violate every part of our
constitution. This house may sometimes have rejected bills beneficial to
the nation; and if this reasoning be allowed, it might have been wise
and just in the commons and the emperour to have suspended our authority
by force, to have voted us useless on that occasion, and have passed the
law without our concurrence.

With regard to the establishment of criminal prosecutions, as well as to
our civil rights, we are, my lords, to consider what is, upon the whole,
most for the advantage of the publick; we are not to admit practices
which may be sometimes useful, but may be often pernicious, and which
suppose men better or wiser than they are. We do not grant absolute
power to a wise and moderate prince, because his successours may inherit
his power without his virtues; we are not to trust or allow new methods
of prosecution upon an occasion on which they may seem useful, because
they may be employed to purposes very different from those for which
they were introduced.

Thus, my lords, I have shown the impropriety of the bill now before us,
upon the most favourable supposition that can possibly be made; a
supposition of the guilt of the noble person against whom it is
contrived. And surely, my lords, what cannot even in that case be
approved, must, if we suppose him innocent, be detested.

That he is really innocent, my lords, that he is only blackened by
calumny, and pursued by resentment, cannot be more strongly proved than
by the necessity to which his enemies are reduced, of using expedients
never heard of in this nation before, to procure accusations against
him; expedients which they cannot show to have been at any time
necessary for the punishment of a man really wicked, and which, by
bringing guilt and innocence into the same danger, leave us at liberty
to imagine, that he is clear from the crimes imputed to him, even in the
opinion of those who pursue him with the fiercest resentment, and the
loudest clamours.

It may well be imagined, my lords, that those whom he has so long
defeated by his abilities, see themselves now baffled by his innocence;
and that they only now persecute his character, to hide the true reason
for which they formerly attacked his power.

I hope, my lords, I shall be easily forgiven for observing, that this is
a testimony of uncorrupted greatness, more illustrious than any former
minister has ever obtained; for when was it known, my lords, that after
a continua