he could not suffer to pass unnoticed. It was insinuated that the mob resembled the Dissenters; the fact was quite otherwise. If there was any resemblance in the case, it was this: the clergy of the Established Church stood in the shoes of the mob; but the Dissenters in those of the poor persecuted Roman Catholics. He remembered with pleasure the conduct of his right honourable friend upon that occasion; it reflected upon his friend's character great honour; for, in defiance of the rage and madness of the mob, he persevered in the laudable purpose in which the House were then engaged, of extending toleration to the Roman Catholics. The mob then were illiberally insisting upon the repeal of a good law; the members of the Established Church were now as illiberally objecting to the repeal of a bad law. All unprincipled mobs he should ever regard with extreme horror and indignation; their cry was still the same, whether they were peasants, gentlemen, or bishops. Ignorance, prejudice, or fanaticism, were their general topics of declamation. From the violence of their rage, the God of peace and order ever preserve us!" Mr. Fox, congratulating himself on having been selected by men who had rather acted as his enemies than friends, to fight their battles, concluded with assuring them, "that so sincerely was he a friend to their cause, that he should be ever ready, on any future occasion, to take the field for them again; under the clearest conviction that their complaint of grievance and oppression, in the present instance, was well founded."

On a division, Mr. Fox's motion was rejected by a majority of 294 to 105.

ABATEMENT OF AN IMPEACHMENT BY A DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT. 1790. December 23rd. While the impeachment against Mr. Warren Hastings was depending before the House of Lords, Parliament was dissolved. This gave rise to the discussion, shortly after the assembling of the new Parliament in November 1790, of a constitutional question of the highest importance; namely, whether a dissolution put an end to an impeachment by the House of Commons before the House of Lords. Upon the deter

On the 6th of June, 1780, during the riots, a detachment of foot guards took possession of Westminster-hall, the doors of which they at last closed to prevent the mob from entering: several members of both Houses who walked down on foot were thus prevented from getting into the House for a considerable time.. Among them was Mr. Burke, who was presently surrounded by some of the most decent of the petitioners, who expostulated with him on his conduct in abetting Sir George Savile's motion for the Roman Catholic Bill; Mr. Burke in his defence said, he certainly had seconded the motion for the bill, and thought himself justified in so doing; he said he understood he was a marked man, on whom the petitioners meant to wreak their vengeance; and therefore he walked out singly amongst them, conscious of having done nothing that deserved their censure in the slightest degree, having always been the advocate for the people, and meaning to continue so. Mr. Burke at last got rid of his troublesome interrogators.-Parl. Hist. vol. xxi. p. 662.

Upon this subject see Hallam's Constitutional Hist., vol ii. p. 562, et seq.

mination of this question it depended whether the proceedings against Mr. Hastings could be taken up by the present Parliament where they were left by the last, or whether they must be begun de novo. In order to bring this important point to a decision, Mr. Burke, on the 17th of December, in a committee of the whole House, moved the following resolution :-" That it appears that an impeachment by this House, in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, and of all the Commons of Great Britain, against Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal, for sundry high crimes and misdemeanours, is now depending." Mr. Burke observed, that his motion involved no abstract question, but was a plain, practical assertion of their privileges, as handed down to them by their predecessors, through an uninterrupted succession of five hundred years. In all the convulsions of our government, in all the struggles, contests, and incidental or progressive changes of the functions and powers of the House of Commons, this had remained immutable-that an impeachment was never to be defeated by collusion with a Minister, or by the power of the Crown. Mr. Erskine, with a view to the appointment of a committee to search for precedents, to be formally reported to the House, as a necessary guide to their ultimate decision, moved, “That the chairman should leave the chair." A debate of unusual length ensued.* Mr. Erskine was supported by Sir Richard Arden,† Sir Archibald Macdonald, Mr. Hardinge.§ Mr. Mitford,|| Sir John Scott,¶ and others. He was opposed by Mr. Addington,** Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, Mr. Anstruther,†† Mr. Adam,‡‡ Mr. Dundas,§§ and Mr. Fox. On the third day of the debate, after Sir John Scott, the SolicitorGeneral, had spoken,

Mr. Fox rose and said, that "after the question had been so fully debated, the committee could not be expected to listen with much patience to any additional arguments upon it. The constitutional principle had been so ably and so eloquently supported on precedent, analogy, and reason; the fallacies urged against it so completely exposed, and the arguments so fully confuted, that he was afraid that to say anything further upon it would have more the appearance of personal vanity than of a desire to convince. He should therefore have been contented to leave it where it stood; but having been always zealous in supporting the privileges of the House of Commons, and

• The debate lasted, by adjournment, three days.

