“_I am very certain that if ever I should see such a law passed I should look upon our constitution as at an end._ Yet we may have an administration that would be fond of having such a law passed, perhaps in order to guard against those treasonable practices which their own conduct had made frequent, and in such a case would not this very law be a good precedent for them, would not they have reason to say to Parliament, ‘What! will you refuse to grant that security against treasonable practices which your ancestors have granted against the practice of smuggling?’” After having proposed important amendments, Lord Hardwicke proceeded to say:— “These amendments will, in my opinion, in some measure prevent those dangers which may accrue with respect to the freedom of our constitution and the liberty of the subject. I say, my Lords, in some measure, for neither these amendments, nor any amendments, can prevent its being a very dangerous bill, and such an one as I am sorry to see necessary in this once happy kingdom. It is one absolutely repugnant to the whole tenor of our laws, and inconsistent with the liberty and happiness of the people.” “I know, my Lords, it may be said that no man can be absolutely safe from treachery and perjury; but from all our law-books I defy any man to suppose a case where it is so easy to cook up a treacherous yet feasible accusation against one who has not been guilty of the least imprudence,[57] or so safe to give a false testimony as it will be in the case I have now laid before you. For in all or most other cases there must be a confederacy or combination between two or more persons in order to get a man convicted upon a false information, in which case the confederates are in danger of being betrayed by one another; and even the facts themselves, which are falsely sworn against a man, often furnish him with the means for justifying himself, and condemning his accusers, whereas in the present case there is no need of any confederacy, nor can the person accused justify himself by any means I can think of.[58]