Debate in the Lords on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill.] April 15. This bill having been read a second time,

· Lord Grenville said, that the bill had three objects; to prevent France from receiving supplies of naval, military, and other stores; to prevent the people of this country from furnishing the French with money for carrying on the war, by purchasing the confiscated estates in France; and to prohibit the insurance of French ships and property by British subjects. For the attainment of those objects the bill had been framed; and the penalty of high treason was to be attached to the breach of some of the clauses, and other punishments were to follow the breach of the others. The legislature, in declaring certain acts to be criminal, was not always influenced by the moral turpitude of the deeds, but by the sense of the injury which society might sustain from them. An act of moral turpitude might affect only an individual, and therefore the legislature did not think it, as such, a crime to be punished with the utmost rigour of the law; but an attempt to overturn the constitution of a country, involving in it the peace and happiness, of every being of the community, was considered as the highest crime against the state, and therefore punished in the most rigorous manner: such a crime was called high treason; and the penalties attached to high treason were from time to time enacted against deeds, which though not in themselves immoral had a tendency to injure, if not destroy the community. His lordship said, there was great danger in any loose or general con

struction of this act: our ancestors had taken great pains to define and ascertain it; and the 25th Edw. 3d had, in a very particular manner, restricted its sense and construction. His lordship observed, that it was the duty of parliament to make laws against treason; and that on no former occasion, in a war with France, was there a necessity for the same provisions in any bill as at present. It was not for an island that we were contending; it was for our constitution, our liberty, and our existence as a nation. To buy lands in France was not in itself an immoral act; but as to buy lands there, under the present circumstances, would furnish the French with the means of carrying on the war against Great Britain, it was a duty which the legislature owed to the public, to make it penal for any subject of this country to lay out his money in a way which might be highly injurious to the interests of this community. Land was the only property on which France depended. It was necessary to prevent the purchases of such property; no nation but England could afford to make these purchases to any large amount, as they alone possessed a capital that enabled her to make speculations of every kind. The people exercising the government of France had hitherto found resources only in public robbery; this was a hard term, but it was a just one; first they raised supplies out of the robbery of the crown lands; next out of the robbery of the church lands; and both these resources being at length exhausted, they were now endeavouring to provide for the exigencies of the state, by robbing their emigrant brethren, first driving by their ty ranny those unfortunate men into exile, and then confiscating their estates, solely because they were exiles; and leaving them only the melancholy alternative of being murdered if they did not emigrate, or of losing their fortunes if they did: so that in either case their lot was deplo rable. It did not become Englishmen to be the purchasers of estates so acquired by the present French government, because it did not become them to participate in an infamous robbery: and therefore it was fit that the legislature should prohibit such a participation under the penalty of high treason. To the same principle might be referred the prohibition of insurance, for sound policy, which justified the clause against the purchase of lands in France, equally justified the

The Earl of Lauderdale maintained the injustice, inefficacy, and impolicy of the whole of the bill as a mass, and the tyrannical nature of several of the clauses in particular. He made several observations on it, as it would be injurious to the sale of any of our commodities abroad, and was severe on that part which had been taken in the progress of the bill as it affected cloth. He quoted the authority of lord Mansfield in the year 1747, upon the subject of insurance, and agreed with the substance of that able speech. He quoted also the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone upon conspiracies and plots, in which he says, that alarms of false plots and conspiracies were always the props of a wicked administration. He dissented from the bill altogether.

The Duke of Portland said, he should not oppose the commitment of the bill, because he thought the committee the proper stage for correcting several parts of it, that appeared highly objectionable. He disapproved, in particular, of making the agreeing to do certain acts equally criminal with the acts themselves. But his principle reason for rising was, to say, that with respect to the bill, and all other measures, he would, in perfect consistency with his former declarations, give a fair and honourable support to the war, because he thought it both just and necessary. This he should do from no timidity, unless zeal for the preservation of the constitution could be called timidity. The question was put and carried; and on the following day the House went into a committee on the bill, in which various amendments were agreed to.

