112 113 114 115 in the statute of the preceding year, the convenient epithet of “* 66 163. But further: In this act we also find an epithet which its author, Lord Grenville, would not introduce for nothing, he called it "the happy Constitution of these Realms ;" and agreeably to this language, his Lordship, on the 30th May, 1797, in reply to the Duke of Bedford, who had said, "The most salutary change, would be a change in the representation of the people," strenuously maintained that such a change went to the direct overthrow of our present 66 system, which he called the present happy system, “struck at all property" that it would change the whale frame of our Constitution," and " was a violation of inheritance and funda“mental rights, which the two Houses of Parliament were not com 46 66 66 that it The petent to enact, and to which His Majesty could not give his assent.” We need not, therefore, to say more to prove that, in the sense of the very author of this act, the goodly words "Laws, Government, "and happy Constitution of these Realms," meant nothing more than the undisturbed and safe dominion of the BOROUGH FACTION. Duke of Bedford called the bill a stab to the Constitution, and an attempt to strike at the foundation of the liberties of Englishmen.” 164. We may now return to the consideration of what is properly the "highest treason, the greatest of all treasons ;" and here it may not be amiss to observe what was the opinion of our Saxon ancestors who, as Lord Liverpool remarked, "had the knowledge of wisely "constituting civil societies" or free governments.* Selden, who had profoundly studied the origin of our constitution, informs us that this crime of treason at first concerned matters against THE “NATION.”* although we have seen that the vital interests of the NATION and the preservation of its Constitution, as security for 112. The words "as by law established" were introduced in the Committee in way of amendment, by the Lord Chancellor Elion. This bill, by the vigilance of the Earl of Lauderdale, underwent a real amendment; for that vigilance canned Lord Grenville, its never-to-be-forgotten parent, to abandon his original words, “malicious and unadvised speaking,” which he intended to have made HIGH TREASON!!! 113 See Lord Abingdou's Thoughts on Let. of Burke to Sher. of Bristol, 22. App. Civ. and Mil. on Eng. Cou. 13. and Sect. 8, 111, 151. 114 See Sect. 27. 115 Histor, & Polit. Disc. by Bacon, II. 149. the rights and liberties of the people, never obtained a single statute of treasons, nor one clause in any such statute; while the whole attention of the legislature, for nearly five centuries, has, on this subject been engrossed in planting fences around the person of our old sovereign lord the King, and latterly of our new sovereign lords the BoROUGH-MONGERS, and around all that in any, the most distant way, appertains to the royal title, power, prerogative, and state, even to an extent the most ridiculous; as refusing to abjure the pope; stealing cattle by Welchmen; or believing Henry the Eighth to have been lawfully married to Anne of Cleves, a fact known to all the world. 66 66 165." The Saxons," says Selden again, "being a people of pub"lic spirit, preferred the good of their COUNTRY above all; account"ing treachery against it, or neglect thereof in time of danger, to be a crime of the greatest concernment, and to be punished in the "highest degree, Proditores et transfugas arboribus suspendunt.* "Other treason than this, no not against Kings, did they then ac"knowledge any; and therefore the form of the indictment for contriving the death of their King, concluded only felonice, as may appear in that form of an indictment for an offence of that nature, "intended and plotted against Edmond the Saxon King: Whereas "for plotting against alliance, though of common and inferior na"ture; the indictment concluded felonice et proditorié. And "whereas, the penalty in case of treachery to the Country, was death "and forfeiture of the whole estate, both real and personal: In "treachery against the King, it was only loss of life, and of the personal "estate. And therefore it may seem that Majesty (here meaning "sovereignty) had not yet arrived at its full growth; or else that the greatest measure thereof rested in the body still," that is, in the NATION.* 116 117 118 "Gallows 116 They hanged traitors and runaways [in battle] on the trees. "Tree" occurs in old ballads. Arbor infelix, is the Latin for a Gibbet. 117 Were "alliance" for any lawful purpose created an obligation of fidelity, a breach of such obligation by treachery was, in the Saxon Law, a Treason. See Mir. c. 1. s. 7. and c. 2. s. 13. 118 Hist. and Polit. Disc. by Bacon, I. 61. H PART IX. 119 120 Baron and Norman principles contrasted. Law of Nature the standard of reasoning. Means of unanimity. Intention the essence of criminality. The Triennial Act of 1790 preeminently reprehensible. 166. Such then, as we have stated, we conceive to be the proper nature of Hien TRIASON and the true Law of THE LAND; such has been the perversion of that law by undermining Statutes, which had their origin in the period of feudal violence and brutality, when to the crime of treason (as iben new-fangled and misapplied) was assigned a punishment 100 disgusting and horrible for modern eyes or ears; and such also was the modest wisdom, the honest and noble practice of our Saxon ancestors, far perpetuating the national (aberty and sovereiguly; of the inheritance and benein of which, the aggrieved nation have nOW been more or less deprived ever since the oracious and Ele-preserving cup of Saxo freedom was se deeply dragged with the deadly poison at the Aerman entrance:”* entailing on the patriots of our comery the painfci sabour, by which, from that day to this, a period of nearly seven centuries and a half, they have toiled, and have bled, for recovering the nation's rights, and “* rebeening” it into a state of Liberty.* 167. How then shall we, as Friends of Parliamentary Reform according to the constrution, and how stall all who may unite their efforts with ours for completing this redemption, make a right application of the doctrines we trust we have established, in practically contuating the work of this Reform? 108. It is an oud legal maxim, that no man mast think himself wiser than the Law of the Land, which is the gathered wisdom of ages. How infinitery less, then, must any man think himself wiser than Gop the author of the Law of NATURE! In the esermal truths of that Law, he who is Wisdom and Goodness, hach, for the guidance 129 Hust, and Polit. Disc. by Bacon, I. 71. 