The Habeas Corpus Act, therefore, as thus explained, is distinctly one of the great constitutional safeguards against arbitrary imprisonment or detention; and this is undoubtedly the correct as well as the generally diffused understanding of the principle of that Act. And the readiness with which people refer to the Contagious Diseases Acts as a violation of the principle of the Habeas Corpus Act, is a proof of the fact that these Acts involve proceedings of a character unconstitutionally arbitrary. The fact is, that to imprison a person without any trial at all would be a _literal_ violation of the Habeas Corpus Act, but that to imprison a person after an inadequate trial by an inadequate tribunal, as these Contagious Diseases Acts do, is a violation of the _principle_ of the Habeas Corpus Act just as great. Lord Coke says, “it is the worst oppression that is done by colour of justice;” and we cannot regard that imprisonment as any less a violation of the Habeas Corpus Act, because it is inflicted after a mode of trial, the adoption of which Parliament had no right, in this instance, to legalize. We therefore see that the legalizing of a tribunal so inadequate for the judgment of cases so grave as those which under these Acts are submitted to a justice of the peace, is in effect a suspension by Parliament of the Habeas Corpus Act, and not, as is usual, for a limited time, but for an indefinite time, and for a vast proportion of Her Majesty’s subjects. “The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act is an expedient which,” says Blackstone,[39] “ought only to be tried in cases of extreme emergency, for a short and limited time; and in these the nation parts with its liberty for a while in order to preserve it for ever.” Now it may be asked, How can we so strongly condemn this particular Act to which we are opposed, while at the same time there actually exists a set of cases, viz., those included in the category of summary proceedings, in which jury trial is equally dispensed with? Why, if the country be generally content to admit these, should it not be content to admit the Contagious Diseases Acts? I will proceed to answer this question. I find in Blackstone an account of these innovations upon our ancient constitutional principles, which are known by the name of summary proceedings. These summary proceedings are of comparatively recent origin, and I cannot give the reader a better account of them, and of what they involve, than by quoting what Blackstone says on the subject:[40]—