April 22. The Traitorous Correspondence bill was read a third time. On the motion that it do now pass,

still remained treasons under the act of the 25th of Edw. 3rd. Having no doubt of the legality of that opinion, he felt himself bound to observe, that the lives of the subjects were put in great danger by this bill; for a man of an ordinary understanding would naturally take it for granted, that if a bill passed, specifying certain acts to be treason, all things not included in that bill were not treason. For this reason, he should think it would be proper to insert a clause, stating, that no man should be convicted of treason on any law except the present bill. Indeed, he had seen nothing in the situation of this country that called for any alteration of the law of treason; but if there was to be any alteration, it thould be such as every man liable to fall a victim to it might understand.

She

Lord Abingdon said, that the bill had his most hearty concurrence; as any measure should have that had even a tendency to prevent the importation and propagation of French principles into this country. His lordship said he was born and bred, as his ancestors before him were, an Antigallican; that he had lived to be confirmed in these principles, to find that they were not falsely implanted in his mind, and to know, from experience, that the old philosophy was better than the new. He had been taught to consider France not only as the natural enemy of this country, but of all the world. Universal dominion had ever been her aim. tried it under a monarchical, she was now trying it under a republican, form of government. What she attempted under Louis 14th; she was now aiming at under citizen Egalité; the governments were different, but the object was the same. He had learnt too that French liberty would be English slavery; and therefore he was not one of those that much wished for French freedom; for although a christian, he was not so good a one as to love his neighbour better than himself. I have, thank God (said his lordship), enough of that Roman amor patriæ in my bosom, to prefer my own to any other country, and thus to say with Pope;

Friends, parents, neighbours, first we do embrace,

"Our country next, and next all human race."

The Marquis of Landsdowne said, that the bill struck at many of the fundamental principles of the constitution, and he should feel great weight upon his mind if he neglected to oppose it. Our ancestors,

in the best times, had confined treason to circumstances concerning the person of the king and wisely so, for by so doing, they had added in the mind of subjects a resource for the royal person; but this bill tended to dissolve the principles of the constitution, and to introduce a confusion in the ideas of the lower classes of the people. It was extremely impolitic to bring within the description of high treason, things in their nature indifferent or unimportant. High treason was the highest crime which the law or the legislature knew, and therefore the punishment annexed to it ought not to be made to fall on petty offenders. The life and liberty of the king were of the greatest importance to the state; for upon them rested the peace and happiness of the whole community; it was consequently wise and just that an attempt to deprive his majesty of either, should be called high treason, and punished as such; but it would be absurd that a man who should, during the present war, sell to the French a pair of old boots, should be deemed exactly as criminal as if he had actually taken away the life of the king, or robbed him of his liberty. He had at all times been disposed to uphold the majesty of the throne; and he was still more disposed to do so at present, when the tide of democracy was running so strongly against royalty; he was ready therefore to give his support to any bill calculated to give greater security to the crown, and insure still more the personal safety of the king; for such purposes he was willing to extend the statute of treason; but he could not bear to think that the selling of a pair of shoes to the French, should be made in the eye of the ław as criminal an act as the murder of the king. There could not be a more mischievous principle than that which tended to diminish the reverence which subjects habitually had for the sovereign; and this bill tended to introduce confusion in that respect, and consequently lessened the honourable support to which government ought to look. Besides, it was a general maxim, that excess of punishment for a crime brings impunity along with it. It was to this we were to attribute so many acquittals of men tried upon sanguinary acts of parliament: the jury seeing the vast disproportion between the offence and the punishment often acquitted, although they had no doubt of the commission of the act; and often judges, after conviction, were obliged to respite, and the king

finally to pardon, for fear that by putting men to death for trifles, the humanity of the public should be shocked. This was the case with the bill in question: for who would say that a jury would doom a fellow creature to death for selling a yard of cloth, and sending it to France. As wise legislators, who should accommodate themselves to the spirit and temper of the times, and to the changes in the public mind, their lordships ought to make allowances for the change of opinions which had taken place in Europe since the revolution in America. That great event had been productive of many others; and no one could tell how many more would spring out of it. Three millions of men in a neighbouring kingdom (the catholics of Ireland), who had bent under the weight of oppression, and had been obliged for a century past to go upon all. fours, now stood erect upon two legs like the rest of their fellow subjects. This was an important change, and ought to influence the legislature in its future systems for a government, in which three millions of people, who had hitherto been doomed to silence, and who now could raise their voice in their country, must perceive that that very circumstance would call for serious attention to the opinions and wishes of the governed. In Scotland there was a growing democracy, becoming daily more powerful, because more wealthy through the medium of commerce. These two circumstances would make it necessary that government should be peculiarly careful to rule the people with prudence and wisdom; and to take from them all temptation to emigrate from Europe to America, whither he understood that many of our most skilful artificers and manufacturers were preparing to carry their industry and ingenuity. History. showed that there had always been a propensity in parliament to enact new statutes of treason; before the 25th of Edw. 3rd, they were so numerous, that it was scarcely possible for a man to stir a single step, or open his lips, without saying or doing something which by those statutes was declared to be treason. That wise monarch found it necessary to repeal them all, and to pass the famous act of the 25th of his reign, which was considered as the standard for defining treason. In the reign of his successor, Richard 2nd statutes of treason began again to spring up; but to show the little efficacy of them, he had only to observe that they could not save the

