“How long soever the people may have remained in a state of supineness as to their most valuable interests, whatever may have been the neglect and even the errors of their representatives, the instant the latter come either to see these errors or to have a sense of their duty, they proceed by means of the privileges we have mentioned to abolish those abuses or practices which during the preceding years had taken the place of the laws. To how low soever a state public liberty may happen to be reduced, they take it where they find it, lead it back through the same path and to the same point from which it had been compelled to retreat; and the ruling power, whatever its usurpations may have been, how far soever it may have overflowed its banks, is ever brought back to its old limits.” The continuance up to this time of the encroachments made on the Constitution by these Acts which we oppose, may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the class of persons first assailed were those with whom society has in general the least sympathy; whereas in similar crises of danger in past times our liberties were violated in the person or persons generally of men of rank, influence, or high character. Nevertheless, this was not always the case, for, as Blackstone says, it was the injury done to a common citizen (one Jenks) which gave existence to the Act which completed the security of public liberties; “the oppression of an obscure individual gave rise to the famous Habeas Corpus Act.” Junius has observed that this is worthy of note, for the just idea it conveys of that readiness of all orders of men in England to unite in defence of common liberty. I am convinced that Englishmen now are not so degenerate as not to contend with equal zeal for the redress of wrongs which are no less dangerous because inflicted on a class whom society generally despises, or upon those the humbleness of whose position or whose unsheltered fame leaves it possible for men carelessly to confuse them with the guilty. This encroachment on our liberties has come upon us “like a lion and wolf in one,” rapacious and devouring, but sly and soft-footed. Had our ancient and dearly loved constitutional freedom been attacked in a more open manner, had the first sufferers been persons accustomed to demand and to receive justice, the evil would have been quickly averted, so loud and instantaneous would have been the outcry; but because this lion-wolf set its paw first upon the meanest of England’s citizens, the danger is but the greater. The gallant ship of our Constitution may be as fatally wrecked by the falling of some unseen spark in the remotest, dingiest corner of its hold, as by the flash of lightning which strikes the headmast in the sight of all, and sends it through the waters a perishing mass of flames. “The Hollander in the midst of the storm, though trusting to the strength of the mounds that protect him, shudders