Lord ISLAY spoke next to the following purpose:--My lords, as there has
in this debate been very frequent mention of extraordinary cases, of new
modes of wickedness, which require new forms of procedure, and new arts
of eluding justice, which make new methods of prosecution necessary, I
cannot forbear to lay before your lordships my sentiments on this
question; sentiments not so much formed by reflection as impressed by
experience, and which I owe not to any superiour degree of penetration
into future events, but to subsequent discoveries of my own errours.
I have observed, my lords, that in every collision of parties, that
occasion on which their passions are inflamed, is always termed an
extraordinary conjuncture, an important crisis of affairs, either
because men affect to talk in strong terms of the business in which they
are engaged, for the sake of aggrandizing themselves in their own
opinion and that of the world, or because the present object appears
greatest to their sight by intercepting others, and that is imagined by
them to be really most important in itself, by which their own pleasure
is most affected.
On these extraordinary occasions, my lords, the victorious have always
endeavoured to secure their conquest, and to gratify their passions by
new laws, by laws, even in the opinion of those by whom they are
promoted, only justifiable by the present exigence.
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