of the suspension instead of an indemnity. Mr Brougham defended Mr Ponsonby from the allegation which had been made of his agreeing to the Suspension Act. He had differed in opinion from his friends as to the report, but on all other subjects they were agreed. His lamented friend was on all occasions the firm defender of the constitution, equally against any threatened turbulence of the people as against the encroachments of power. He was a man of too sound a mind, and too firm principles, to be led away by vague generalities, unsupported by facts, or to surrender the liberties or the people, when ministers found it for their interest to sound a false alarm, and pack committees to find matter of accusation against the country. He kept to the sheet-anchor of the constitution, and the more the storm raged, he held by it the faster, as the only means of weathering it out. He was a true constitutional lawyer of the old school. Mr B. would not so much have object ed to the indemnity, if the measures leading to it had been in consequence of any real alarm felt by ministers. In fact, however, their conduct arose merely from a sense of their unpopularity, and a desire to maintain their places. Thinking a plot necessary, they made one, resolved to maintain their places, though they destroyed the liberties of their country. If the House were thus to agree to every unconstitutional measure suggested by the minister, the substance of the constitution was gone, and the rights of the people of England were held at the good will and pleasure of the ministers of the crown.

Mr Lamb explained, that he had been far from saying that the whole manufacturing population was disloyal, but merely that there were some agitators among them.

Mr Canning had formerly conceived

it unnecessary for ministers to tak part in a discussion in which the ba fance turned so decidedly in their fa vour, but as the question in some de gree personally involved them, it might be proper to shew that they did no shrink from the discussion. He agreed with Mr Lamb, that the necessity for the Indemnity Bill arose not so much from the Suspension Bill, as from the same circumstances in the disturbed state of the country, which called for that bill. The object of it was to give indemnity for acts beyond the law, but necessary for the public safety, and, in the case of legal acts, to dispense with the necessity of injurious disclosures in proving their legality. There was no alternative between indemnity and impeachment; if ministers had properly used their powers, the former was due to them; if they had abused those powers, the latter. It was difficult to find precedents, precisely and accurately agreeing in all particulars; but one point was clear, that the very essence of a suspension of the Habeas Corpus, implied not proof of guilt by trial, but detention without trial. The very first act of this kind, after the Revolution, authorized the king to arrest and detain persons suspected of conspiring against his person and government, expressly recognizing the propriety of not bringing to trial the persons who might be so arrested and detained. It was complained, however, that redress had been refused to those who had suffered under the act. No doubt, every man who had been arrested under the Suspension Act would come to the bar and swear-no, not swear, but say that he had been most cruelly and unjustly treated; that he was the most innocent and most injured of mankind, and that his merits only had pointed him out as an object for persecution; that he had been exposed to the most cruel tortures, and

inventions, and no man but a dolt or an idiot could believe a word of them. It had been asserted, that Oliver was sent down as the London delegate; but in fact Mitchell was the delegate, and merely took Oliver with him. All the most violent speeches reported to have been made by Oliver, could be traced to Mitchell. Mr Smith, the member for Harwich, had demanded that all the private transactions of Oliver's life should be ripped up; that a select committee should inquire, whether he had regularly paid his tailor's bill, and of how many chips and shavings he had cheated his master, the carpenter. But, though he did not consider the private character of Oliver as altogether irrelevant, it was well known, that information relative to plots against the state must, in nine cases out of ten, come through polluted channels; human means must be employed to maintain human institutions. A distinction had been attempted to be drawn between an informer and a spy; but it was a distinction that would not bear examination. For what was the state of the case? Simply this, that if a man brought information to government, it might be credited the first time; then, it seemed, he was only an informer; but if the informer, at the recommendation of government, should proceed to gain fresh information, the second fact would be good for nothing, because he would then be a spy; twice an informer was once a spy. He appealed to Mr Wilberforce, whether the theoretical notions which he had entertained upon this subject were reducible to practice. Among the many virtues which distinguished and adorned his character, his honourable friend had one quality which might be considered a defect; he was apt to think every man as good and as honest as himself: still, he was sure that his honourable

friend had lived long enough to have found, by experience, that the world cannot be governed on any theoretical notions of purity. He must have felt, too, that as it was the sweetest reward of virtue to have a perfect confidence in all around it, so it was the greatest curse of crime, that it could not trust even its dearest associates: to take away, therefore, from crime its penal terror of being betrayed by its intimates, and to communicate to it the best privilege of virtue, what was it but making virtue the prey of crime? Much had been said as to the blow struck at the liberties of the people by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. He was as much disposed as any man to think that crisis of affairs most lamentable, which required such an extension of power. Nay, he would go farther; he not only lamented the suspension as a misfortune, but he charged it as a crime: but upon whom did he so charge it? Not on the go. vernment, who had fairly come forward, and laid before Parliament the real state of the country; not on Parliament, who deliberately acted upon the report of a committee of the first respectability; not upon the people of England, as had been most unjustly insinuated, to whose steady loyalty the utmost homage was paid; but upon those designing and malignant wretches, who attempted, out of the distresses of a day, to effect the desolation of the work of ages; who looked upon the famished peasant and ruined artisan, not as objects of compassion, but as instruments of crime. Mr C. ridiculed the visionary schemes of reform supported by Sir Francis Burdett, and expressed his astonishment that Mr Brougham, who laughed at them in his heart, should yet, for the sake of popularity, every now and then present a petition for reform. The best friends of the people, while they

bric took no harm, the shrine itself had been preserved from profanation, and the temple stood firm and unimpaired.

