Under such circumstances as these, when an unjust law comes to be argued and discussed by the public generally, we find that a strong and universally diffused appreciation of its unjust character may, and indeed always does, exceed the power of definitely pointing out the exact part of the constitution which may be violated by such a law. It is one of the blessings of this free country of England, that a perception of freedom and of constitutional right is more widely diffused than it is possible for a knowledge of the statute-book to be, or of the particular laws which form the basis of that constitution. The many are thus, by the education which they receive from our free institutions, made the protectors of our liberties, which could never be protected or maintained if in the hands only of the few and learned.[36] In accordance with this principle, we find the general instinctive perception of the violation of liberty by the Contagious Diseases Acts giving vent to itself throughout the country in varied forms, and in none more so than in an expression, which has not been unfrequently used, that these Acts are in some way or other opposed to the Habeas Corpus Act. These Acts as they stand do not directly violate the Habeas Corpus Act, yet this very objection to them, erroneous though it may be in the absolute letter, serves only the more to show how widely diffused is a true appreciation of the spirit in which the Habeas Corpus Act is conceived. The spirit of the Habeas Corpus Act, equally with that of Magna Charta, of which it is an elucidation, is violated by these Acts. It is said in Magna Charta, “no man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or any-otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man, either justice or right.”[37] Now let us just again view these sentences as strictly applying to the administration of justice, in order to show the truth of the instinctive feeling above alluded to of so many people, that the Habeas Corpus Act is in some way violated. “These words contain,” says Sir E. Creasy,[38] “two great principles, the one that persons accused of criminal offences shall have free jury,” of which I have already spoken, “the other, that no man shall be imprisoned on mere general grounds of suspicion at the discretion or caprice of the executive power; but that imprisonment shall be only inflicted as the result of a legal trial and sentence, or for the purpose of keeping in safe custody, when necessary, an accused person on a definite charge, until he can be tried on that charge. This latter principle is familiar to us by the term of an Englishman’s right to a Habeas Corpus, if his personal liberty be interfered with.”