imperfection is discovered, it is the province of the legislature to
supply it.

By the experience, my lords, of one generation after another, by the
continued application of successive ages, was our law brought to its
present accuracy. As new combinations of circumstances, or unforeseen
artifices of evasion, discovered to our ancestors the insufficiency of
former provisions, new expedients were invented; and as wickedness
improved its subtilty, the law multiplied its powers and extended its
vigilance.

If I should, therefore, allow, what has been urged, that there is no
precedent of a bill like this, what can be inferred from it, but that
wickedness has found a shelter that was never discovered before, and
which must be forced by a new method of attack? And what then are we
required to do more than has been always done by our ancestors, on a
thousand occasions of far less importance?

I know not, my lords, whether it be possible to imagine an emergence
that can more evidently require the interposition of the legislative
power, than this which is now proposed to your consideration. The nation
has been betrayed in peace, and disgraced in war; the constitution has
been openly invaded, the votes of the commons set publickly to sale, the
treasures of the publick have been squandered to purchase security to
those by whom it was oppressed, the people are exasperated to madness,
the commons have begun the inquiry that has been for more than twenty
years demanded and eluded, and justice is on a sudden insuperably
retarded by the deficiency of the law.

Surely, my lords, this is an occasion that may justify the exertion of