_Statute of William III._--It might for a moment be doubted, upon the statute of Edward VI., whether the two witnesses whom the act requires must not depose to the same overt acts of treason. But, as this would give an undue security to conspirators, so it is not necessarily implied by the expression; nor would it be indeed the most unwarrantable latitude that has been given to this branch of penal law, to maintain that two witnesses to any distinct acts comprised in the same indictment would satisfy the letter of this enactment. But a more wholesome distinction appears to have been taken before the revolution, and is established by the statute of William, that, although different overt acts may be proved by two witnesses, they must relate to the same species of treason, so that one witness to an alleged act of compassing the king's death cannot be conjoined with another deposing to an act of levying war, in order to make up the required number.[239] As for the practice of courts of justice before the restoration, it was so much at variance with all principles, that few prisoners were allowed the benefit of this statute;[240] succeeding judges fortunately deviated more from their predecessors in the method of conducting trials than they have thought themselves at liberty to do in laying down rules of law. Nothing had brought so much disgrace on the councils of government and on the administration of justice, nothing had more forcibly spoken the necessity of a great change than the prosecutions for treason during the latter years of Charles II., and in truth during the whole course of our legal history. The statutes of Edward III. and Edward VI., almost set aside by sophistical constructions, required the corroboration of some more explicit law; and some peculiar securities were demanded for innocence against that conspiracy of the court with the prosecutor, which is so much to be dreaded in all trials for political crimes. Hence the attainders of Russell, Sidney, Cornish, and Armstrong were reversed by the convention-parliament without opposition; and men attached to liberty and justice, whether of the whig or tory name, were anxious to prevent any future recurrence of those iniquitous proceedings, by which the popular frenzy at one time, the wickedness of the court at another, and in each instance with the co-operation of a servile bench of judges, had sullied the honour of English justice. A better tone of political sentiment had begun indeed to prevail, and the spirit of the people must ever be a more effectual security than the virtue of the judges; yet, even after the revolution, if no unjust or illegal convictions in cases of treason can be imputed to our tribunals, there was still not a little of that rudeness towards the prisoner, and manifestation of a desire to interpret all things to his prejudice, which had been more grossly displayed by the bench under Charles II. The jacobites, against whom