+ Master of the Rolls, afterwards Lord Alvanley.

Attorney-General. Afterwards Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. A Welsh judge.

Afterwards Solicitor and Attorney-General, Speaker of the House of Commons in England, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Solicitor-General. Afterwards Attorney-General, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and Lord Chancellor of England.

** The Speaker.

++ Afterwards Chief Justice in India.

‡‡ Afterwards one of the Barons of the Court of Exchequer. §§ The Lord Advocate of Scotland.

on some occasions contrary to the opinions of those with whom he agreed on other points, he thought it his duty to give something more than a silent vote in support of a question, in the fate of which all their privileges were involved.

"The question was, indeed, of great importance. Of such importance, as he defied human wit, or human eloquence to exaggerate; no less than whether the constitution of the country was a free constitution, under which every act of Government was subject to inquiry, and accompanied with responsibility; or whether power might be exercised without control and without any national inquest to take cognizance of its abuse. Those who disputed the right of the Commons to proceed on an impeachment after a dissolution, had argued from a repetition of the same precedents first referred to, and very ably commented upon by the honourable and learned gentleman who first opposed an immediate decision. All the arguments on those precedents had been answered with so much ability by the right honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as to render any other answer unnecessary. Of this, those who contended that the Commons had no such right, seemed to have been aware. They appeared to have said to themselves, the first speech on the precedents contained all that can be urged with any plausibility. That speech has been so fully, so irresistibly answered, that all we can now do is to weaken the impression of the answer by repetition; if we cannot convince, we may yet confound.' Repetition was accordingly tried. Other learned gentlemen had risen, and, instead of taking new ground, had gone over the same precedents, built on them the same arguments, and deduced the same conclusions, in hopes, no doubt, that the second answer would be less able than the first. In this, however, they had been disappointed, for a second answer by another right honourable gentleman (Mr. Dundas) had as completely demolished the repetition as the first overturned the original arguments. Another attempt, however, was made. The routed precedents were again rallied, and brought into the field by another learned gentleman, (Sir John Scott), who declared that he could not conscientiously vote that an impeachment after a dissolution remained in statu quo, unless he was first satisfied that such a principle was agreeable to the practice of the courts below. This third attempt he feared would be too successful, inasmuch as the answer which he should give would be much less able than either of the preceding.

"It was not his intention to dwell much on the precedents which had been so repeatedly and so ably discussed; but to rest his argument on the general principle, that whatever was inconsistent with, or subversive of a free constitution, could make no part of the law under that constitution. On the precedents, however, the learned gentleman who preceded him had brought only one new authority, the authority of Lord Danby on the state of his own impeachment, an authority just as good as the opinion of Mr. Hastings

The Earl of Danby, Lord High Treasurer in the reign of Charles the Second, was impeached by the Commons on a charge, among others, of having written a letter to

would be on the question before the House, and of which the learned gentleman was welcome to the full value. The clear and express resolution of 1678,* adopted on the plain analogy of other judicial proceedings in Parliament, on careful search of precedents and mature deliberation, that resolution on which Lord Stafford† had been tried, convicted, and executed, Montague, the English ambassador at Paris, while the negotiations at Nimeguen for the general peace were pending, empowering him to make an offer of neutrality for the price of 6,000,000 livres yearly for three years. The letter was not only written by the King's express orders, but Charles attested this with his own hand in a postscript. -Hume's History of England, vol. vi. pp. 129, 130, Edit. 1841. See Hallam's Constitutional Hist. vol. ii. p. 552, et seq.

