But, even without that aid, it was clear that every
government must, for the common good of all, be at times of
extraordinary emergency invested with the power of suspending laws made
for ordinary circumstances. And what would be an intolerable evil, if
the supreme magistrate took upon himself to exercise it, ceases to be
one when the right to exercise it is conferred by the nation itself in
Parliament. If the bill did, as was argued, suspend the _Habeas Corpus_
Act, that statute had been enacted by Parliament, and therefore for
Parliament, in a case of necessity, to suspend its operation was clearly
within the spirit of the constitution.
The bills affecting our own fellow-subjects were still more warmly
contested. One was known as the Traitorous Correspondence Bill, which,
according to Lord Campbell, was suggested by Lord Loughborough, who had
lately become Lord Chancellor. The old law of high-treason, enacted in
the reign of Edward III., had been in effect greatly mitigated by later
statutes, which had made acts to which that character was imputed more
difficult of proof, by a stricter definition of what was admissible
evidence, and other safeguards; and the practice of the courts had by
degrees practically reduced the list of treasons enumerated in the old
law, indictments for many of the offences contained in it forbearing to
assert that the persons accused had incurred the penalty of
high-treason.
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