an a proscription; the
head of a citizen is apparently set to sale, and evidence is hired, by
which the innocent and the guilty may be destroyed with equal facility.

It is apparent, my lords, that they by whom this bill is proposed, act
upon the supposition that the noble person mentioned in it, is guilty of
all those crimes of which he is suspected; a supposition, my lords,
which it is unjust to make, and to which neither reason, nor the laws of
our country, will give countenance or support.

I, my lords, will much more equitably suppose him innocent; I will
suppose that he has, throughout all the years of his administration,
steadily prosecuted the best ends, by the best means; that if he has
sometimes been mistaken or disappointed, it has been neither by his
negligence nor ignorance, but by false intelligence, or accidents not to
be foreseen; and that he has never either sacrificed his country to
private interest, or procured, by any illegal methods, the assistance
and support of the legislature; and I will ask your lordships, whether,
if this character be just, the bill ought to be passed, and doubt not
but every man's conscience will inform him, that it ought to be rejected
with the utmost indignation.

The reason, my lords, for which it ought to be rejected, is evidently
this, that it may bring innocence into danger. But, my lords, every man
before his trial is to be supposed innocent, and, therefore, no man
ought to be exposed to the hazards of a trial, by which virtue and
wickedness are reduced to a level. A bill like this ought to be marked
out as the utmost effort of malice, as a species of cruelty never known
before, and as a method of prosecution which this house has censured.

I did not, indeed, expect from those who have so long clamoured with
incessant vehemence against the measures of the ministry, such an open
confession of their own weakness. Nothing, my lords, was so frequently
urged, or so warmly exaggerated, as the impossibility of procuring
evidence against a man in power; nothing was more confidently asserted,
than that his guilt would be easily proved when his authority was at an
end; and that even his own agents would readily detect him, when they
were no longer dependant upon his favour.

The time, my lords, so long expected, and so ardently desired, is at
length come; this noble person whom they have so long pursued with
declamations, invectives, and general reproaches, has at length resi