On the 11th of March, 1672, the House of Lords ordered that the committee for privileges should inquire, "whether an appeal to that House, either by writ of error or petition, from the proceedings of any other court, being depending and not determined in one session of Parliament, continue in statu quo unto the next session of Parliament, without renewing the writ of error or petition." In the report of the committee on the 29th of March, 1673, the order of reference was mis-recited in a very remarkable manner. Instead of the words in the order "from the proceedings of any other court," the following are inserted: "or any other business wherein their lordships act as in a court of judicature and not in their legislative capacity." The committee then came to the resolution, "That businesses depending in one Parliament, or session of Parliament, have been continued to the next session of the same Parliament, and the proceedings thereupon have remained in the same state in which they were left when last in agitation." The House approved of this resolution, and ordered it accordingly. The dissolution of the Long Parliament while the impeachment against Danby and the five Popish lords was pending raised the question, whether an impeachment abates by a dissolution. It was, therefore, referred by the Lords, on the 11th of March, 1678, to their committee for privileges, to consider whether petitions of appeal which were presented to that House in the last Parliament were still in force to be proceeded on. Next day it was referred to the same committee, on a report of the matter of fact as to the impeachments of the Earl of Danby and the five Popish lords in the late Parliament, to consider the state of the said impeachments and all the incidents relating thereto, and to report to the House. On the 18th of March, the Earl of Essex reported from the committee that, "upon perusal of the judgment of this House of the 29th of March, 1673, they are of opinion that, in all cases of appeals and writs of error, they continue and are to be proceeded on, in statu quo as they stood at the dissolution of the last Parliament, without beginning de novo. . . . . And upon consideration had of the matter referred to their lordships concerning the state of the impeachments brought up from the House of Commons the last Parliament, and all the incidents relating thereunto, their lordships are of opinion that the dissolution of the last Parliament doth not alter the state of the impeachment brought up by the Commons in that Parliament." This report was taken into consideration on the following day by the House; and after a debate, which appears from the journals to have lasted some time, it was resolved to agree with the committee.-Lords' Journals. Hallam's Constitutional Hist. vol. ii. pp. 565, 566.

Of the five peers, Lords Stafford, Powis, Arundel, Petre, and Belasyse, who were committed to the Tower, on the charge of being the principal instigators of the celebrated Popish Plot in the reign of Charles the Second, Lord Stafford alone was brought to trial, and condemned, and executed. The other peers, with the exception of Lord Petre, who died in confinement, on the 5th of January, 1683, were liberated on the 22nd of May, 1685, when the falsehood of the evidence upon which they all had been committed was established. Vide post, p. 364.

VOL. II.

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had been arraigned as an arbitrary resolution, made in bad times, to serve a particular purpose, and contrary to the former practice of Parliament. The peculiar hardships of Lord Stafford's case had also been pathetically insisted upon, as if any hardship or informality in a particular case would affect the general principle.

"After what had been stated with so much precision and so much truth of the times of Charles the Second, it would not again be contended that they were bad times in Parliamentary law, or that any precedent derived from them was to be suspected merely on that account. The fact was that the times, in a constitutional point of view, were good. All that could be charged upon them was their credulity. The people, harassed and alarmed by repeated attempts on their liberty, were, perhaps, too ready to listen to those who wished to take advantage of their fears; but while some of their acts, viewed coolly and at a distance, might be blamable, the principle on which they acted was good. The condemnation of Lord Stafford, viewed, as we were now enabled to view it, divested of fear and credulity, and convinced that Oates and Bedloe, the principal witnesses against him, were impostors, we must naturally lament. But every man who had perused the printed account of his trial must admit that it was perfectly regular in point of form, and that the verdict of his peers, believing, as they did, the evidence of Oates and Bedloe,† was a just verdict, and such as they were bound in conscience to pronounce. In those times, which were reprobated as incapable of affording a precedent fit to be followed, every question necessary to stop an impeachment, by the exercise of the King's prerogative, had been tried, and all had been baffled by the vigorous and constitutional exertions of the Commons, and ever since completely settled. The King first tried to stop the impeachment by refusing to appoint a Lord High Steward. The Commons contested the point, agitated it with the Lords, and it ended in settling the commission of a Lord High Steward, by inserting words which have ever since stood in the commission, and which make the Lord High Steward not a necessary part of the court of the House of Lords. Thus the Commons, without an Act of Parliament, established that the King could not stop an impeachment by refusing to appoint a Lord High Steward, because that office was determined to be unnecessary. The King next tried to stop the impeachment by granting a pardon to Lord Danby. But here again the prerogative of the King was routed by the privileges of the Commons. He would not discuss the point agitated in the conference; it was

* Upon his trial Lord Stafford requested that his counsel might be heard touching the continuance of impeachments from Parliament to Parliament; but the House of Lords decided that his counsel should not be heard upon that point.-Lords' Journals, December 4, 1780.

Titus Oates and Bedloe were the principal actors in the pretended Popish Plot; but Bedloe did not appear as a witness on the trial of Lord Stafford, having died at Bristol the summer before the trial took place.-Burnet's Hist. of his Own Times, p. 488. See also Howell's St. Tr. vol. vi. p. 1493.