iament the
conviction that, "so long as our Colonies kept the idea of their civil
rights associated with our government, they would cling and grapple to
us, and no force under heaven would be of power to tear them from their
allegiance." In the case of which he was speaking his warning, as we
have seen, fell on deaf ears; but the policy of the present reign is a
willing and full adoption of them, on a far larger scale than even his
farseeing vision could then contemplate. Within the century which has
elapsed since his time the enterprise of Britain has sent forth her sons
to people another hemisphere; and they, her children still, cling to the
parent state with filial affection, because they feel that, though
parted from her by thousands of miles and more than one ocean, they are
still indissolubly united to her by their participation in all the
blessings of her constitution, her generous toleration, her equal laws,
her universal freedom.

On one transaction of these years the leaders of the Opposition were
found acting in close agreement with the ministers. We have seen how, in
the early part of the reign of George III., the House of Commons threw
the sheriffs of London into prison, on account of their performance of
what they conceived to be their duty as magistrates; and in 1840 it
subjected the same officials to the same treatment on a question of the
same character--the extent of the privilege of the House of Commons to
overrule the authority of the courts of law. The question was in
appearance complicated by the institution of several suits at law, and
by the fact that the House was not consistent in its conduct, but
allowed its servants to plead to the first action, and refused the same
permission in the second, when the result of the first trial had proved
adverse to them. The case was this: some inspectors of prisons has
presented a report to Parliament, in which they alleged that they had
found in Newgate a book of disgusting and obscene character, published
by a London publisher named Stockdale. The House of Commons had ordered
the report to be printed and sold by Messrs. Hansard, the Parliamentary
publishers, and Stockdale brought an action against Messrs. Hansard for
libel. Chief-justice Denman charged the jury that "the fact of the House
of Commons having directed Messrs. Hansard to publish their reports was
no justification to them for publishing a Parliamentary report
containing a libel;" and Stockdale o