These, my lords, are the arguments which have influenced me hitherto to approve the bill now before us, and which will continue their prevalence, till I shall hear them confuted; and, surely, if they are not altogether unanswerable, they are surely of so much importance, that the bill for which they have been produced, must be allowed to deserve, at least, a deliberate examination, and may very justly be referred to a committee, in which ambiguities may be removed, and inadvertencies corrected.

Lord CHOLMONDELEY spoke next, to the following purpose:—­My lords, this bill is, in my opinion, so far from deserving approbation, that I am in doubt whether I should retard the determination of the house, by laying before you the reasons which influence me in this debate; nor, indeed, could I prevail upon myself to enter into a formal discussion of a question, on which I should have imagined that all mankind would have been of one opinion, did not my reverence of the abilities of those noble lords who have spoken in defence of the bill, incline me, even against the conviction of my own reason, to suspect that arguments may be offered in its favour, which I have not yet been able to discover; and that those which have been produced, however inconclusive they have seemed, will operate more powerfully when they are more fully displayed, and better understood.

For this reason I shall lay before your lordships the objections which arose in my mind when the bill was first laid before us, and which have rather been strengthened than invalidated by the subsequent debate.

It appears, my lords, evident to me, that every man has a right to be tried by the known laws of his country; that no man can be justly punished by a law made after the commission of a fact, because he then suffers by a law, against which he never transgressed; nor is any man to be prosecuted by methods invented only to facilitate his condemnation, because he ought to be acquitted, however guilty he may be supposed, whom the established rules of justice cannot convict.  The law, my lords, is the measure of political, as conscience of moral right; and he that breaks no law, may indeed be criminal, but is not punishable.  The law likewise prescribes the method of prosecuting guilt; and as we, by omitting any crime in our laws, disable ourselves from punishing it, however publick or flagrant, so by regulating the process in our courts of justice, we give security to that guilt, which by that process cannot be detected.

The truth of this assertion, my lords, however paradoxical it may perhaps appear, will become evident, if we suppose a man brought to the bar whose guilt was unquestionable, though it could not be legally proved, because all those were dead who might have appeared against him.  It is certain that his good fortune would give him no claim to pardon, and yet he could not be convicted, unless we suppose him weak enough to accuse himself.  In this case, my lords, it is not impossible, that some might be prompted by their zeal to propose, that the foreign methods of justice might be introduced, and the rack employed to extort, from his own mouth, a confession of those crimes of which every one believed him guilty.