SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. APRIL 26, 1798. BILL FOR SUSPENDING FOR A LIMITED TIME THE OPERATION OF THE HABEAS-CORPUS ACT. MR. SHERIDAN expressed his entire disapproba 2 tion of the bill, and his wish that it had not been urged with such violent rapidity as marked its motion through the other house, and which he anticipated would also become its career through this house. The last great and best privilege was trial by jury any efforts of any administration that checked its attributes, or diminished its virtues, was a death-blow to the vitality of constitutional liberty. This was a privilege which, of all others, he was most tenacious of, and which, of all others, was most valuable to the political eminence of Englishmen. He could not then permit the bill now proposed to pass through the house, without thus, in the most rigid, decided, and unqualified manner, giving it his most positive negative. He could not, when he lent his warmest aid in approbation of every measure to be adopted to resist the common enemy, at the same time, and the very same instant, give his approbation of a measure, the operation of which would retard, check, and damp that vigor requisite to meet and confound that common enemy. To resist with effect the common enemy, there must be unanimity but the effect of this would be to sow discord, to excite murmurs, and to feed discontent. When a measure similar to this, on a former occasion, was introduced, he used the same arguments that he should apply now. He desired to have evidence before the house of the existence of treason, and of traitorous conspiracies, before he gave a ready acquiescence to that which in its operation involved so many. The measure introduced now required still more urgently the application of the same arguments. He, therefore, again required evidence of conspiring traitors, of treasonable correspondence, of seditious societies; until these were adduced, he would never give his consent to the bill then before the house. He should consider himself performing but a lukewarm duty to his conscience, or to his country, if he did not express himself to this effect; but he should do a violence to both, if he did not resist it with every faculty which God and nature gave him to enjoy. The right honorable gentleman opposite to him seemed to welcome his co-operation in the general system of national welfare, and to infer from thence, that he was to expect his support, thick and thin, of all his measures; but he took occasion to remark, that as, in the general principle of united opposition to foreign invasion, he entertained but one and the same wish with that right honorable gentleman and the rest of his colleagues; yet, in the specific transaction of his ministerial conduct, he never coincided with him, and never would. This he desired might be universally understood. He took occasion to remark, that the period when this measure was before introduced, was when a set of persons were ready to be put upon their trial; the same was precisely the case now. But even at that period there was more abundant reason for the house to adopt such a measure than at the present; for at that time there was such evidence for their guide as the secret committees of the two houses of parliament; but now even that pretext is not forthcoming, nor a shadow of proof offered, that any kind of treason existed that could warrant the adoption of so violent a means to restrict the liberty of Englishmen.There was nothing good, nothing wise, nothing just or prudential in it, and nothing that could sanction for it his support. The right honorable gentleman, then, failing to adduce any evidence to authorize the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, either at the former period to which he alluded; or now, it remained for him to inquire, whether there existed any proof, or any demonstration, sufficient to supersede the necessity of suspending it at this time. He thought he could produce argument to such an effect; and for that purpose he had only to submit to the house the very reasoning used this day by that right honorable gentleman. He stated, in very glowing language, "the prevalent spirit of opposition that reigned among the people of this country to French principles, their unanimity to resist French arms, and the universality of both opposition and resistance in maintaining against all invaders the inviolability of their constitution, their liberty, and laws." He, therefore, confessed, when he heard such assertions issue from that right honorable gentleman, he could not but conceive and believe that such a measure as that submitted to the house was, if not nugatory, at least unnecessary. He desired to know, where was the necessity of oppressing a willing people? By the declarations of the right honorable gentleman himself, unanimity prevailed; one sentiment, one spirit, one soul, seemed to actuate the people (and he believed it). Then where exists the recessity of imposing upon them a law, which, if not oppressive, must be useless and |