The duke of ARGYLE replied to the following effect:--My lords, I am not yet able to discover that the bill now before us is either illegal or absurd, that its interpretation is doubtful, or its probable consequences dangerous. The indisputable maxim, that _the publick has a right to every man's evidence,_ has been explained away with much labour, and with more art than a good cause can often require. We have been told of publick contracts, of the rights of society with regard to individuals, and the privileges of individuals with respect to society; we have had one term opposed to another, only to amuse our attention; and law, reason, and sophistry have been mingled, till common sense was lost in the confusion. But, my lords, it is easy to disentangle all this perplexity of ideas, and to set truth free from the shackles of sophistry, by observing that it is, in all civilized nations of the world, one of the first principles of the constitution, that the publick has a right, always reserved, of having recourse to extraordinary methods of proceeding, when the happiness of the community appears not sufficiently secured by the known laws. Laws may, by those who have made the study and explanation of them the employment of their lives, be esteemed as the great standard of right; they may be habitually reverenced, and considered as sacred in their own nature, without regard to the end which they are designed to produce. But others, my lords, whose minds operate without any impediment from education, will easily discover, that laws are to be regarded only for their use; that the power which made them only for the publick advantage ought to alter or annul them, when they are no longer serviceable, or when they obstruct those effects which they were intended to promote. I will, therefore, my lords, still assert, that _the publick has a right to every man's evidence;_ and that to reject any bill which can have no other consequence than that of enabling the nation to assert its claim, to reconcile one principle of law with another, and to deprive villany of an evasion which may always be used, is to deny justice to an oppressed people, and to concur in the ruin of our country. And farther, my lords, I confidently affirm it has not been proved, that this bill can endanger any but the guilty; nor has it been shown that it is drawn up for any other purpose than that which the noble lord mentioned, of hindering _an inquiry from being impossible;_ it may, therefore, justly be required from those who affect, on this occasion, so much tenderness for liberty, so many suspicions of remote designs, and so much zeal for our constitution, to demonstrate, that either an inquiry may be carried on by other means, or that an inquiry is itself superfluous or improper.