told them of their rights, told them of their duties also. He asked whether every man who heard him did not know, that either in his own immedi. ate neighbourhood, or in districts of which he had knowledge, a sedulous and wicked activity had been employed in disseminating the doctrines of discontent, and exasperating suffering into malignity? He asked, whether hatred to government as government; not merely to particular individuals, (a tax which those who fill ostensible situations in the state must make up their minds to bear as they may,) but to government by whomsoever administered; to eminence as eminence; to rank as rank, had not been industriously inculcated? Whether the Crown and its ministers had not been proscribed as the natural enemies of the people? and this House held up to peculiar hatred and horror, as the tyrants of the Commons, whom they were especially bound to protect? He believed now that even the multitude were undeceived as to parliamentary reform, and that any hope of discomfiture to ministers upon this ground would be felt to be vain. It was not against parliamentary reform, but against the mischief attempted to be perpetrated under its name, that an appeal had been made to Parliament. Instead of there being now a leaning against the people, the dangers which threatened society were quite of a different kind, against which it equally behoved Parliament to guard. If, in the hour of peril, the statute of Liberty had been veiled for a moment, let it be confessed, in justice, that the hands whose painful duty it was to spread that veil, had not been the least prompt to remove it. If the palladium of the constitution had, for a moment, trembled in its shrine, let it be acknowledged that, through the vigilance and constancy of those whose duty it was to see that the fa

The first reading of the Indemnity Bill was carried by a majority of 190 to 64; the second by 89 to 24; and the carrying it into a committee by 238 to 65. The bill passed through the committee without any amendment being moved. Notices indeed were given of several, by Sir J. Newport and Sir W. Burroughs, but they were reserved to the third reading. At the third reading, which took place on the 13th of March, the Speaker stated, that the bill must be read before the amendments were proposed. After, therefore, Sir R. Heron had taken the opportunity to utter a final malediction against the whole measure, the third reading was carried by 82 to 23. Sir J. Newport then moved a clause, by which the indemnity was not to extend to the exercise of any unnecessary cruelty or severity. The Attorney-General opposed it as superfluous, stating, that no act of this kind would prevent any individual from obtaining redress for acts of unjust or unnecessary rigour; and Lord Castlereagh thought such a clause would be even dangerous to the liberty of the subject, by giving a greater latitude in other respects to the construction of the bill. It embraced only four points, the seizure of arms, of papers, the detention of suspected persons, and the arrest of those who attended tumultuous meetings. Sir Samuel Romilly, however, urged, "Here were plain words which every man could comprehend. This act said, that all actions brought for, or on account of any act, matter, or thing, should be discharged and made void; and that every person by whom any such act, matter, or thing, should have been done, should be freed, acquitted, discharged, and indemnified. Now, they were told, that this act did

not mean what it said. It was stated, that it went only to all necessary acts. But if this was the intention of the gentlemen who framed it, why did they not say so?" Mr Brougham then observed, "when there was such a complete difference of opinion between hon. and learned gentlemen, why leave the words in so vague and undefined a form? How long had acts of Parliament been so concise in their construction? When had brevity become the style of the statutes? Was it on the introduction of the present bill, that the love of precision had seized the framers of it?" Sir J. Newport, however, finally withdrew his amendment. Sir W. Burroughs then brought forward a clause to prevent the bill from applying to acts done maliciously and without probable cause. This clause he stated to be more comprehensive than the last, since it would reach not only jailors, but magistrates and police-officers. The Attorney-General observed, that this must defeat the whole object of the bill, since, in order to disprove the charge of malice, magistrates must bring forward the whole information on which they had acted, and every thing which it was the object of the bill to conceal.-Negatived. Several other amendments was then moved and negatived. Mr Brougham moved the introduction of the word " necessary,' to qualify the acts over which indemnity was to be thrown. This amendment, in fact a revival of Sir J. Newport, was met by the same arguments, and being brought to the vote, was negatived by 149 to 39. The bill then, after a vehement reprobation by Mr Brougham, Mr Tierney, and Mr Peter Moore, was passed.

In the course of these proceedings, two motions were also made and warmly supported, relative to the employ. ment of spies and informers; the point on which the opposition members considered themselves as having the

strongest and most popular ground. The first, made on the 11th of February, by Mr Fazakerly, was found. ed on the admission of the committee of secrecy, that some of the informers had used language or conduct tending to encourage those designs which they were intended to be the instruments of detecting. He proposed, therefore, that it should be referred to the committee now sitting, to inquire whether due punishment had been inflicted upon these persons. This was followed up by Mr Bennet, with a long statement of measures, said to be taken by Oliver, with a view of exciting insurrection. Oliver, he said, had been first introduced to a small society in London, by a person of the name of Pendrill, and afterwards set out for Liverpool with one Mitchell, to see Pendrill before his departure from that place to America. After taking leave of Pendrill, Oliver set out on a sort of tour through the country. He went to Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, and other places in that part of the country, and they had evidence that at all those places he had called on the most respectable persons, whom he had stimulated to attend the meetings. He represented himself as a man who had been long actively employed in important transactions, as concerned in the business of 1792, as connected with Despard, as having facilitated the escape of Thistlewood and young Watson, and as having collected money for them. He stimulated them to enter into engagements to send delegates. To Wakefield he went first by himself

his companion had been arrested at Huddersfield. The hon. gentleman said, he had in his possession a narrative, drawn up by two persons, of what had taken place there; and he had opportunities of authenticating the most minute circumstances of this narrative. On the arrival of the delegate from Birmingham, he called on Oliver