ded by
the people; or to deny, if it was in appearance transgressed by these
enactments, that it was yet transgressed by strictly constitutional
acts, by the decision of the Parliament, to whose power the constitution
prescribes no limits.

But it is not sufficient that in this point of view these measures may
have been defensible. In judging of their statesmanship, it is almost
equally to be considered whether they were expedient and politic,
whether the emergency or necessity were such as to justify such rigorous
methods of repression. It was fairly open to doubt whether some of them,
and especially the Traitorous Correspondence and the Seditious Meetings
Bills, did not treat as treasonable acts which did not go beyond
sedition, and whether so to treat them were not to invest them with an
importance which did not belong to them. And on this part of the
question the general judgment has, we think, been unfavorable to the
government; and it has been commonly allowed that the Chancellor, whose
advice on legal subjects the Prime-minister naturally took for his
guide, gave him impolitic counsel. In fact, it is well known that these
two acts, to a great extent, failed in their object through their
excessive severity, several juries having refused to convict persons who
were prosecuted for treason, who would certainly not have escaped had
they only been indicted for sedition; and it is deserving of remark that
these two bills were not regarded with favor by the King himself, if the
anecdote--which seems to rest on undeniable authority--be true, that he
expressed satisfaction at the acquittal of some prisoners, on the ground
that almost any evil would be more tolerable than that of putting men to
death "for constructive treason." It must therefore, probably, be
affirmed that these two acts, the Treason Act and the Seditious Meetings
Act, went beyond the necessity of the case; that they were not only
violations of the constitution--which, when the measures are temporary,
as these were, are not always indefensible--but that they were
superfluous, unjust, and impolitic; superfluous, when they proposed to
deal with acts already visitable with punishment by the ancient laws of
the kingdom; unjust, when they created new classes of offences; and
impolitic, as exciting that kind of disapproval of the acts of
government which in many minds has a tendency to excite a spirit of
discontent with and resistance to legitimate authority. And