Another bill was designed to check the growing custom of holding public meetings, by providing that no meeting, the object of which was to consider any petition to the King or Parliament, or to deliberate on any alleged grievance, should be held without those who convened it, and who must be householders, giving previous notice of it by public advertisement; and empowering any two justices of the peace, at their own discretion, to declare any such meeting an unlawful assembly, and to disperse it by force, if, from the subjects discussed, the language held, or any special circumstances, they should regard it as dangerous.
Fox, and those who still adhered to him, resisted almost every clause of these different bills. They maintained that one of the most fundamental maxims of law "in every country calling itself free was, that property was in the highest degree entitled to the protection of the law; and, if so, that the right of disposing of it or investing it in any manner must be considered under the same protection;" that any interference "with ordinary commercial transactions was equally repugnant to the spirit of the constitution;" and, taking a practical view of the question, they warned the minister that such rigorous enactments imposing such extreme penalties would defeat their own end; for "it was a general and true maxim, that excess of punishment for a crime brings impunity along with it; and that no jury would ever find a verdict which would doom a fellow-creature to death for selling a yard of cloth and sending it to France." They protested, too, against inflicting on words, whether written or spoken, penalties which had hitherto been confined to overt acts. And the clauses conferring power on magistrates to prevent or disperse public meetings encountered still more vehement opposition; Fox insisting, with great eloquence, that "public meetings for the discussion of public subjects were not only lawful, but agreeable to the very essence of the constitution; that, indeed, to them, under that constitution, most of the liberties which Englishmen now enjoyed were particularly owing." The people, he maintained, had a right to discuss their grievances. "They had an inalienable right to complain by petition, and to remonstrate to either House of Parliament, or to the King; and to make two magistrates, who might be strong partisans, irresponsible judges whether anything said or done at a meeting had a tendency to encourage sedition, was to say that a free constitution was no longer suitable to us." Pitt justified these measures, partly on the ground of the special and unprecedented danger of the times, as proved by the late attempt on the King's life, and partly by the open avowal of republican doctrines made at the meetings of different societies; partly, also, on the temporary character of the measures, since in each bill a period was fixed after which its operation should expire. And he argued, farther, that, as many of the actions specified in these bills as seditious or treasonable were by many lawyers considered capable of being reached by statutes already existing, though not universally understood, it was "humane, not cruel, to remove doubts, and to prevent men from being ensnared by the ambiguity of old laws."
And in May, 1794, he brought in another bill, founded on the report of a secret committee which, in compliance with a royal message, the House of Commons had appointed to investigate the proceedings and objects of certain societies which were known to exist in different parts of the kingdom. In obedience to a Secretary of State's warrant, founded on sworn informations, their books and papers had been seized, and, having been sealed up, were now laid before the House, with the report of the committee that they proved that several of the societies which they named had, ever since the end of the year 1791, been uniformly pursuing a settled design for the subversion of the constitution; one society, in particular, having approved a plan for assembling a Convention, in imitation of the French Assembly sitting under that title, in order to overturn the established government, and to wrest from the Parliament the power which the constitution placed in its hands.
To prevent the dissemination of such principles, and to defeat such schemes, Pitt now asked leave to bring in a bill to empower his Majesty-acting, of course, through the Secretary of State-to secure and detain such persons as he should suspect of conspiring against the King's person and government. He admitted that the power which he thus proposed to confer amounted to a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in every part of the United Kingdom; nor did he deny that it was an unusually strong measure, but he contended that it was one justified by absolute necessity, by the manifest danger of such a conspiracy as the committee had affirmed to exist to the tranquillity of the nation and the safety of the government.
Fox, it may almost be said as a matter of course, opposed the introduction of any such measure; but his opposition was hardly marked by his usual force of argument. He was hampered by the impossibility of denying either the existence of the societies which the committee and the minister had mentioned, or the dangerous character of some of their designs; but he objected to the measures of repression which were proposed, partly on the absence of all attempts at concealment on the part of the promoters of these societies, partly on the contemptible character of the Convention which it was designed to summon, and the impossibility that such an assembly should have the slightest influence. He even made their avowed hostility to the constitution a plea for a panegyric on that constitution, and on the loyal attachment to it evinced by the vast majority of the people; and from that he proceeded to found a fresh argument against the proposed measure, contending that it made a fatal inroad on that very constitution which was so highly valued by the whole nation. He described it as a measure "of infinitely greater mischief than that which it proposed to remedy, since it would give the executive authority absolute power over the personal liberty of every individual in the kingdom." He did not deny that a similar measure had been enacted under William III., again in 1715, and again in 1745; but he contended that "the present peril bore no resemblance to the dangers of those times. This measure went to overturn the very corner-stone of the constitution, and if it passed, there was an end of the constitution of England." The bill was passed in both Houses by very large majorities.[124] It was originally enacted for six months only, but was from time to time renewed till the end of the century.
If we take a general survey of all these measures together, as parts of one great defensive scheme for the preservation of the public tranquillity and the general safety of the empire, it may, probably, be thought that, though undoubtedly suspensions of the constitution, they are not open to the charge of being unconstitutional, since they were enacted, not only for the welfare of the people, but with their consent and concurrence, legitimately signified by their representatives in Parliament. It is scarcely consistent with sound reason to contend that the habeas corpus, which had been enacted by Parliament, could not be suspended by the authority which had enacted it; that the constitution, which exists for the benefit of the people, could not be suspended by the people; or to deny, if it was in appearance transgressed by these enactments, that it was yet transgressed by strictly constitutional acts, by the decision of the Parliament, to whose power the constitution prescribes no limits.