HABEAS CORPUS SUSPENSION BILL.

February 26, 1817.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL rose and said: I had not intended to trouble the House with any observations of mine during the present session of Parliament. Indeed, the state of my health induced me to resolve upon quitting the fatiguing business of this House altogether: but he must have no ordinary mind whose attention is not roused in a singular manner when it is proposed to suspend the rights and liberties of Englishmen, though even for a short period. I am determined for my own part that no weakness of frame, no indisposition of body, shall prevent my protesting against the establishment of the most dangerous precedent which this House ever made.

Sir, I am the more convinced of the danger in which the constitution stands from the manner in which the question has been treated by an hon. Friend below me. From a person of his intelligence, candour, and information I expected an excellent judgment on this subject. But to what do his arguments amount? I will venture to say they are so weak and superficial that I would not upon the strength of them vote for a Turnpike Bill. He tells us that reform wears a most dangerous aspect because it is moderate-because it proposes to go step by step. Let my hon. Friend consider to what this argument leads: it leads to the rejection of every species of reform, because it is innovation. In this point of view there was danger in the proposition made last night to reduce two of the Lords of the Admiralty, and my right hon. Friend who proposes to

abolish the office of third secretary of state is a monster of terror and alarm. Another argument of my hon. Friend was that the danger must be great because the distress was great, and that the discontent was to be measured by the distress. And upon this sort of argument a priori does he propose to take away the liberties of the people of England! Without waiting to ask whether they have been loyal, whether they have been patient under suffering, and enduring in the depth of misery, he turns to them and says, 'Because you are starving you shall be deprived of the protection of the law, your only remaining comfort.' Yet upon such arguments as these, for he had little other, did my hon. Friend rest his support of this Bill. He told us he would not enter into the historical question, and that he knew not if the existing laws were sufficient to remedy the evil. On these two points, however, I think it necessary to dwell a short time before I give my vote. Upon looking back to history the first precedent which strikes us is the precedent of the enactment of this law. The year before this law passed a plot was discovered, which, though it has since been mentioned only as an instance of credulity, bore at the time a most alarming appearance. Not less than two hundred persons, many of them of the first rank, were accused of conspiring the death of the king. The heir presumptive of the throne was supposed to be implicated in the conspiracy, and foreign powers were ready with money and troops to assist in the subversion of our constitution in church and state. Yet at this time did the Lords and Commons present for the royal assent this very Bill of Habeas Corpus, which for less dangers you are now about to suspend. We talk much, I think a great deal too much, of the wisdom of our ancestors. I wish we would imitate the courage of our ancestors. They were not ready to lay their liberties at the foot of the Crown upon every vain or imaginary alarm.

The able manner in which the history of the various suspensions of the Habeas Corpus which have taken place has been commented upon by my noble Friend behind me renders it unnecessary for me to enter upon that part of the subject:-one principle seems to have guided our legislators on all these occasions. It was this-that, when persons within the country were plotting with an enemy from without, the success of their machinations could only be prevented by detaining their persons till the danger of invasion was past. Thus, when, just before the first suspension of this Act, King William informed his Parliament that James had sailed with a French fleet for Ireland, the effect of leaving his adherents at large till legal proofs of their guilt could be procured would have been that they might have joined James, or made an insurrection in his behalf. On the various occasions, too, when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended during the late war, the system of anarchy prevailing in France was always specified in the preamble of the Bill; and in the preamble of the Sedition Bill in 1799 it is expressly stated that a conspiracy has been carrying on in conjunction with the persons from time to time exercising the powers of government in France. Indeed, it is manifest that some fear of foreign aid, some dread of an invasion from abroad, or a competitor for the throne supported by rebellion, is an essential circumstance to render this measure necessary. For else why have a Habeas Corpus Act at all? The very purpose of the law is to protect the subject in all common cases of treason and sedition, and if it is to be a mere matter of holiday parade, if it is to be used only when the sky is bright, if every rumour of conspiracy and alarm of disaffection is to be sufficient ground for its suspension, then the Englishman who tells foreigners that his constitution and his laws are better than those of his neighbours is a lying boaster.

Now a few words as to the present danger and the sufficiency of the existing laws to meet it. The report of the Committee refers to two objects-to the plot which broke out in Spa-fields, and to the system of clubs and combinations now carrying on. As to the first, though the story is told in very pompous language in the report, we know the fact to be that a few miserable malcontents attempted a riot -that one man summoned the Tower, and that another party which went to the Royal Exchange was defeated by the Lord Mayor and Sir James Shaw. So that whatever the danger may have been previously, it is now past. The insurrection was tried and failed. Now, Sir, what better proof can there be of the excellence of the present laws? An attempt was made to overturn them; the people refused to join in it, and it was immediately quelled. What better evidence could we desire of the sufficiency of the constitution to repel the dangers which menace it? I was therefore surprised to hear the noble lord say that a reason for the present measure was, that a plot had exploded. This would be an excellent argument to a jury before whom one of the conspirators was tried, but it surely cannot be a good reason to the legislature for altering the present law. If a man's house has been saved from lightning by a conductor he does not immediately take it down to put up something else. If a traveller is attacked by a robber whose pistol misses him, and whose person falls into his power, he does not consider himself in the same danger he would be in with the pistol still aimed at his head.

As to the clubs and combinations which are said to exist I should admit they were dangerous, but that they cannot proceed a step without committing an unlawful act. All societies which administer unlawful oaths are illegal by the 39th of the King. The blasphemy and sedition said to be openly avowed are punishable by common law. The attorney-general has been asked very naturally what