but every man's conscience will inform him, that it ought to be rejected
with the utmost indignation.

The reason, my lords, for which it ought to be rejected, is evidently
this, that it may bring innocence into danger. But, my lords, every man
before his trial is to be supposed innocent, and, therefore, no man
ought to be exposed to the hazards of a trial, by which virtue and
wickedness are reduced to a level. A bill like this ought to be marked
out as the utmost effort of malice, as a species of cruelty never known
before, and as a method of prosecution which this house has censured.

I did not, indeed, expect from those who have so long clamoured with
incessant vehemence against the measures of the ministry, such an open
confession of their own weakness. Nothing, my lords, was so frequently
urged, or so warmly exaggerated, as the impossibility of procuring
evidence against a man in power; nothing was more confidently asserted,
than that his guilt would be easily proved when his authority was at an
end; and that even his own agents would readily detect him, when they
were no longer dependant upon his favour.

The time, my lords, so long expected, and so ardently desired, is at
length come; this noble person whom they have so long pursued with
declamations, invectives, and general reproaches, has at length resigned
those offices which set him above punishment or trial; he is now without
any other security than that by which every other man is sheltered from
oppression, the publick protection of the laws of his country; but he is
yet found impregnable, he is yet able to set his enemies at defiance;
and they have, therefore, now, with great sagacity, contrived a method
by which he may be divested of the common privileges of a social being,
and may be hunted like a wild beast, without defence, and without pity.