What tribunal then can decide so grave and important a national question as this, other than the nation itself? What therefore shall we think of a Government which, when the nation has pressed this question upon it, has shown itself so contemptuous of the great constitutional principle involved, as to profess to investigate the question by means of a tribunal of twenty-six men, a considerable proportion of whom rank among the actual framers or supporters of the Acts? Further, in what light must it appear to us when we learn that the investigation conducted by this tribunal is expressly to be made into the “operation and administration” of the Acts, and that it has no other specified object? Those who made such a limitation must surely either have been ignorant of, or determined to override, the constitutional objections which the nation itself has proclaimed more or less distinctly from the first; otherwise why was not the inquiry directed at least in part to that momentous question on which it must finally be decided? A Royal Commission has been appointed to inquire into these Acts. What is the subject of their inquiry? Is it whether this law be consistent with the first principles of morality? No, for that, such a tribunal, not being the ultimate fount of truth, is incompetent; nor, since we have each of us direct access to the ultimate fount of truth, do we need its verdict on this point. Is it whether this law be consistent or not with the principles of the English Constitution? No, although into this question inquiry might well have been made by such a body, for there are constitutional lawyers amongst us who could not on inquiry have remained blind to the fact of this great violation of our rights. But such an inquiry apparently did not suit the Government; therefore, what do they inquire into? Merely into this question, How does this double violation of the constitution and of morality work?