ures
are now necessary, which no other distresses, however urgent, or
provocations, however flagrant, have hitherto produced. It ought to be
proved, that wickedness had discovered some new shelter from justice,
before new engines are invented to force it from its retreat, and new
powers applied to drag it out to punishment.

The nation has subsisted, my lords, so many centuries; has often
recovered from the lingering disease of inward corruption, and repelled
the shocks of outward violence; it has often been endangered by corrupt
counsels, and wicked machinations, and surmounted them by the force of
its established laws, without the assistance of temporary expedients; at
least without expedients like this, which neither law nor justice can
support, and which would in itself be a more atrocious grievance than
those, if they were real, which it is intended to punish, and might
produce far greater evils than those which are imputed to him, against
whom it is projected.

It has, indeed, my lords, been mentioned by a noble lord, in much softer
language, as a method only of making an inquiry possible. The
possibility of an inquiry, my lords, is a very remote and inoffensive
idea; but names will not change the nature of the things to which they
are applied. The bill is, in my opinion, calculated to make a defence
impossible, to deprive innocence of its guard, and to let loose
oppression and perjury upon the world. It is a bill to dazzle the wicked
with a prospect of security, and to incite them to purchase an indemnity
for one crime, by the perpetration of another. It is a bill to confound
the notions of right and wrong, to violate the essence of our
constitution, and to leave us without any certain security for our
properties, or rule for our actions.

Nor are the particular parts less defective than the general foundation;
for it is full of ambiguous promises, vague ideas, and indeterminate
expressions, of which some have been already particularized by the noble
lords that have spoken on this occasion, whose observations I shall not
repeat, nor endeavour to improve; but cannot forbear proposing to the
advocates for the bill one sentence, that it may be explained by them,
and that at least we may not pass what we do not understand.

In the inquiry into the conduct of the earl of ORFORD, every man, as we
have already seen, is invited to bring his evidence, and to procure an
indemnity, by answering such questions as shall b