a merit, but should honour it at least for the sake of the precedent. Pratt prepared a Bill for explaining and extending the Habeas Corpus, and ascertaining its full operation. It was brought into the House of Commons, where Pitt and the Speaker supported it with firmness, and the majority cheerfully promoted it. Yet even in that House it met with avowed foes. The authority of Lord Mansfield had weight with some; the influence of Lord Hardwicke with more; and the lawyers, who easily overlooked the essence of a thing on which there was enough said in their books to enchant them with sounds and cavils, laid themselves out in such a profusion of jargon, that nothing but the nonsense they talked prevented all the world from seeing how much they contradicted both themselves and one another. They made the plainest thing in the world, _the right to freedom_, the most obscure; and yet while any hope of their becoming intelligible remained, men listened to know through what genealogy of terms this blessing had been derived to them: a common error that I willingly censure, as if precedents brought in support of, did not weaken liberty. Can ages of ancestors submitting to tyranny impeach my freedom? Have I not a right to be free the moment I have the power of being so? If we hold our liberties but by Magna Charta, we hold them by an extorted piece of parchment. If the Crown had a right to enslave us before, it has a right still, for then that struggle was Rebellion; and what right can Rebellion give? Magna Charta was but the King’s confession of his usurpation; as taking up arms against oppression is only doing justice on the oppressor. I have ever found that such grave personages as affect to authenticate our liberties by history and precedent, are no better than those foppish tools the Heralds, who hoard long rolls of nobility, but are ready to forge a pedigree for the first pretender to birth. The Bill passed easily, though tediously, through the Commons. Before I proceed to its fate among the Lords, I must touch upon the other events of the season. The campaign was opened on our part with great success. Prince Ferdinand and that gallant boy, his nephew, drove the French out of Hanover, by a plan, like that of Turenne in Alsace, of attacking them in four different quarters at once. The Count de Clermont, who had succeeded Richelieu, behaved with a politeness that sufficiently indicated how much the French were humbled;--he gave a pass to a Courier, to come and acquaint the King that he was again master of his dominions. But the virtuous humanity of the Duc de Randan must not be confounded with the humiliation of his countrymen: Governor of Hanover, he had treated the conquered with amiable lenity; and when he was obliged to quit his post, and had full time to destroy his magazines, he nobly abandoned them to the magistrates, and marched himself the last out of the city, to prevent his troops from committing any revengeful outrage.