English history may observe, that the flagrant abuse of any power, by the crown or its ministers, has always been productive of a struggle; which either discovers the exercise of that power to be contrary to law, or (if legal) restrains it for the future. This was the case in the present instance, The oppression of an obscure individual gave birth to the famous habeas corpus act, 31 Car. I. c. 2. which is frequently considered as another magna charta of the kingdom; and by consequence has also in subsequent times reduced the method of proceeding on these writs (though not within the reach of that statute, but issuing merely at the common law,) to the true standard of law and liberty.

"The statute itself enacts, 1. That the writ shall be returned and the prisoner brought up, within a limited time, according to the distance, not exceeding in any case twenty days. 2. That such writs shall be indorsed, as granted in pursuance of this act, and signed by the person awarding them. 3. That on complaint and request in writing by or on behalf of any person committed and charged with any crime (unless committed for treason or felony expressed in the warrant, or for suspicion of the same, or as accessory thereto before the fact, or convicted or charged in execution by legal process) the lord chancellor or any of the twelve judges, in vacation, upon viewing a copy of the warrant, or affidavit that a copy is denied, shall (unless the party has neglected for two terms to apply to any court for his enlargement) award a habeas corpus for such prisoner, returnable immediately before himself or any other of the judges; and upon the return made shall discharge the party, if

bailable, upon giving security to appear and answer to the accusa. tion in the proper court of judica-. ture. 4. That officers and keepers neglecting to make due returns, or not delivering to the prisoner or his agent within six hours after demand a copy of the warrant of commitment, or shifting the custody of a prisoner from one to another, without sufficient reason or authority (specified in the act), shall for the first offence forfeit 100%, and for the second offence 2001. to the party grieved, and be disabled to hold his office. 5. That no person, once delivered by baleas corpus, shall be recommitted for the same offence, on penalty of 500l. 6. That every person committed for treason or felony shall, if he requires it, the first week of the next term, or the first day of the next session of oyer and terminer, be indicted in that term or session, or else admitted to bail; unless the king's witnesses cannot be produced at the time: and if acquitted, or if not indicted and tried in the second term or session, he shall be dischargrd from his imprisonment for such imputed offence: but that no person, after the assizes shall be opened for the county in which he is detained, shall be removed by babeas corpus, till after the assizes are ended; but shall be left to the justice of the judges of assize. 7. That any such prisoner may move for and obtain his babeas corpus, as well out of the chancery or exchequer, as out of the king's bench or common pleas; and the lord chancellor or judge denying the same, on sight of the warrant or oath that the same is refused, forfeit severally to the party grieved the sum of 5001. 8. That this writ of habeas corpus shall run into the counties palatine, cinque ports, and other privileged places,

and the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. 9. That no inhabitant of England (except persons contracting, or convicts praying, to be transported; or having committed some capital offence in the place to which they are sent) shall be sent prisoner to Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, or any places beyond the seas, within or without the king's dominions: on pain that the party committing, his advisers, aiders, and assistants, shall forfeit to the party grieved a sum not less than 500/. to be recovered with treble costs; shall be disabled to bear any office of trust or profit; shall incur the penalties of pramunire; and shall be incapable of the king's pardon.

"This is the substance of that great and important statute: which extends (we may observe) only to the case of commitments for such criminal charge, as can produce no inconvenience to public justice by a temporary enlargement of the pri soner: all other cases of unjust imprisonment being left to the habeas corpus at common law. But even upon writs at the common law it is now expected by the court, agree able to antient precedents and the spirit of the act of parliament, that the writ should be immediately obeyed, without waiting for any alias or pluries; otherwise an attach. ment will issue. By which admirable regulations, judicial as well as parliamentary, the remedy is now complete for removing the injury of unjust and illegal confinement. A remedy the more necessary, because the oppression does not always arise from the ill-nature, but sometimes from the mere inattention, of government. For it frequently happens in foreign countries, (and has happened in England during temporary suspensions of the sta

tute) that persons apprehended up on suspicion have suffered long imprisonment, merely because they were forgotten."

From this account it will appear that by the suspension of the habeas corpus act, persons may be imprisoned without the necessity of bringing them to trial. Let us now examine in what respect this suspension could be useful to repress the disturbances by which part of the country was agitated, and to secure the safety of the government.

It is easy to conceive such a state of things, that a fair and impartial trial cannot be expected, and that it may be prudent or necessary to imprison those against whom no legal evidence of guilt can be brought forward. On these two grounds, principally, was the suspension of the habeas corpus act justified by ministers. But if the great mass of the people were loyal and untainted, there could be no apprehension that a fair and impartial trial would not be obtained; and in fact, as we shall afterwards have occasion to show, the only part of the kingdom, where those who were accused of high treason were found guilty, was the very centre of the disaffected districts. On this ground, therefore, there seems hardly a sufficient reason to be found for suspending the habeas corpus act. The other ground is more tenable, provided the country were in such a state as to render persons, who were only supposed to be proceeding towards illegal acts, dangerous to its tranquillity; for, by the supposition, they had not actually committed any act on which the law could take hold, otherwise the suspension of the habeas corpus act would not have been necessary with respect to them.

