strates for arresting persons in tumultuous assemblies, on the ground that there could be here no need of secrecy; but Lord Liverpool contended, that such a case, where great numbers must often be taken up without any minute investigation, was one in which the magistrates peculiarly required protection against vexatious suits. The amendment was negatived. Lord Erskine then moved, that the indemnity should not extend to any thing done maliciously, or without reasonable or probable cause; but the Chancellor observed, that such a provision would nullify the whole bill, and it was accordingly rejected. Lord Lansdowne moved, that Ireland should be left out, as the provisions of the Suspension Act did not extend to that country. Lord Sidmouth stated, that the name of Ire land was introduced to meet a special case of a person who was apprehended there for acts done in Great Britain; but Lord Holland urged, that Ireland should be left out, and that a clause should be introduced, embracing merely the special case. This was agreed to by Lord Liverpool. The Earl of Carnarvon then protested against the payment of double costs by the plaintiffs, in actions already begun, and Lord King condemned the introduction of double costs into the bill alto. gether; but the Chancellor stated, that the next provision of the clause enacted, that those who stopped proceedings should not be liable to any costs, and that double costs applied only to those who persevered, after Parliament had taken from them the ground of action. This explanation was allowed to be satisfactory. The Earl of Carnarvon proposed a clause, by which the proceedings of persons, aggrieved under the Act, were only to be stayed upon an affidavit from the Secretary of State, that the action could not be defended without producing evidence that would be injurious

to individuals and to the public; but Lord Liverpool observed, that this would subject all magistrates, and per sons acting under them, to the discretion of the Secretary of State. Lord Carnarvon, however, intimated his intention of proposing the clause anew. Lord Lauderdale said, he had still an amendment to propose, though he did not expect that it would be adopted. It consisted merely of an alteration in the preamble, in which, by first barely reciting the facts of the Derbyshire rising, and then the measures which had been founded upon them, he endeavoured to expose the latter to ridicule. The amendment, which was intended merely as a jeu d'esprit, was accordingly negatived. The report being then given in, the third reading took place on the 5th of March. A fresh debate, of considerable length, took place, in which the measure was attacked by Lord Auckland, Earl Grosvenor, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Earl of Carnarvon ; and defended by Earl Bathurst, the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of Westmoreland. It was then carried by a majority of 93 to 27. A protest, however, was entered on the journals by Lords Erskine, Carnarvon, Grosvenor, Lauderdale, Montford, King, Auckland, Holland, Lansdowne, and Rosslyn.

The bill having thus passed the Lords, was introduced on the 9th March into the House of Commons. Here debates ensued of equal length; but, upon the same principle of abridgment as in our report of the other House, we shall confine ourselves to those of Mr Lamb, Mr Brougham, and Mr Canning.

Mr Lamb observed, that in rising for the first time to give an opinion of the measures adopted in the present Session, with a view to the transac tions of last year, he could not but feel great pain in differing from so

many of those whose persons he esteemed, and whose opinions he respected. It had been supposed, that the grounds of the opinions which he, with others, entertained in the former Ses sion, had been materially affected by events which had since occurred, particularly by the issue of the trials at Westminster, and Derby, and even by that of Hone. "Sir, I beg leave to say for myself, and in saying this, I conceive I am asserting a great and important principle, that I voted for those measures upon general views, upon a persuasion of the disposition which then prevailed in a certain portion of the community, upon the language which was then held, upon the opinions then professed, upon the designs and intentions then manifested; I voted for those measures upon legislative reasons, upon such reasons as are fit in their nature to sway the judgment and direct the conduct of a member of this House; and allow me to say, that a judgment so formed is not neccessarily invalidated or corroborated, is not necessarily affected, by any thing that passes in courts of justice, by the result of any judicial examinations or investigations, by any inquiries before tribunals, formed for entirely different purposes, acting by entirely different means, and proceeding towards another purpose and end, by another course." No man respected more than he the verdict of a jury when confined to its proper object of determining the guilt or innocence of a prisoner, but not as extended to the maintenance of general political propositions. Perhaps the danger might have been exaggerated; he was unwilling to renew former discussions; "but since the disturbances in Derbyshire have been mentioned, I will ask, whether it is possible to assert, whether human credulity can go the length of believing, that that tumult was an accidental, solitary, inulated proceeding; that it was un

connected with any more extensive arrangement, or more general understanding? I ask, whether that is, upon the face of the affair, a reasonable conclusion? and I believe I may safely appeal to those who have had the best means of information upon the subject, whether they do not know the contrary to be the fact."—In arguing against the measure, every thing was taken for granted; the secrets of time were raised, and imaginary evils conjured up; while, in defending themselves, ministers were strictly tied down to the record of facts. There was a great difference between civil and military services, the latter of which were publicly performed, and universally acknowledged. Not so to the services of the minister; they lie not so much in acting in great crises, as in preventing those crises from arising; therefore they are often obscure and unknown, and not only obscure and unknown, but subject to every species of misrepresentation, and often effected amidst obloquy, attack, and condemnation, when, in fact, entitled to the approbation and gratitude of the country:-they are lost in the tranquillity which they are the means of preserving, and amidst the prosperity which they themselves create. If some extraordinary measure was ne cessary, he considered it much better to have recourse to the precedented one of the suspension, of which the effects had been tried and experienced, and from which they could return to the constitution unimpaired, unless by the inevitable effects of the precedent. The committee had been afraid to express the ground of hope which they entertained, lest it should have failed them. Now, that it had been fulfilled, and that the prospects of the country began to brighten, he considered it imprudent to give way to too confident security and premature exultation. "It is impossible to survey the continent of Europe, with its jar

