The Sun.
London, England, 1801-06-06 00:00:00

upon the grounds he
,was now urging them in the
present,instance, because in those cases, clic Rebel-
lion had bten quelled, • and the mischief had passed-
by- bat now the mischie£•was circulating through
the veils of the State, a ConspVracymas.carrying
on, the objet of whiCh was, to subvert the-Go.
yernment of the Country, to destroy all religion.
and morality,to overturn the'Throne, and- to loosen
al,l- those ties which bind man to man, and consti.:
tute the happiness of. society. The Hon. Gentle-
man had argued at some length upon the. Bills'of In-
demnity which had pasied upon
.former occasions ;
he -was glad the Hoi Gentleman had turned his
thoughts to the perusal of the Statute Book,,because
he would there obtain more 'imfOrmation upon this
subjea, than he would probao" find -in TAC rrus.
If the Hon. Gentleman had looked- accurately into .
the Precedents, he would have found that the Aft
which passed 'in .1780, was taken from the Aft
of /746—that, the Aa of 1746 was taken from that
,of 'vs, and that the. Aft of 1715 was taken from
the Ist •and sth of 'WILLIAM and MARY. The
House must observe, that the Afts of WILLIAM
and MARY were passed in times that certainty were
propitious to Liberty,' as they were .immediately
after the Revolution. The Hon. Gentleman had
contended,, that these Statutes confined the Indem-
nity to what had been done in the' course of the
Rebellion ; but if he, had read them attentively, he
would -have found 'that it expressly extended the
Indemnity to ;lets. done before the Rebellion, and
for taking' up persons ,who might disturb the Go-
vernment. When the Bill passed in 1715, there
were a great many persons in Parliament of the
greatest,abilities,. strongly attached to the•Consti.
tution, and to those principles which placed the
House of Hanover upon- the Throne, and they
:would not have consented to the Aft of Indeinnity,

if they had not considered it as fotinded in justice,
and. conformable to the Constitution. The Hon.
Gentleman was,mistaken in another point :• he sup..
posed that there. had not been a Suspension of the
Habeas Corpus Aft upon the occasion to which he
had alluded ; but if he would examine a little more
attentively he would immediately perceiv e his error.
The House, as he before stated, did not pass this
Bill from motives of favour to the late Ministers ;
such a motive would be highly improper; it was
an Ad of imperative duty in the House, if they
prevented persons from using the necessary means
for their defence, to indemnify them, for measures to
which the safety of the State was to be attributed.
There was one great mistake whiCh seemed to per-
vade the whole of, the Hon. Gentleman's speech ; he
supposed that if any person who had been taken up,
, was really innocent, that he must, if he established his
innocence in a Court of Justice, of course ohtain .a
vertlitt against the Minister by whose warrant be
was committed ; because, if it could be shewn that
the warrant had, been issued upon probable 'grounds,
that would be a complete defence, even though the
patty should afterwards appear to be innocent.—
A Learned Gentlemen had referred to the Trials at
Maidstone, and ,stated, that the Judges had com-
plained that there were no informations upon oath ;
but why did they complain ? For the same reason
that they frequently complained it the Assizes
when the informations were not laid before them,
because it was a great convenience to. the Judges to
have these informations, in order that they might
know the nature of the business that was coming
before them. - But he really should' have thought
that' Maidstone would never have escaped the lips of
any person on the other •side—lllaitistalte !, never
was there such a complete shipwreck of a Party as
at that fatal place.. He should have thought that
the word would have been anathematized, and. that
.those Gentlemen would have anxiously endeavoured
to blot it out of their own memories, and from those
of the rest of mankind. He should have thought,
that the recollection of Maidstone would have satis-
fied Gentlemen,, that against such an undermining
occult system of Conspiracy there was no other pro.
tedion but Spies, more especially when it appeared
that the Traitors had been able to impose upon the
simplicity of the greatest, the noisest, and the Lea
of 'men, Let Reynolds (who was called a Spy, but
to whose information, and the unexampled firmness
and gallantry of the Gentlemen and Yeomanry of
Ireland, that Country owed its safety) be, put in
competition with the traitor O'Connor• and while
he would hug the Spy,,-as he was called, to his bo-
som, he had no language (at least that he could use
consistently with the decorum of that -House) to
express his detestation of .the other. He then ad-
verted to an argument which had been used, Viz.
that if this Bill passed, it would leave the persons
who had been taken up without any means of .re-
dress, with whatever cruelty they had been treated;'
but this was`a complete mistake. The Bill, was to
indemnify Ministers for causing them to he appre-
hended ; it did not indemnify persons for any .at of
cruelty or oppression, if any had been .coliamitted,
which, notwithstanding all the Petitions and Affi-
davits, he believed ,was not the case.—The AT-
TORNEY GENERAL then most ably replied to other
parts of Mr. Gaavi Speech ; but we lament that
for Want of room, we are unable to detail the re-
.. tuainder of his Speech. He concluded with saying,
.that he voted for this Bill with a safe conscience ;
and he trusted after it bad passed, he should still
retain an unblemished reputation.

Mr. TIBRN.EY said, that though he was not examined
at Maidstope, yet he,sluoulcl have given the same- evidence
as the rest of his friends gave there ; hitt he was stare the
A TTOR NEY.GiNER AL would not assert, that since the con-
fession which -had been made, that any of those Gentlemen
who gave evidence there, any longer telt any friendship for
Mr. O'Connor.

- He then complained of this BM's being introduced so
late in the Session, and when hut few besides the Secret
• Committee were aware tho.r. such a Bill was in agitation.
,'The Learned Gentleman had rested' much upon precedents,
"hut none oflhose he had quoted were like the present Bill,
for they limited the time of ads being done by the Executive
Government for which-an indemnity LVas.granted ; but in the
present instance, the House was called upon to indemnify
Ministers for acts done by them'foreight years back. He be-
lieved the truth to be, after all the disclosure of plot; &c.
that Mihister4 in,applying for this Bile, were more concern-
ed for•their own justification-than for the public safety, The
Legislature was called upon to indemnify Ministers for ads
done or S years back, without their being obliged to disclose
the grounds on which they procevicli ; it was called upon to
say, that they estigiit to be subject to no inquiry whatever,
±Or acts (*lone by them attesting the security of the Subject.--,
Learned G,tutlernan might show that they were in-
fuenerd by no bad motive; but might they not have been
imposed upon ? The-course he should have preferred would
..,11-.ve been to give these men an opportunity of proving their
iunoccney,
.tuid a; the tame time to h;tve tofit'whified
3t015 from personal risks and pena!titsi By this Bill, the
notity was called iyon to enable the late Minister, to destroy
-01 V fortunes tArhiliet- itnd Npitt4tioa of any titan lit the