After he has shown to his own satisfaction, as our opponents also do, that under the Act complained of no innocent person has anything to fear, and after he has assured Lord Hardwicke that the justices are not in the least likely to judge wrongly, for the excellent reason that “if they did so they would be very derelict in their duty,” he goes on to use the very same argument which the supporters of the Acts which we oppose have lately been very fond of using. They affirm that many a raw girl, trembling on the verge of evil courses, being brought under the Acts, is terrified back into a virtuous life by the penalties which she is made to undergo. Similarly Lord Hardwicke’s opponent argues: “A month’s confinement in a correction-house, with the severest sort of whipping, would be very far from being an adequate punishment for the first offence.” But such is his opinion of the reclamatory effects of this beneficent process that he adds, “A raw country fellow, or a poor labouring man, may for a reward easily be drawn into assisting in the running of goods, where no violence is intended, and may for that purpose be prevailed on to loiter and wait somewhere near the sea coasts; for such a man a month’s confinement and whipping may be a sufficient admonition; he may be thereby reclaimed and frightened from ever engaging again in such practices.”[61] To these and similar arguments it was replied by Lord Chancellor Talbot:—“My Lords, we are fully sensible that it is the duty of Parliament to grant a revenue sufficient for supporting the Government,[62] and to contrive such methods of collecting the revenue as may be effectual; but we likewise know that it is the duty of Parliament to support the constitution, and to preserve the liberties of the people; therefore, when it begins to appear that the methods prescribed by Parliament are not effectual for the end intended, nor can be made so without endangering our constitution, those methods ought not to be further pursued.... It is always with regret and sorrow, my Lords, that I form to myself any apprehensions of danger to my native country, and therefore I shall always avoid it as much as possible; but we have already created so many new crimes and transgressions, and have inflicted so many new pains and penalties for preventing those transgressions, that, in my opinion, the fears of increasing them can in no case be called phantoms. Our Parliaments have, it is true, been hitherto able, generally speaking, to give a check to every wrong use of any power and to bring the offenders to punishment; and while our Parliament continues to be independent of those who have the exercise of power,[63] their will, as well as their ability, will continue the same. But we know the effect of pains and penalties in other countries; we know that Parliaments, Senates, and Assemblies have, by such means, been made subservient to the worst and most tyrannical uses that could be