ring and conflicting interests, with its vast military establishments, which have been engendered and produced by the great war in which the world has been engaged, and by the ambition of the enemy, it is impossible to contemplate the internal situation of this country, with her vast load of debt, her great financial embarrassments, and the state of society, in some respects unnatural and distorted, which has grown up within her, it is impossible to reflect upon her vast colonial territories and dependencies, scattered as they are in every quarter of the globe, and containing within them every species of the human race, every form of human government and every condition of human nature,-it is impossible to consider them, with their neighbourhoods and vicinages, new nations growing up into a magnitude beyond conception with a velocity exceeding thought,-I say, sir, it is impossible to look upon this spectacle without feelings of awe, of alarm, and apprehension." With regard to the employment of spies, he could not blame the reprobation with which it had been mentioned; at the same time, both sides of the question must be fairly considered. On the one hand, we must fairly allow the encouragement which this man's presence and assumed character was calculated to give to designs and schemes which might otherwise not have been enter tained or undertaken; on the other hand, we must not suffer ourselves to be made the dupes of those whose evident interest it is to heap all their own doings upon the head of Oliver, to put in his mouth all violent language and criminal propositions by whomsoever held or made, and by so charging him, entirely to liberate and absolve them selves. His conduct had been most wicked and nefarious; he had used the most violent language, and, ridiculing parliamentary reform, had uniformly

advised them to have recourse to phy sical force. This, however, was a character which he assumed, not at the suggestion of government, but of the London conspirators, who uniformly proceeded upon this system; and the manner in which he had been welcomed and trusted, and in which his secret had been kept down to the moment when he was discovered to have been in the employ of government, clearly shewed how much a-kin these sentiments were to the minds upon which he acted. Mr Lamb did not perceive a very broad distinction between spies and informers. The latter might indeed be influenced by good motives; but in general, interest and impunity were their objects. "When the public indignation was excited against an offender, the same nicety was not felt as to the mode in which he was convicted; but when the public sympathy and commisseration is, as it is very apt to be in state prosecutions, excited in favour of the accused-and the public feeling, allow me to say, may very possibly run in a current directly opposed to the public interest

then we examine every step with utmost rigour, and lay down strict rules, from which in other cases we depart in silence and without observation." Viewing the subject in this light, he felt himself bound to support the bill. Approving of the measures of last year, he conceived, that, under them, acts might have been done, meritorious in themselves, but illegal; and others, which, though legal, could not safely be proved to be so. He had not voted last year blindfold or in the dark; he was always aware that injustice and oppression might arise from the exercise of secret powers; but, overruled by the necessity of the case, he voted for the suspension as a great conservative measure of state. Believing that the powers granted had not been exercised tyrannically or oppressively,

he hesitated not in extending to ministers the protection of a fair indemnity. Mr Brougham, though he was not altogether unprepared for the course which was to be taken by his honour able friend, could not help regretting that a person of so much weight in that House, and in the country, from his accomplishments, his talents, and his character, should have lent himself to the support of such a measure. At the same time, rich as his honourable .friend's speech had been in general observations, powerful as it had been in eloquence, beautiful in its illustrations, various in its topics, and animated in delivery, those observations and that eloquence were no more than so many vague generalities, applicable, if not to any subject, at least to any period, any government, or any dan ger to such government, and entirely unconnected with the measure of indemnity now before the House. The only part which appeared to him to have any relation to the subject, consisted in a few sentences at the end, in which he observed that persons in the late crisis of the country, might have been called upon to do acts not strictly legal, or which, though legal, they could not safely prove to have Mr Brougham said, if this had gone merely to protect magis trates who had acted under the necessity of the moment, he could readily concur; but it went equally to protect a person whom he should describe without periphrasis, without any of those respectful circumlocutions with which he had been generally ushered into the notice of the House by the gentlemen opposite, the person who had been called by the various names of" that loyal and upright subject," "that much injured individual," "that meritorious agent of the police," he meant that Oliver: it confounded such a magistrate as he had described with

been so.

this man, or with any other such miscreant, if any other such there could be-that is, it placed those persons in the same attitude as the magistrates, by holding out the same indemnity to them. As to the difficulty of defending actions, he did not believe there was the least difficulty of producing witnesses in the face of the country, in open court, in public and honourable trial. This had been done at all former periods, particularly in 1812, when the report of the committee was as strong as at present, and equally represented the danger incurred by giving evidence. But how did the government act on that occasion? In a manner for which he gave them credit. They brought to trial all those against whom they could procure any information. Numbers were tried, and numbers of witnesses were examined; and he would ask, what person was ever injured on this account? what person was ever exposed to the slightest risk? But without recurring to 1812, he had another instance in view, in which the same course was adopted; in which more than a hundred witnesses, after discharging their consciences by swearing to facts of conspiracy and treason

after leaving the prisoners to execution-went peaceably home the next day without threat or molestation. He need only remind the House of the trials at Derby: not one of the hundred witnesses called on that occasion had experienced the slightest inconvenience. Now, when on the authority of the report itself, on the evidence of their own senses, on the admission of his honourable friend, it was plain that perfect tranquillity prevailed over all the country, that the suspension was no longer necessary, and the ordinary course of law was restored in every thing else, it rested with the supporters of this bill to shew (and he wished his honourable friend would