To call upon any man to accuse himself, is only to call upon him to commit perjury, and has therefore been always accounted irrational and wicked:  in those countries where it is practised, the confession is extorted by the rack, which indeed is so necessary on such occasions, that I should not wonder to hear the promoters of this clause openly declaring for the expediency of tortures.

Nothing is more evident than that this bill, however the importance of the occasion may be magnified, was drawn up without reflection, and that the clauses were never understood by those that offered them:  errours like these must arise only from precipitation and neglect, for they are too gross to be committed either by ignorance or design.

To expose such absurdities is, indeed, easy, but not pleasing; for what end is answered by pointing at folly, or how is the publick service advanced by showing that the methods proposed are totally to be rejected?  Where a proposition is of a mixed kind, and only erroneous in part, it is an useful and no disagreeable task to separate truth from errour, and disentangle from ill consequences such measures as may be pursued with advantage to the publick; but mere stupidity can only produce compassion, and afford no opportunities for inquiry or dispute.

Admiral WAGER replied:—­Sir, this clause, however contemptuously treated, has been already passed into a law by a senate which brought no dishonour upon the British nation, by a senate which was courted and dreaded by the greatest part of the universe, and was drawn up by a ministry that have given their posterity no reason to treat them with derision and contumely.

In the reign of the late great queen, this method of proceeding was approved and established, and we may judge of the propriety of the measures followed in that war by the success which they procured.

Those, therefore, by whom this bill was drawn up have committed no new absurdities, nor have proposed any thing which was not enacted by the wisest of our predecessors, in one of the most illustrious periods of our history.

Mr. GYBBON answered:—­Sir, I am far from thinking a proposition sufficiently defended by an assertion that it was admitted by our predecessors; for though I have no inclination to vilify their memory, I may without scruple affirm, that they had no pretensions to infallibility, and that there are in many of our statutes instances of such ignorance, credulity, weakness, and errour, as cannot be considered without astonishment.

In questions of an abstruse and complicated nature, it is certain, sir, that experience has taught us what could never have been discovered previously by the wisdom of our ancestors; and we have found, by their consequences, the impropriety of many practices which they approved, and which we should have equally applauded in the same circumstances.

But to what purpose is observation, if we must shut our eyes against it, and appeal for ever to the wisdom of our ancestors?—­if we must fall into errour, merely because they were mistaken, and rush upon rocks out of veneration to those who were wrecked against them.