nce of power for twenty years, any man, when his conduct
became the subject of publick examination, was without accusers?

I cannot, for my part, but congratulate the noble person upon his
triumph over malice; malice assisted by subtilty and experience, by
wealth and power, which is at length obliged to confess its impotence,
to call upon us to assist it with new laws, to enable it to offer a
reward for evidence against him, and throw down the boundaries of
natural justice, that he may be harassed, censured, and oppressed, upon
whom it cannot be proved that he ever deviated from the law, or employed
his power for any other end than the promotion of the publick happiness.

Had the officers of the crown, my lords, when his influence was
represented so great, and his dominion so absolute, projected any such
measures for his defence; had they proposed to silence his opponents by
calling them to a trial, and offered a stated price for accusations
against them, how loudly would they have been charged with the most
flagrant violation of the laws, and the most open disregard of the
rights of nature; with how much vehemence would it have been urged, that
they were intoxicated with their success, and that in the full security
of power they thought themselves entitled to neglect the great
distinctions of right and wrong, and determined to employ the law for
the completion of those purposes, in which justice would give them no
assistance.

I doubt not that your lordships will easily perceive, that this censure
is equally just in either case; that you will not allow any man to be
prosecuted by methods which he ought not to have used in his own case;
that you will not expose any man to hardships, from which every other
member of the community is exempt; that you will not suffer any man to
be tried by hired evidence; and that you will not condemn him whom the
law acquits.

Lord BATHURST spoke next, in substance as follows:--My lords, the
question under our consideration has been so long and so accurately
debated, that little can be added to the arguments on either side; and
therefore, though I think it necessary on so important an occasion, to
make a solemn declaration of my opinion, I shall endeavour to support
it, not so much by any arguments of my own, as by a recapitulation and
comparison of those which have been already heard by your lordships.

It has not been denied, that the punishment of crimes is absolutely
necessary to