unfortunate monarch who had so multiplied them, or prevent him from being deposed and murdered. Henry 4th, who succeeded him, followed the example of Edward 3rd, and repealed all the acts of treason, except the 25th of that king. Both Houses of parliament indeed wanted him rather to extend than to repeal statutes of treason; they both proposed to him a bill for making sacrilege treason; but Henry 4th, instead of giving it his royal assent, rejected it by means of his negative, saying le roi s'avisera. From his time to that of queen Mary statutes of treason again multiplied to such a degree, that Mary found she could not do the nation a greater pleasure than to repeal them all, except the 25th of Edward 3rd From the time of that queen to the present day, new statutes of treason were enacted against papists, against coiners, and against such as should endeavour to prevent or overturn the Hanover succession. The statutes against the first were deemed, in our liberal days, too bloody and unjust to be put into execution, and were last year repealed. The acts against coiners were now found inadequate to the end for which they had been passed, and must very soon be revised by the legislature. The statutes of treason made for the security of the Hanover succession, were now completely useless, that succession being firmly established and undisturbed by any claim or pretension in opposition to it." At present he did not see any necessity for statutes of treason, except for the security of the life and dignity of the sovereign, and the safety of the state. He therefore could not bear to see a bill pass that House for punishing acts of little or no importance, with just the same rigour as if they were done against the life of the king, or the very being of the community. The authority of Grotius might perhaps be quoted against him; but he was confident, that as the opinion of that able man had been governed by the principles and sentiments entertained in his day by the different nations, he would, if he was now alive, give quite another opinion, on account of the revolution which he must perceive in the public mode of thinking. Revolutions in public opinions were much more rapid than men in general might think: so late as the year 1755, it was stipulated that the plunder acquired by the Russians at the capture of Berlin, should be considered as part of the subsidy to be paid to Russia. Such

a stipulation did not at that time hurt the public feelings; but no one would dare to propose such a one at this moment; the world would not endure it. With respect to the war in which we were at present engaged, he could not better describe the injustice of it, than by quoting a passage from the English Grotius, the learned archdeacon Paley, in which that author setting down what were the causes which could justify war in general, observed that nothing could be more unjustifiable than that one nation should take advantage of the weakness, misfortunes, or distractions of another, and thus make war upon it with views of conquest and aggrandizement. Such he considered the nature of the present war. The bill would never answer its own object; for it never could prevent the traders of this country from supplying the French with the enumerated articles, when the profit to be made was likely to be great. Some noble lords had defended the bill on this ground, that there was something in the internal state of this country which made it necessary; he knew of no such state; he believed nothing of what he had heard about plots, and conspiracies, and seditions in Great Britain; he did not, indeed, say that there might not be some disaffected people in the nation, for such were to be found in every nation; but all that was necessary for the purpose of counteracting them, was vigilance on the part of the executive government; nothing could be more absurd than, for the purpose of keeping them under, to extend the statutes of treason. Upon all these grounds, he not only opposed the bill, but was determined to take the sense of the House upon it.

The Duke of Leeds supported the bill. He thanked his majesty's ministers for the vigorous exertions which they had made, for suppressing the spirit of discontent and sedition which had begun to show itself in many parts of the kingdom. He thanked them also for the readiness with which they had sent relief to our allies the Dutch, and prepared to carry on a war as unprovoked as it was unjust on the part of France. The correspondence between the noble secretary of state and M. Chauvelin, he considered as having done great honour to the former, who had displayed a firmness in the negociation, which could be equalled only by his moderation. We were at war, not for purposes of aggrandizement, but of selfdefence; and our only object was, to