Further to manifest their servility to the king, as well as their hostility to every principle that could by implication be supposed to be connected with Monmouth or his cause, the House of Commons passed a bill for the preservation of his majesty's person, in which, after enacting that a written or verbal declaration of a treasonable intention should be tantamount to a treasonable act, they inserted two remarkable clauses, by one of which to assert the legitimacy of Monmouth's birth, by the other, to propose in parliament any alteration in the succession of the crown, were made likewise high treason. We learn from Burnet, that the first part of this bill was strenuously and warmly debated, and that it was chiefly opposed by Serjeant Maynard, whose arguments made some impression even at that time; but whether the serjeant was supported in his opposition, as the word _chiefly_ would lead us to imagine, or if supported, by whom, that historian does not mention; and, unfortunately, neither of Maynard's speech itself, nor indeed of any opposition whatever to the bill, is there any other trace to be found. The crying injustice of the clause which subjected a man to the pains of treason merely for delivering his opinion upon a controverted fact, though he should do no act in consequence of such opinion, was not, as far as we are informed, objected to or at all noticed, unless indeed the speech above alluded to, in which the speaker is said to have descanted upon the general danger of making words treasonable, be supposed to have been applied to this clause as well as to the former part of the bill. That the other clause should have passed without opposition or even observation, must appear still more extraordinary, when we advert, not only to the nature of the clause itself, but to the circumstances of there being actually in the House no inconsiderable number of members who had in the former reign repeatedly voted for the Exclusion Bill.