One beneficial consequence this suspension

suspension undoubtedly had: it repressed the violent measures of many; and, as we have already noticed, drove Cobbett out of the country. But it certainly would be much better in every point of view, to preserve or restore tranquillity to the country by additional laws, (if those in existence are not sufficient) than by such an infringement on the constitution as the suspension of the habeas corpus act produces. In all governments, and perhaps in free governments more than in others, precedent very properly is of great weight and influence in the direction and justification of The most scrupulous care, therefore, ought to be taken, that no bad precedents are set; or, at least, that they be set as seldom as possible; and never unless when the special necessity for them is most urgent, and most distinctly and unequivocally pointed out, as their sole justification; so that the precedent of the justification, and of the necessity on which it is formed, may be as distinct and strong as the precedent of the measure itself.

measures.

On the whole, therefore, we are disposed to be of opinion, that though there were disturbances in

the country, and though these dis-turbances were fomented by the violent reformers; yet, as the great mass of the people were sound and untainted, they would have worked themselves off with very partial and temporary mischief; and that the laws of the country, though perhaps they were not sufficient to have prevented all this mischief, yet were powerful enough to prevent any very serious evil, without, the suspension of the habeas corpus. act. Ministers ought to be the last people to weaken the attachment and veneration of the nation for the constitution; yet it must be weakened, when they acknowledge by their measures, that unless it is violated, it is not adequate to the putting down partial disturbances. Ministers also should be the last people to show distrust in the nation: but this they certainly did, when, notwithstanding their decla-, ration that the great mass was loyal and untainted, they deemed it necessary to employ spies, and to deprive this great mass, thus loyal and untainted, of one of the great bulwarks of the constitution, on account of the disaffection and disturbances of a few.

IN

N the volume of the New Annual Register for the year 1816 was given a very full and particular account of the tenets and the plans of the Spenceans, as well as of the reasonings and authority on which

they were founded. To all who read this account it must appear, we think, that the doctrines broached and maintained by the Spenceans were those of a set of wrongheaded enthusiasts, alike ignorant of human

nature

nature and regardless of the state and strength of human society and institutions: and that no possible harm could be apprehended from these reformers, principally because their plan of reform went so far as to defeat itself, and render itself perfectly harmless.

Government, however, seems to have thought otherwise; for in the first report of the secret committee, one of the grounds on which the suspension of the habeas corpus act and the other measures that curtailed the liberty of the subject were recommended, rested on the dangerous and alarming doctrines of the Spenceans. Our readers will recollect that the grand doctrine which they taught was, that the land ought not to be the property of individuals, but of the state; and that all labour ought to be for the common good and advantage: they endeavoured to prove, that all the misery of the great mass of mankind, all wars, and in short every calamity with which man in society had been inflicted, originated from the existence of individual property: they also contended, that even those who by the present structure and laws of society possessed a large share of property, would be benefited by giving it up to the common stock.

It certainly is not necessary to show that the Spencean doctrines were not the least likely to meet with, or to make converts, among those who possessed any property: a few madmen, or enthusiasts approaching to the state of madness, might indeed have been induced to adopt the Spencean doctrines; as men of this description will always be found ready, by the very morbid structure of their minds, to become the disciples of the most absurd doctrine that ever was broached;

but certainly from the men of property, however small, no converts of any consequence, or in any numbers, were to be looked for."

Let us now inquire what chance there was that the Spencean doctrines would find or make converts among those who had not property, among the poorest and most hardworking class of the community. When it has been asserted that no danger of a serious or permanent nature could possibly have arisen from the disaffected in the manufacturing districts, and especially from the Spenceans, and therefore that it was not necessary to have suspended the habeas corpus act,➡ it was replied that we ought to look to the French revolution;— that it arose from small beginnings

from the lowest riot-from men who were despised-but who proved themselves capable of overturning the government of France, and eventually of spreading ruin and misery throughout nearly the whole of Europe. But the cases are by no means similar: it certainly will not be contended, that because in one case a government has been overturned by the machinations of men who were few in number, and despicable in means and character, and to all appearance incapable of doing so much mischief; that therefore, in all cases, such calamities ought to be apprehended and guarded against, by infringements on the liberty of the subject. All who recollect, or have read of, the state in which France was just before the revolution, must know, that the moral poison had circulated through the greater part of the mass of the people, that it entered into the vital parts. The English violent reformers, and the mob in the disturbed districts, under their guidance and instruction, cer