But this new bill greatly enlarged the catalogue. It made
it high-treason to hold any correspondence with the French, or to enter
into any agreement to supply them with commodities of any kind, even
such as were not munitions of war, but articles of ordinary merchandise,
or to invest any money in the French Funds; and it enacted farther that
any person who, by "any writing, preaching, or malicious and advised
speaking," should encourage such designs as the old statute of Edward
made treasonable, should be liable to the penalties of high-treason.
Another bill was designed to check the growing custom of holding public
meetings, by providing that no meeting, the object of which was to
consider any petition to the King or Parliament, or to deliberate on any
alleged grievance, should be held without those who convened it, and who
must be householders, giving previous notice of it by public
advertisement; and empowering any two justices of the peace, at their
own discretion, to declare any such meeting an unlawful assembly, and to
disperse it by force, if, from the subjects discussed, the language
held, or any special circumstances, they should regard it as dangerous.
Fox, and those who still adhered to him, resisted almost every clause of
these different bills. They maintained that one of the most fundamental
maxims of law "in every country calling itself free was, that property
was in the highest degree entitled to the protection of the law; and, if
so, that the right of disposing of it or investing it in any manner must
be considered under the same protection;" that any interference "with
ordinary commercial transactions was equally repugnant to the spirit of
the constitution;" and, taking a practical view of the question, they
warned the minister that such rigorous enactments imposing such extreme
penalties would defeat their own end; for "it was a general and true
maxim, that excess of punishment for a crime brings impunity along with
it; and that no jury would ever find a verdict which would doom a
fellow-creature to death for selling a yard of cloth and sending it to
France.
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