nions, without bail or mainprize, and there
detained, without trial, during the continuance of the act, unless
his majesty's privy-council granted an order for admitting any
such prisoners to bail or to trial. This bill encountered a strong
opposition. On the second reading Mr. Dunning declared that it struck
directly at that great pillar of British liberty, the Habeas Corpus Act,
and that it was disgraceful that it should be brought in without notice,
and when the house was so thinly attended. He moved, that the bill
should be printed, which was granted, and the second reading was
therefore postponed. The alarm it excited brought back several of the
seceders, and the debate became more animated. It was urged by the
opposition that the bill would tend to create spies, informers, and
false accusers; that it would furnish means of gratification, emolument,
and safety to the most profligate of mankind; and that it would enable
any revengeful minister or mercenary villain to satiate his revenge or
replenish his purse at the expense of the virtuous. Charles Fox used
some cogent arguments against the measure. He remarked:--"Who knows but
ministers, in the fulness of their malice, may take into their heads
that I have served on Long Island under General Washington? What would
it avail me, in such an event, to plead an _alibi_--to assure my old
friends that I was, during the whole of the campaign, in England--that I
was never in America, or any other sea but between Dover and Calais, and
that all my acts of piracy were committed on the mute creation? All this
may be true, says a minister or a minister's understrapper, but you are
for the present suspected, and that is sufficient. I know that you are
fond of Scotland:--this is not the time for proofs; you may be, and very
probably are innocent, but this bill cares not whether you are guilty
or innocent: I will send you, under the sign-manual, to study the Erse
language in the isle of Bute; and as soon as the operation of the bill
is over, you will be at liberty to return, or go whither you please. You
may then call upon your accusers, to prove their charges of treason
in America, or of piracy on the high-seas; but they will laugh in your
face, and tell you they never charged, they only suspected; and the act
of parliament will serve as a complete plea in bar. It will answer a
double end--it will be at once your redress and our justification." In
reply, Lord Thurlow ridiculed the i