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    26& State of Public Affairs.

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    Lit Various Period , Different Questions...

    possession of the infidels , and myriads fell a sacrifice to the folly of the crusades . These instances ought to teach us the necessity of forming a true estimate of every question , in which our interests ,

    temporal or eternal , are concerned ; and we shall find , that in most of them we are blinded by our passions , and letting them be our guides , lose the path which would be pointed out ^ to us by unpreju-. diced reason .

    A most important question has occupied , and continues to occupy , the attention of this country . Twe of our fellow-countrymen have been committed to prison , and are kept there under the authority of the House of Commons for certain writings , which that house has adjudged'to be a breach of its privileges .

    Its authority is called in question , and very eminent men , both in and out of Parliament , have given different opinions . On the one hand the liberty of the subject , on the other the privileges of the House , sway with the individuals who have spoken or written upon the

    subject . But we may observe , that the most eminent men in Parliament , Lord Erskine in the upper house , and Sir Samuel Rom illy ; in the lower house , give great weight to those , who deny to the House of Commons the power that it has claimed .

    We need not be surprised , if the passions have been exercised on both sides ; and ; indeed , it is very difficult , if not impossible , to speak on such a subject without feeling . St . Paul spoke with warmth , when he asserted his rights as

    -.- * ¦ • • «¦« a Roman citizen ; and it is not denied to a Christian to claim those rights which belong to him in his station in civil society . The grand clause in Magna Charta , on the imprisonment of a subject , is as much to be appealed to by

    an English Christian , as the law of Rome by Paul , in the case of his confinement ; and it would be a great disgrace to this country , if Paul ' s appeal to heathens should be more respected by them than cur appeal to Christians by our Christian authorities .

    In this grand question , the appeal of Englishmen is to Magna Charta : the reply to it is , that the privileges of the House of Commons are an exception to this rule ; and the exceptions are attempted to . be proyed by precedents , and by the reason of the thing . The precedents completely fail ; for though at various tunes the / house has exercised the

    Lit Various Period , Different Questions...

    power in question , yet it has in many instances been disputed , and even in our own memory the serjeant of the House of Commons was imprisoned for attempt ing to execute their warrant , and the magistrate who committed him refused

    to obey the summons of the House to attend at their bar , and the House was under the necessity of putting up with the insult , and seeing its authority set at nought ; . The reason of the thing is as strong against the power claimed . For what can be more self-evident than

    the danger of allowing to a body of men the right of being prosecutor , judge , jury and executioner , * in their own cause . That the House of Commons should have privileges , no one can doubt ; as , for example , the freedom of debate and the freedom from arrest . The latter

    maybe abused as well as the former ; yet circumstances require that for the sake of the public service a deviation from the general law should be allowed to those who are peculiarly devoted to that service . Privilege means only priva lex ) a private law , a law in favour of

    private persons for peculiar purposes ? but it would be a strange thing to distort the exemption of certain persons from a general law into a power , conferred upon those persons , to break through a general law . This is the question now at issue between the House of

    Commons and the people of England ,, and the case will , we doubt not , be ably argued in our courts of law . It is very desirable that this question should be fairly heard , that the people of England should know in what their liberty consists ; for instead of being free , they may become the basest and

    most despicable people upon earth . Such things have happened . The Egyptians were once a great and flourishing nation , and in the time of Cyrus their army was esteemed the bravest in the world ; yet they have sunk into the most abject slavery . The power now claimed by a House of Commons has thrown two of

    our fellow-subjects into prison , and into prisons in London , yet we do not sec the limits to that power , i * or to what extent it may be exercised . With the forms of the constitution , it is po & siblc that a grievous tyranny might be established ; for who , that has read history > and reflects on the nature of man , can set bounds to the acts of an arbitrary p # wcr , wherever it may be p laced ?

    26& State Of Public Affairs.

    26 & State of Public Affairs .

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1810, page 266, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02051810/page/50/