began that British Reign of Terror,
which lasted longer than the French, and brought the liberties of the
People into such peril as they had not known since William of Orange
hurled the last of the Stuarts from his throne. Dreadful laws were
passed, atrocious almost as our own fugitive slave bill. First came
"the Traitorous correspondence Bill;" next the "Habeas Corpus
Suspension Act;" and then the "Seditious Practices Act," with the
"Treasonable Attempts Bill" by legislative exposition establishing
constructive treason! All these iniquitous measures were brought
forward in Parliament by Sir John Scott--then Attorney-General, one of
those North Britons who find the pleasantest prospect in Scotland is
the road to London. He also was vehemently active in defending the
tyranny of the Scotch judges just referred to, as indeed all judicial
insolence and legal wrong.[138] He opposed all attempts to reform the
law which punished with death a theft of five shillings. In two years
there were more prosecutions for seditious libel than in twenty
before. But Scott had his reward, and was made Lord Chancellor in
1801, and elevated to the peerage as Lord Eldon.[139]

[Footnote 138: 30 Parl. Hist. 581; 31 Parl. Hist. 520, 929, 1153, _et
al._; 32 Parl. Hist. 370.]

[Footnote 139: 7 Campbell, 119; 1 Townsend's Judges; Life of Vic.
Gibbs.]

8. Then came that series of trials for high treason which disgraced
the British nation and glutted the sanguinary vengeance of the court.
The government suborned spies to feign themselves "radicals," join the
various Reform Societies, worm themselves into the confidence of
patriotic and philanthropic or rash men, possess themselves of their
secrets, catch at their words, and then repeat in court what they were
paid for fabricating in their secret haunts. A ridiculous fable was
got up that there was a plot to assassinate the King! Many were
arrested, charged with treason--"constructive treason." On the
evidence of spies of the government, hired informers--such men,
Gentlemen of Jury, as Commissioner Loring and Marshal Freeman jointly
made use of last year to kidnap Mr. Burns--estimable men were seized
and locked up in the most loathsome dungeons of the kingdom, with
intentional malignity confined amongst the vilest of notorious
criminals. The judges wrested the law, constructing libels, seditions,
"misdemeanors," treasons--any crime which it served their purpose to
forge out of acts innocent, or o