If such powers were at all times possessed by the crown, its authority would be too great for a free government to co-exist with it; but if such could not be at times conferred on the crown, its authority would be too small for its own safety or that of the people.
The arguments of the ministers were, no doubt, greatly recommended, both to the Parliament and the people in general, by the notoriety of the fact that foreign agents were in many of our large towns busily, and not unsuccessfully, engaged in propagating what were known as Jacobin doctrines.

But, even without that aid, it was clear that every government must, for the common good of all, be at times of extraordinary emergency invested with the power of suspending laws made for ordinary circumstances.

And what would be an intolerable evil, if the supreme magistrate took upon himself to exercise it, ceases to be one when the right to exercise it is conferred by the nation itself in Parliament.

If the bill did, as was argued, suspend the _Habeas Corpus_ Act, that statute had been enacted by Parliament, and therefore for Parliament, in a case of necessity, to suspend its operation was clearly within the spirit of the constitution.
The bills affecting our own fellow-subjects were still more warmly contested.

One was known as the Traitorous Correspondence Bill, which, according to Lord Campbell, was suggested by Lord Loughborough, who had lately become Lord Chancellor.