[9] What, however, the House of Commons
abstained from affirming was distinctly, though somewhat
extra-judicially, asserted by Lord Camden, as Chief-justice of the
Common Pleas. Wilkes, with some of the printers and others who had been
arrested, had brought actions for false imprisonment, which came to be
tried in his court; and they obtained such heavy damages that the
officials who had been mulcted applied for new trials, on the plea of
their being excessive. But the Chief-justice refused the applications,
and upheld the verdict, on the ground that the juries, in their
assessment of damages, had been "influenced by a righteous indignation
at the conduct of those who sought to exercise arbitrary power over all
the King's subjects, to violate Magna Charta, and to destroy the liberty
of the kingdom, by insisting on the legality of this general warrant."
Such a justification would hardly be admitted now. But, in a subsequent
trial, a still higher authority, the Chief-justice of the King's Bench,
Lord Mansfield, held language so similar, that, once more to quote the
words of Lord Campbell, "without any formal judgment, general warrants
have ever since been considered illegal."
However, the release of Wilkes on the ground of his parliamentary
privilege gave him but a momentary triumph, or rather respite.
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