The Attorney-General laboured, in a speech extremely artful, to convince the Speaker, whose Whig spirit had groaned over this attempt, that it was no breach of the principles of the Revolution; and he insisted that it was by no means the sense of Scotland, that these little magistrates should be for life. He owned, that Judges, who are to decide on questions of State, should be for life, as in cases of treason, where it is not fit to trust the Crown with its own revenge; in cases of charters, &c.; but it is not necessary to be so strict in mere cases of _meum_ and _tuum_. Even Charles, and James the Second, permitted other Judges to be for life, as the Master of the Rolls, the Judge of the Marshalsea, &c., because the Crown could remove trials into the King’s Bench. This, with many more details of law, too long to rehearse, were poorly answered by Lord Egmont; by Pitt, with great fire, in one of his best-worded and most spirited declamations for liberty, but which, like others of his fine orations, cannot be delivered adequately without his own language; nor will they appear so cold to the reader, as they even do to myself, when I attempt to sketch them, and cannot forget with what soul and grace they were uttered. He did not directly oppose, but wished rather to send the Bill to the Committee, to see how it could be amended. Was glad that Murray would defend the King, only with a salvo to the rights of the Revolution; he commended his abilities, but tortured him on his distinctions and refinements. He himself indeed had more scruples; it might be a Whig delicacy--but even that is a solid principle. He had more dread of arbitrary power dressing itself in the long robe, than even of military power. When master principles are concerned, he dreaded accuracy of distinction: he feared that sort of reasoning: if you class everything, you will soon reduce everything into a particular; you will then lose great general maxims. Gentlemen may analyze a question till it is lost. If I can show him, says Murray, that it is not My Lord Judge, but Mr. Judge, I have got him into a class. For his part, could he be drawn to violate liberty, it should be _regnandi causâ_, for this King’s reigning. He would not recur for precedents to the diabolic divans of the second Charles and James--he did not date his principles of the liberty of this country from the Revolution: they are eternal rights; and when God said, “_let justice be justice_,” he made it independent. The Act of Parliament that you are going to repeal is a proof of the importance of Sheriffs-depute: formerly they were instruments of tyranny. Why is this attempted? is it to make Mr. Pelham more regretted? He would have been tender of cramming down the throats of people what they are averse to swallow. Whig and Minister were conjuncts he always wished to see. He deprecated those, who had more weight than himself in the Administration, to drop this; or besought that they would take it for any term that