ous theory did not become embodied in the law; the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; the Traitorous Correspondence Bill widely extended the definition of treasonable offences, and proposed that a prisoner might be sentenced to capital punishment upon the evidence of one witness, and without being furnished with a copy of the indictment against him, and without the privilege of being defended by counsel. The Whigs who had joined Pitt were the most vigorous defenders of the new system. Lord Loughborough was directly responsible for the new measures proposed, and Windham was their most ardent defender in the House of Commons.[1] In the House of Lords the Bench of Bishops cast their mantle over every proposal for restricting the liberty of the subject. Dr. Horsley indeed did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws but obey them.[2] By "the Seditious Meetings Bill" every public assemblage for the purpose of petitioning or remonstrating or deliberating on any public question was forbidden, except under certain arbitrary regulations. Any Justice of the Peace might at his own discretion disperse the meeting, and, if, one hour after the meeting had been summoned to disperse, twelve persons were still found assembled together they became liable to the penalties of felony. The Attorney-General boasted that in the last two years there had been more prosecutions for libels than in any twenty years before. Fox declared that he feared that in a few years either the Government would become completely absolute, or confusion would arise almost as much to be deprecated as despotism itself.[3] It was a sign of the times that the Government at this period renewed the unconstitutional practice, protested against in 1775 by the Whig Opposition, of landing foreign troops in England without the previous consent of Parliament.[4]
To all these measures Lord Lansdowne offered a most
