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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1812 Excerpt:...a public man--and he is personally accused. But the Learned Gentleman asserts it as a legal doctrine, that. there ought not to be an inquiry unless there is a great and infinite probability of guilt. Is this, Sir, the practice of any one court in England? There ought not to be a trial, I admit, without a certain degree of suspicion; but there ought to be an inquiry wherever there is a charge, and wherever there is an open and avowed accuser. A man ought not to be brought before a jury of his peers to answer to a frivolous and vexatious charge, but will you say that the grand jury shall not examine the bill? To deny an inquiry is to bar the door against justice. It is contrary to the first principles of jurisprudence. It is what a band of criminals would rejoice in, but it would be fatal to innocence. We state that there is positive guilt--we have the record of positive guilt. We have the proof that a public officer suffered a person, accused of an offence against law, to escape, for a corrupt reason, offensive to the dignity of this house, outrageous to the representation of the people; and we have it presented to us, that he did this with the connivance of higher persons. We demand that this bill be examined. We demand that the house shall go into a committee, to see whether persons in office did, or did not, convert the public revenue into an instrument of election abuse. Granting a committee is not going to trial; VOL. I. P but if you say? that you ought not to inquire, when abuse it stated, you lay down a principle unknown in any court in the world! You say, in so many words at least, that the English House of Commons shall establish for its own conduct a doctrine to screen guilt and to torture innocence. Another doctrine, advanced by the Learned Gentle...