With what horrour, my lords, such a proposal would be heard, how loudly it would be censured, and how universally rejected, I need not say; but must observe, that, in my opinion, the detestation would arise principally from a sense of the injustice of exposing any man to peculiar hardships, and distinguishing him to his disadvantage from the rest of the community.

It will, my lords, not be easy to prove, that it is less agreeable to justice to oblige a man to accuse himself, than to make use of extraordinary methods of procuring evidence against him; because the barriers of security which the law has fixed are equally broken in either case, and the accused is exposed to dangers, from which he had reason to believe himself sheltered by the constitution of his country.

This argument, my lords, I have mentioned, without endeavouring to evince the innocence of the person whom this bill immediately regards; because the intent of it is to show, that no man is to be deprived of the common benefits of the constitution, and that the guilty have a right to all the advantages which the law allows them.  For guilt is never to be supposed till it is proved, and it is therefore never to be proved by new methods, merely because it is supposed.

That the method of procuring evidence now proposed, is new, my lords, I think it no temerity to conclude; because the noble lords who have endeavoured to defend it, have produced no instance of a parallel practice, and their knowledge and acuteness is such, that they can only have failed to discover them, because they are indeed nowhere to be found.

In the case of bribery, my lords, the person accused has the privilege, if he be innocent, of prosecuting his accuser for perjury, and is therefore in less danger of being harassed by a false indictment.  But, my lords, this is not the only difference between the two cases; for he that discovers a bribe received by himself, has no motives of interest to prompt his evidence; he is only secured from suffering by his own discovery, and might have been equally safe by silence and secrecy; since the law supposes the crime out of the reach of detection, otherwise than by the confession of the criminal.

But far different, my lords, are the circumstances of those who are now invited to throng the courts of justice, and stun us with depositions and discoveries.  They are men supposed criminal by the indemnity which is offered them; and by the nature of their crimes it is made at least probable, that they are in daily hazard of discovery and punishment; from which they are summoned to set themselves free for ever, by accusing a man of whom it has not been yet proved that he can legally be called to a trial.

Thus, my lords, in the law which the noble duke has mentioned as a precedent for this bill, the accuser is only placed in a kind of equilibrium, equally secure from punishment, by silence or by information, in hope that the love of truth and justice will turn the balance; in the bill now before us the witness is in continual danger by withholding his evidence, and is restored to perfect safety by becoming an accuser, and from making discoveries, whether true or false, has every thing to hope and nothing to fear.