To prevent the dissemination of such principles, and to defeat such
schemes, Pitt now asked leave to bring in a bill to empower his
Majesty--acting, of course, through the Secretary of State--to secure
and detain such persons as he should suspect of conspiring against the
King's person and government. He admitted that the power which he thus
proposed to confer amounted to a suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act
in every part of the United Kingdom; nor did he deny that it was an
unusually strong measure, but he contended that it was one justified by
absolute necessity, by the manifest danger of such a conspiracy as the
committee had affirmed to exist to the tranquillity of the nation and
the safety of the government.
Fox, it may almost be said as a matter of course, opposed the
introduction of any such measure; but his opposition was hardly marked
by his usual force of argument. He was hampered by the impossibility of
denying either the existence of the societies which the committee and
the minister had mentioned, or the dangerous character of some of their
designs; but he objected to the measures of repression which were
proposed, partly on the absence of all attempts at concealment on the
part of the promoters of these societies, partly on the contemptible
character of the Convention which it was designed to summon, and the
impossibility that such an assembly should have the slightest influence.
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