Manchester, at Derby, and in Scotland. With respect to Manchester, it might be remembered that a large portion of the last report of the secret committee went to establish the opinion that a treasonable conspiracy of the most atrocious kind had existed in that town. It was stated in the reports, that some of the culprits were in custody; but these persons, for the intent that they should not be brought up for trial, were removed by certiorari to the court of King's bench; and at the next assizes in Lancaster, Mr. Topping, who acted for the Attorney-general, stated that no evidence was to be produced against them. It was then declared, that the prosecutions were discontinued, because every thing was tranquil, and the ministers were willing to show their clemency. But if there had been any truth in the statements of the atrocious crimes which these men meditated, were they persons to whom clemency ought to be shown? Were men conspiring to burn factories, to attack barracks, and create a revolution, to be discharged without a trial and without punishment? But though the country was so tranquil at this time that it was deemed unnecessary to resort to the ordinary modes of legal trial, and the alleged offenders were discharged; yet the persons against whom there had never been supposed to be evidence sufficient to put them upon their trials, those who had been arrested under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, were kept in prison; so that while those against whom the strongest case was made out, were dis

charged, those against whom the case was the weakest, were kept in confinement.

With respect to the proceedings in Scotland, he would not now enter upon them, as they would be made the subject of a noble lord behind him; but he should beg the House to bear in mind how much the effect produced on the House had been occasioned by an oath which the lord advocate had read in his place. The person who had been said to have administered it had been three times proceeded against on three different indictments, yet at last he had been acquitted.

The hon. member next alluded to the transactions at Derby. There could be no doubt, he said, that the persons who suffered, whether guilty of treason or not, were guilty of a capital crime; but the proceedings on that trial, more than any other, pronounced a full condemnation on the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. No evidence of any proceeding prior to the 8th of June was suffered to transpire; although the Attorney-general, in his opening speech, had said that he could prove that Brandreth had meetings with the conspirators previous to that day, and it was his duty to have given evidence respecting them. From this circumstance there was a strong presumption that the whole of that insurrection was the work of the persons sent by government; not indeed for the specific purpose of fomenting disaffection, but as emissaries of sedition from clubs that had never existed. The crown lawyers, in making out their case, took care that it should

not

not be ascertained how far this information was correct. The Attorney-general having promised that he would prove that Brandreth was present at several meetings anterior to the 8th of June, was called on by the counsel for the prisoners to produce that evidence on the first, second, and third trials, yet he persevered in the course he had first adopted, of leaving all the former proceedings in obscurity. The ministers had previous information of Brandreth's designs, yet they did not seize him. He was suffered to go on till he had effected all the mischief in his power; and the only use proposed to be made of the suspension, was not made of it.

The conclusion of his speech related to the prosecution of Hone. If (said Sir Samuel) the prosecutions were not vindictive, why were they undertaken? The publications themselves were stopped before the Attorney-general attempted to suppress them; but this injudicious attempt brought them again into public notice, and gave them infinitely greater currency than they would have obtained in their original state, with a great mass of concealed, forgotten, and unknown parodies attached to them. The least criminal of the parodies was the last prosecuted, and the prosecution was persevered in after a double failure, because, according to the explanation of a learned friend, the Attorney - general thought it would have manifested weakness in himself to have relinquished it. He could not forget that they were the same government who had endeavoured to

excuse their own acts in requiring prisoners to confess they had done wrong, by giving security for the peace.

The Solicitor General began his remarks by observing, that the statement of the proceedings which had taken place at Manchester was not fair with respect to the hon. and learned gentleman. He had confounded those persons who were brought up to be tried for misdemeanors, with those who were accused of high treason. He must know that the persons who had been arraigned, and against whom no evidence had been offered, were only those who had been called "the Blanketeers." These men, though a bill had been found against them by the grand jury, had been dismissed, as the restored tranquillity of the country made it unnecessary to punish them, it appearing that they were weak instruments in the hands of others, and had besides suffered enough for their past conduct.

With respect to the trials at Derby, he said it was with surprise he had listened to any attempt to cavil at those proceedings. From the part he had taken in those prosecutions, it was with reluctance that he alluded to them; but thus far he could assert with confidence, that no man who had attended to those trials but was convinced that a more satisfactory judicial investigation never took place. He denied that the Attorney-general had stated, in the first trial, that he was in possession of proofs of meetings having taken place at which Brandreth was present, anterior to the 8th of June. The

