been illegal. All precedents are under the control of the principles of law. Lord Talbot says it is better to observe these than any precedents, though in the House of Lords, the last resort of the subject. No Acts of Parliament can establish such a writ ; though it should be made in the very words of the petition, it would be void. An act against the constitution is void. (vid. Viner.) But these prove no more than what I before observed, that special writs may be granted on oath and probable suspicion. The act of 7 & 8 William III. that the officers of the plantations shall have the same powers, &c. is confined to this sense ; that an officer should show probable ground ; should take his oath of it ; should do this before a magistrate ; and that such magistrate, if he think proper, should issue a special warrant to a constable to search the places. That of 6 Anne can prove no more.
John Adams, Works (edited by Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850), II, Appendix, 523-525.
132. Opposition to Arbitrary Power (1763)
These extracts are taken from the famous No. 45 of The North Briton, published by Wilkes, then a member of Parliament. Wilkes was clever but profligate, and his paper was scurrilous; yet he stood for liberty of the subject and for parliamentary reform in England at the time when the treatment of the American colonies was under discussion. —Bibliography: Fitzgerald, Life of Wilkes ; May, Constitutional History of England, II, chs. ix-x, III, ch. xi; Lecky, England, III, 68-82, and ch. xi.
THE Preliminary Articles of Peace were such as have drawn the contempt of mankind on our wretched negociators. All our most valuable conquests were agreed to be restored, and the East-India company would have been infallibly ruined by a single article of this fallacious and baneful negociation. No hireling of the minister has been hardy enough to dispute this ; yet the minister himself has made our sovereign declare, the satisfaction which he felt at the approaching reestablishment of peace upon conditions so honourable to his crown, and so beneficial to his people. As to the entire approbation of parliament, which is so vainly boasted of, the world knows how that was obtained. The large debt on the Civil List, already above half a year in arrear, shews pretty clear the transactions of the winter. It is, however, remarkable, that the minister s speech dwells on the entire approbation given by parliament to the Preliminary Articles, which I will venture to say, he
