ssary, it
might not be improper to reflect, how unseasonably we shall irritate the
commons by rejecting this bill, and how justly we shall exasperate the
people, by showing them that their complaints and remonstrances are of
no weight; that they must expect the redress of their grievances from
some other power; and that we prefer the impunity of one man to the
happiness and safety of the publick.

Lord ISLAY spoke next to the following purpose:--My lords, as there has
in this debate been very frequent mention of extraordinary cases, of new
modes of wickedness, which require new forms of procedure, and new arts
of eluding justice, which make new methods of prosecution necessary, I
cannot forbear to lay before your lordships my sentiments on this
question; sentiments not so much formed by reflection as impressed by
experience, and which I owe not to any superiour degree of penetration
into future events, but to subsequent discoveries of my own errours.

I have observed, my lords, that in every collision of parties, that
occasion on which their passions are inflamed, is always termed an
extraordinary conjuncture, an important crisis of affairs, either
because men affect to talk in strong terms of the business in which they
are engaged, for the sake of aggrandizing themselves in their own
opinion and that of the world, or because the present object appears
greatest to their sight by intercepting others, and that is imagined by
them to be really most important in itself, by which their own pleasure
is most affected.

On these extraordinary occasions, my lords, the victorious have always
endeavoured to secure their conquest, and to gratify their passions by
new laws, by laws, even in the opinion of those by whom they are
promoted, only justifiable by the present exigence. And no sooner has a
new rotation of affairs given the superiority to another party, than
another law, equally unreasonable and equally new, is found equally
necessary for a contrary purpose. Thus is our constitution violated by
both, under the pretence of securing it from the attack of each other,
and lasting evils have been admitted for the sake of averting a
temporary danger.

I have been too long acquainted with mankind to charge any party with
insincerity in their conduct, or to accuse them of affecting to
represent their disputes as more momentous than they appeared to their
own eyes. I know, my lords, how highly every man learns to value that
whic