Attorney

Attorney-general had argued in his opening, that from the situation in which Brandreth was found on the 8th of June, it was evident that prior meetings must have taken place. If such meetings could have been shown to have happened at which the agents of government were present, exciting the conspirators to rebellion, 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 was 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 Sidmouth presented to the House of Lords a bill for repealing an act passed in the last session of parliament to empower his Majesty to secure and detain persons suspected 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 time; which was accordingly 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 oppose 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 dangerous situation of the country; but whatever might have been the difficulties of the times, the bill now about to be repealed had been, he would 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 remind their lordships, was not one which had been granted by any act of parliament whatever. The personal liberty of the people was no concession: it was a right antecedent 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 people 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 proceeding which would demonstrate to the latest posterity that they considered

considered themselves pledged to guard against such unjust encroachments in future. The evidence on such an inquiry must not be of the ex-parte and suspicious nature which their lordships were induced to accept of last year. Nothing would satisfy the country but a full and impartial investigation. He trusted it was unnecessary for him to urge the importance of this right on their lordships minds, but he could not help dwelling upon it. It was the most ancient of all the rights of the people of this country. It rested neither on Magna Charta, the act of Habeas Corpus, nor the Bill of Rights, though it was reasserted in them. The act of 1672, in the reign of Charles II, by which it was legislatively enacted, did not constitute the right. The ancestor of the noble lord, the earl of Shaftesbury, then stood up honourably and manfully for this best right of the people, and contributed greatly to the measure by which it was confirmed. And at what time was that important act passed? At the moment when the Houses of Lords and Commons were in the state of the greatest alarm from the apprehension of plots and conspiracies. Even in those convulsed times no plot had been thought sufficient to warrant the legislature in depriving the subject of personal liberty.

Returning to the act of last session, his lordship again asserted that no ground for it had been laid at the time when it was passed, and that nothing had since occurred to show that there was any thing in the state of the country which called for it. But the noble earl opposite had declared, that he

was ready to prove, not only that the measure was justified by the state of the country at that time, but that it had been productive of the greatest advantages. That the country was in better circumstances now than last year he was happy to believe; but whatever improvement had taken place, certainly was not owing to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act; for were the truth of this assertion of ministers to be admitted by their lordships, there would be no longer any security for personal liberty. If they could persuade parliament to suspend the Habeas Corpus act on ex-parte evidence, they would have nothing more to do than to come forward the next year, and say, "You see what advantages have been derived from following our recommendation."

After touching upon the case of Hone, and affirming that these prosecutions bore about them such marks of hypocrisy as he had never before witnessed, he returned to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. It was, he said, an act of the most pernicious tendency to suspend the personal liberty of the subject in a time of profound peace, and formed a precedent of the most lamentable effect. Such acts left rents in the constitution which could not afterwards be closed. He trusted, however, that a strict inquiry would be made as to the manner in which this act had been executed.

Lord Sidmouth, in paying particular attention to the speech of the noble lord, began with his lordship's statement that there was no necessity for the act of the last session. He affirmed on

his own part, that the report made by the committee appointed by their lordships, and on the authority of which the act was passed, afforded its complete refutation. He further said, that the noble lord had also asserted, that the evidence produced by ministers was garbled, and that information which ought to have been communicated to the committee was withheld. He could, on the contrary, assure their lordships, that every kind of information which could with propriety be laid before the committee, had been produced to them, and that nothing had been withheld which was necessary to enable them to arrive at a fair and proper conclusion on the question. In the Prince Regent's speech, only the other causes which had contributed to the returning prosperity of the country were mentioned; but it did not follow that great benefit had not been derived from the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act.

His lordship then alluded to the effects of the same measure with respect to the trials at Derby; in which case, he said, that these men, besides making a confession of their guilt, gave certain information that an insurrection of a much more formida ble nature than that in which they had been engaged, was in contemplation, and would infallibly have taken place had not the Habeas Corpus bill been suspended. Thus it was proved by incontrovertible evidence, that the measure for which the noble lord had contended that there was no necessity, had preserved the peace and tranquillity of the country.

After various other conside

rations upon different subjects, his lordship recurred to his own responsibility for the due execution of that act which of course rested chiefly with himself. He had only in view, he said, to prevent the threatening danger, and had not been the means of depriving individuals of their liberty any farther than the necessity of the case required. The act at present under consideration did not expire till the first of March; and there was no record on the Journals of the House that an act of that description had ever been repealed, or not suffered to run out to its utmost limit. But his majesty's ministers admitted that nothing could justify the continuance of such an act but the necessity which originated it; and when that necessity ceased, it was due to the legislature and to the people of the country to repeal it forthwith.

He should not detain their lordships any longer. It was the intention of the Prince Regent to lay before their lordships papers touching the internal state of the country. It would be for their lordships to decide how they should be disposed of. Many opportunities would arise in the course of the session of discussing the measures lately resorted to by the government, and on the propriety of those measures he was ready to state his unshaken conviction.

The bill was then read a se

cond time, the commitment negatived, and the bill ordered to be engrossed. The engrossed bill was brought into the House almost immediately. It was then read a third time, passed, and ordered to be sent to the Commons. CHAPTER