Black Rod, brought to the bar, flung
into prison, and kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness by
the most degrading submissions. Nothing could therefore be more natural
than that an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new advantage for their
order should be regarded by the Commons with extreme jealousy. There is
strong reason to suspect that some able Whig politicians, who thought it
dangerous to relax, at that moment, the laws against political offences,
but who could not, without incurring the charge of inconsistency,
declare themselves adverse to any relaxation, had conceived a hope that
they might, by fomenting the dispute about the Court of the Lord High
Steward, defer for at least a year the passing of a bill which they
disliked, and yet could not decently oppose. If this really was their
plan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House rejected the amendment;
the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held; and the question
was argued with great force and ingenuity on both sides.

The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at first
sight seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend a system
under which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures to
decide the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. And could
any thing be more absurd than that a nobleman accused of high treason
should be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if his
indictment happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minute
before a prorogation, but that, if the indictment arrived a minute after
the prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by the
very authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could have been said
on the other side seems strange; but those who managed the conference
for the Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion to have
put forth all their powers. Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague,
who was rapidly attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age.
To him the lead seems on this occasion to have been left; and to his pen
we owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notion
of his talents for debate. "We have framed"--such was in substance his
reasoning,--"we have framed a law which has in it nothing exclusive,
a law which will be a blessing to every class, from the highest to
the lowest. The new securities, which we propose to give to innocence
oppressed by power, are common