, in terms of unrivalled eloquence, a most pathetic funeral oration on the supposed departed liberties of British subjects, which he had stated as having expired with the introduction of the present bill-a bill, in his mind, nothing worse, or more dangerous in its consequence, than what had been known, from the experience and practice of our ancestors, to be a wise and proper measure, when the existing eircumstances of the country demanded such a measure, and required that the hands of the executive government should be strengthened. That necessity, however difficult it might be to convince that honourable gentleman of its existence, he trusted, had been fully made out to the house, and to all those who had given themselves the trouble of bestowing the slightest consideration on the subject; and such necessity having been proved to exist, it came then to be considered, whether the danger was of sufficient magnitude to justify the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act, which, properly speaking, was the only question for consideration before the house. That measure, he granted, was of considerable importance; it was a remedy only to be applied when the emergency was so great as really to call for it. The fair question, therefore, which gentlemen were to put to their own minds, was simply this, Whether the danger with which the constitution of the country was threatened by the practices now exposed, was, or was not, greater than any danger which could result from putting into the hands of the executive government, a more than ordinary degree of power, for the purpose of resisting what they considered, and what parlia

* Mr. Fox.

ment considered, a very dangerous conspiracy? The honourable gentleman had carried his argument so far as to say, that if the bill passed, all the rights of the people, and all the privileges of parliament, would be at once destroyed-a doctrine which he could never admit, by whatever ability or eloquence it might be supported. On that point it was important for the consideration of the house, a point which had not yet been touched on by any of those who had argued the question, that the bill was limited in its duration; that it was but a temporary measure, adapted to a present existing evil, and was to continue in force for little more than six months; and that it invested the executive government with a temporary discretionary power, to imprison suspected persons for that limited time, without bringing them to trial;-all the rights of the people, and all the privi leges of parliament, remaining uninterruptedly the same, attach ing all the time the same responsibility upon ministers to which they were liable in every other situation in which they acted, and equally answerable for any abuse of this power, if they should abuse it, as they were for the abuse of any other discretionary power which was vested in them. Stating the question in that view, which was the real and proper state of it, could any gentleman think that all the liberties of the subject, and all the privileges of parliament, would be so completely annihilated by the bill, as to make it a question, whether a member of parliament ought, or ought not, to give up his attendance in parliament, or the interest of his constituents? He would not do those honourable gentlemen the injustice to suppose that any of them thought so for a moment; and it would not be doing justice to their own characters, were they to make any such declaration.

The right honourable gentleman, and those who argued on the same side with him, had contended, that in this, and other measures of government, there appeared a strong imitation of the French system of procedure; upon what grounds they knew best; hitherto they had never taken the trouble of explaining them to the house. Wherein was the comparison to be found? He begged gentlemen to attend a little to the compara

tive state of the two countries. Here a case had been stated, and clearly made out, proving that there was a party in this country, whose avowed system aimed at the destruction of all civilized order, the annihilation of parliament, and the subversion of the constitution itself, by the introduction of jacobinism, which had already proved so fatal to France, and at that moment threatened the dissolution of every established government in Europe! Such being the case in this country, it was proposed to prevent the calamitous effects of this dangerous conspiracy, by the adoption of a legal measure, limited in its duration, and which the experience and wisdom of our ancestors had approved, and found highly beneficial. What then was to be compared to this in the situation of France, under the influence of the present ruling power in that country, miscalled a government ?-a power which, to support its reprobated, detestable, and presumptuous usurpation, had recourse to every stratagem that fraud, robbery, and injustice could suggest. It was, therefore, unfair to impose any such comparisons upon the house; for, in the present instance, we were doing no more than resisting French crimes, by opposing to them English principles; and between them it would not be said, there could be found the least comparison, analogy, or imitation. The right honourable gentleman had next proceeded, in the climax of his imagination, to augur consequences the most portentous, ominous, and inauspicious, from the arguments of the right honourable gentleman who sat near him; and, taking that to be the first step of the ladder which he supposed reared for the destruction of the constitution, seemed dreadfully afraid about the extent to which that reasoning might be carried; and on that point he had produced somewhat of an extraordinary kind of argument, which was, that, because all the measures which had yet been taken had proved ineffectual to check the progress of the evil they had been applied to remedy, we were not therefore to persevere in endeavouring to overcome the evil by the

*Mr. Windham.

application of means stronger and more efficacious.

But here

it might be asked, whether, if those measures had not been adopted, and the vigilance of government exerted, the evils complained of might not have been much greater now than they really were? and whether, if no such steps had been taken during the last two years, we should have enjoyed the same tranquillity that had prevailed during that period? The fact was, if these measures had not been adopted, we should have been hurried much faster to the same scenes of mischief which had now been opened to our view, and from the dreadful consequences of which we had been saved by the vigilance of parliament and the exertions of government, assisted by the prevailing opi nions of the country.

The right honourable gentleman had then said, that if we dreaded all that our alarms had suggested, and found that the measures adopted last year had not succeeded in checking those parties, we ought not to persevere by more severe measures, when there was reason to think that such measures had been of little avail, and that those of a cooler and more moderate nature would have been more adequate but to what did the right honourable gentleman mean to apply those mild and moderate re-medies? Did he suppose that the progress of a jacobin conven◄ tion, were it to be once established in this country, was to be -stopped, and its consequences avoided by indulgence and concession? or that indulgence and concession were fit to be applied as a remedy to so daring an attempt upon the existence of the constitution? He might wish to preserve the British constitution, but that would be a thing impossible, if these societies met with indulgence or concession. Their own language clearly expressed, that they would make no compromise; and it must be clear that no concession would satisfy them, short of a surrender of the British constitution. It must therefore that appear -resistance, and the strongest resistance that could be made, was absolutely necessary, notwithstanding all that had been augured in so prophetic a strain against the adoption of severe measures, even in extreme cases. The right honourable gentleman had