The first was directed against the foreign propagators of revolution. The resolutions of the Convention had been promulgated in November, 1792; and at the meeting of Parliament in December, Lord Grenville, as Foreign Secretary of State, introduced in the House of Lords an alien bill, to enable the government to deal in a summary manner with any foreign visitors whose conduct or character might seem to call for its interference. It provided that all foreigners who had arrived in the kingdom since the preceding January should give in a statement of their names and residences; that any one who should arrive in future should furnish an account of his name, his station in life, and his object in visiting England; that the King, by proclamation, order in Council, or sign-manual, might direct all foreigners to reside in such districts as might be thought suitable; that no one might quit the residence in which he first settled without a passport; and that the Secretary of State might order any suspected foreigner to quit the kingdom instantly.
The act was to be in operation for twelve months, and Lord Grenville, in introducing it, though he admitted it to be a measure of "rather a novel nature," explained at the same time that it was so far from being new in the powers which it gave, that Magna Charta distinctly recognized "the power and right of the crown to prevent foreigners from entering or residing within the realm." All that was really new was the defining of the manner in which that power should be exercised, since it had been so rarely needed that doubts might exist as to the proper mode of putting it in action. The bill, which was adopted in both Houses by large majorities, is remarkable, among other circumstances, from the fact that its discussion furnished the first instance of a public display of the difference between the two sections of the Opposition, subsequently described by Burke in one of his most celebrated pamphlets as the Old and New Whigs; those whom he called the Old Whigs (the Duke of Portland, Sir Gilbert Elliott, Mr. Windham, not to mention Burke himself) earnestly supporting it, while Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Grey resisted it with equal zeal. Lord Lansdowne took the ground that it was a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act; while Fox and Grey denounced it, in more general terms, as a measure "utterly irreconcilable with the principles of the constitution," Mr. Grey apparently referring chiefly to the power given by the bill to the Secretary of State to send any foreigners from the country, which he described as "making the bill a measure of oppression, giving power for the exercise of which no man was responsible." Sir Gilbert Elliott's answer was singularly ingenious. He did not deny that the bill conferred additional power on the crown, though not more than was justified by existing circumstances; but he maintained that the right of giving extraordinary powers to the crown on occasions was so far from being inconsistent with the principles of the constitution, that to grant extraordinary powers in extraordinary emergencies was a part of it essential to the character of a free government. 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. The old law of high-treason, enacted in the reign of Edward III., had been in effect greatly mitigated by later statutes, which had made acts to which that character was imputed more difficult of proof, by a stricter definition of what was admissible evidence, and other safeguards; and the practice of the courts had by degrees practically reduced the list of treasons enumerated in the old law, indictments for many of the offences contained in it forbearing to assert that the persons accused had incurred the penalty of high-treason. But this new bill greatly enlarged the catalogue. It made it high-treason to hold any correspondence with the French, or to enter into any agreement to supply them with commodities of any kind, even such as were not munitions of war, but articles of ordinary merchandise, or to invest any money in the French Funds; and it enacted farther that any person who, by "any writing, preaching, or malicious and advised speaking," should encourage such designs as the old statute of Edward made treasonable, should be liable to the penalties of high-treason.