that the acceptance of the proposal was, in the actual posture of affairs, the best thing to be done for her father's interests, and for the living; and that her character was secured against all malicious insinuations, by the manner and the moment in which the proposal came from Mr Hatton's friends. The manner, the moment, and the substance of the proposal, made it indeed equivalent to a confession, that the Bishop's defence of her evidence was unanswerable, and that the bare value of the allotment would be an inadequate compensation for the tithes in kind.

ON THE THIRD READING OF THE

TREASON BILL;

NOVEMBER 30, 1795.

ON

.

N Friday the 6th of November 1795, Lord GRENVILLE brought in a bill entitled "a bill to prevent seditious and treasonable practices." The bill originated in a daring attack which had been made on the King, in his way to the ParliamentHouse, on Thursday the 29th of October. During the time the clauses of the bill were agitated in a committee, some very warm and personal debates took place. In one of these, Dr Horsley (now Bishop of ROCHESTER) Supported the measure; and insisted, in the course of his argument,

that "all that the people had to do with the laws of the country was to obey them." This was very warmly taken up by Lord LAUDERDALE; who said, he should not have been surprised at such an expression from an Eastern mufti,—but that it should fall from an English bishop, astonished him beyond measure. In reply to this, the Bishop, on the third reading of the bill, 13th November 1795, rose and said,

"MY LORDS,

The sentiment which fell from me, in a former night's debate, which has excited such a fever in the mind of the noble earl, and has drawn forth such a torrent of his eloquence, I uttered upon the gravest deliberation, and with the steadiest conviction of my mind; and I never shall retract it. My Lords, I am sensible that it is perfectly disorderly to allude to

any thing that passed in a former debate ;and I should not have done it, had not the noble earl compelled me to this irregu larity: But when any of your Lordships is thus attacked, he generally meets with the indulgence of the House, if, in his own defence, he transgresses the strict rule of order. My Lords, a turn was given to my expressions, at the time, as if I had delivered that maxim professing at the same time to be little acquainted with the laws of my country. My Lords, I made no such profession: I never meant to impute that ignorance to myself, whatever other noble lords may impute to me. I avowed only an ignorance of those technical parts of the law in which none but lawyers by profession can be learned, and in which it is no disgrace to any man that is not a lawyer by profession to be unlearned. This avowal of my ignorance was made in sta

3

ting to your Lordships, as I thought it my duty to state, the wide difference of my opinion, concerning the second clause of this bill, from the opinions that were advanced by a noble and a learned lord * whom I am proud to call my friend. My Lords, it was painful to me at the time to express my dissent from his opinions, because he was absent; and I thank the noble earl who has given me the opportunity, now that my noble friend is in his place, to repeat my objections to his argument. My Lords, I said that the only point of argument I could perceive in my noble and learned friend's objections to the provisions of the bill was this,—that the bill applies the punishment of felony to crimes not felonious. I said, my Lords, that this seemed to me a technical objec

* Lord THUrlow.