1.90 See Sec. 30, of his rational and moral creatures laid down unerring rules of con. duct, so as that nought can justify a deviation from those truths and rules, but ignorance of their existence. A sense of obligation, inherent in our nature, to conform to those rules, is what we call conscience acting according to conscience is wisdom and virtue-the contrary, folly and vice; for in the LAW OF NATURE lies the root of all reason, all wisdom, all morality. 169. If, therefore, by our reason we arrive at a knowledge of that in which the civil part of political liberty consists, this knowledge must bring with it a moral obligation, a dictate of conscience, thereby to regulate our conduct as Reformists. We have shewn that the civil part of political liberty consists in A DULY PROPORTIONED REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENTS OF A CONSTITUTIONAL DURATION, and that this duration cannot exceed ONE year.* 170. How incapable of illuminating his mind at the source of intellectual light, how blind to the form and pressure of the times, how utterly void of true wisdom and statesmanship, how influenced by interest or ambition, how warped to the crookedness of party politics, how infatuated by prejudice, how bewildered by a confusion of ideas, or how intoxicated by some chimera of EXPEDIENCY (the political ig. nis faluus that has led so many astray!), must those be who either insensible to self-evident truth, or in contempt of their own conviction, can propose a partial disfranchisement of Boroughs, a mere addition of county members, with a return to triennial parliaments, or any othe rfeeble half measure-sure Apple of Discord and certain cause of defeat instead of a simple, a dignified demand of RIGHTS, which, although lying in the compass of a nut-shell, yet in the science of representation, are all the human mind understands by FREEDOM; and which simple demand of RIGHTS, as the generative egg of NATIONAL UNION and NATIONAL INTHUSIASM, would promise our country all the happiness freedom has to confer ! 171. Inasmuch as national liberty and national sovereignty are convertible terms, it must be self-evident, that whatever has at any time, been intentionally done for betraying, undermining, or violating the nation's liberty, has been HIGH TREASON. Almost the entire conduct of many of our kings, from the accession of the first to that of the third William, as perpetually invading public right, was an uniform perpetration of HIGH TREASON against the nation and its constitution. On the same premises as lead to this conclusion, it would seem manifest that, had as suitable an allegiance and fidelity to the sovereignty of the Nation, as to the inferior sovereignty of its Executive Magistrale, prevailed, that is, had it in the same manner been held up to public notice and reverence, by being in the same manner guarded and fenced around by written law against the HIGH TREASON of attempting its destruction, as surely ought to have been done, and we are to hope will yet be done, then in such case none could doubt that even statules 121 See Sect. 63. 109. and others referred to in the Index on Annual Parliaments. 121 122 123 of bad times intentionally enacted, and all overt acts of statesmen intentionally done for abridging public liberty, were unquestionably HIGH TREASON: that all use of Borough Property with intention to control the freedom of election is HIGH TREASON; that all bribery in open boroughs, the act itself proving the intention, is HIGH TREASON; that all aristocratic combination in counties with intention to defeat the freeholders' exercise of their sovereignty by their suffrage is likewise HIGH TREASON. 172. But if there ever were a deliberate slab to public liberty and the national sovereignty more flagitious than ordinary, a Treason against the constitution pre-eminently criminal, it was that of the triennial act of 1694, enacted by a corrupt parliament chosen the year after the revolution, but who, so soon forgetful of that event, in contempt of the proposition left on the Journals of the Convention, for preventing theloo long continuance of the same parliament," against the earnest remonstrances of the honest Dr. Samuel Johnson, and in defiance of the protest of the Lord Devonshire and other peers, in support of the principle of the constitution, passed a decree for taking away the liberty of the nation, for two parts in three of human life in all time to come, the first act of the kind on English record! 173. And, when parliaments of "too long continuance❞ have proved the scourge and curse of our country, is a return to parliaments of three years' duration, which, while we had them, were offensively corrupt, and crowned their perfidy by consiguing the nation to parliaments for seven years, is this, forsooth, one of the nostrums now recommended for the cure of corruption? How faint the impression made on some minds by the criminal stab to the constitution, of which the authors of the triennial act were guilty! How mentally blind, not to see what a deluge of crimes and of evils poured in upon our country through that profligate act! How infatuated by presumption are those who tender the nation their conceit of a fancied expediency, as better than principle!-their extraordinary proposal, that it shall accept in payment that which is sixty-six per cent. less than what is due to it of right! and this, after their arguments have been a thousand times refuted, they persist in calling expedient. As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a thorough-bred child of expediency returneth to his dogma! If, indeed, these men were Atheists who scoff at a Moral Law, we could understand them; but for mortal worms who acknowledge a Deity, to talk of dispensing with his moral code, and 122 Had the CONSTITUTION in former times been thus protected, Dudley and Empson, instead of having had bad Statutes to plead in their defence, might have been impeached on good Statutes violated; instead of having been made victims to popular vengeance contrary to law, would have suffered according to law, for their notorious Treasons against the Nation. Lord Bacon observes that their principal working was upon penal laws, not considering whether compliauce with the law were possible or impossible, or the law itself were in use or obsolete, and that they had ever a rabble of spies, and promoters, and Jurors at command, so as they could have any thing found as they pleased. See Ra pin, I. 686. Hall, 57. See also Sect. 189. 123 In his Es. concerning Parl. at a certainty. |