Those, therefore, by whom this bill was drawn up have committed no new absurdities, nor have proposed any thing which was not enacted by the wisest of our predecessors, in one of the most illustrious periods of our history. Mr. GYBBON answered:--Sir, I am far from thinking a proposition sufficiently defended by an assertion that it was admitted by our predecessors; for though I have no inclination to vilify their memory, I may without scruple affirm, that they had no pretensions to infallibility, and that there are in many of our statutes instances of such ignorance, credulity, weakness, and errour, as cannot be considered without astonishment. In questions of an abstruse and complicated nature, it is certain, sir, that experience has taught us what could never have been discovered previously by the wisdom of our ancestors; and we have found, by their consequences, the impropriety of many practices which they approved, and which we should have equally applauded in the same circumstances. But to what purpose is observation, if we must shut our eyes against it, and appeal for ever to the wisdom of our ancestors?--if we must fall into errour, merely because they were mistaken, and rush upon rocks out of veneration to those who were wrecked against them. In questions easily to be examined, and determinations which comprised no perplexing contrarieties of interest, or multiplicity of circumstances, they were equally liable with ourselves to be supine and negligent, to sink into security, or be surprised by haste. That the clause now before us was enacted by them, must be ascribed merely to the hurry of the session in which it was brought before them; a time in which so many inquiries of the highest importance were to be made, and great diversity of views to be regarded, that it is no wonder that some absurdities should escape without detection. In the fourth of the reign of the queen, this bill was brought in, as now, at the latter end of a session, when the attention of the senate was fatigued and distracted; and it was hurried through both houses, and ratified by the queen, with very little consideration. But then, as this circumstance may be justly termed an extenuation of their errour, it ought to be a lesson of caution to us, that we may not be, in the like manner, betrayed into the same weakness. Mr. Henry PELHAM next rose up:--Sir, the conduct of our predecessors seems not to stand in need of any excuse; for it might be easy to vindicate it by arguments, but that it is more proper to approve it by imitation. Whenever the bill was passed, or how hastily soever the law was enacted, it was, I believe, rather the effect of necessity than of inadvertency; of the same necessity which now presses, and which is very ill consulted by tedious debates.