ld turn
argument aside.

Upon what principles, my lords, we can now call out for a proof of
crimes, and proceed in the debate as if no just reason of suspicion had
appeared, I am not able to conjecture; here is, in my opinion, if not
demonstrative proof, yet the strongest presumption of one of the
greatest crimes of which any man can be guilty, the propagation of
wickedness, of the most atrocious breach of trust which can be charged
upon a British minister, a deliberate traffick for the liberties of his
country.

Of these enormous villanies, however difficult it may now seem to
disengage him from them, I hope we shall see reason to acquit him at the
bar of this house, at which, if he be innocent, he ought to be desirous
of appearing; nor do his friends consult his honour, by endeavouring to
withhold him from it; if they, indeed, believe him guilty, they may then
easily justify their conduct to him, but the world will, perhaps,
require a more publick vindication.

These, my lords, are the arguments which have influenced me hitherto to
approve the bill now before us, and which will continue their
prevalence, till I shall hear them confuted; and, surely, if they are
not altogether unanswerable, they are surely of so much importance, that
the bill for which they have been produced, must be allowed to deserve,
at least, a deliberate examination, and may very justly be referred to a
committee, in which ambiguities may be removed, and inadvertencies
corrected.

Lord CHOLMONDELEY spoke next, to the following purpose:--My lords, this
bill is, in my opinion, so far from deserving approbation, that I am in
doubt whether I should retard the determination of the house, by laying
before you the reasons which influence me in this debate; nor, indeed,
could I prevail upon myself to enter into a formal discussion of a
question, on which I should have imagined that all mankind would have
been of one opinion, did not my reverence of the abilities of those
noble lords who have spoken in defence of the bill, incline me, even
against the conviction of my own reason, to suspect that arguments may
be offered in its favour, which I have not yet been able to discover;
and that those which have been produced, however inconclusive they have
seemed, will operate more powerfully when they are more fully displayed,
and better understood.

For this reason I shall lay before your lordships the objections which
arose in my mind when the bill was