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the guilt or poverty of those on whom such warrants have been executed that deterred or hindered them from contending against the power of a Secretary of State and the Solicitor to the Treasury, as such warrants could never have passed for lawful. It is said to be better for the Government and the public to seize the libel before it is published; if the legislature be of that opinion, they will make it lawful. As yet our law is wise and merciful, and supposes every man accused to be innocent till he is tried by his peers and found guilty. Upon the whole, we are of opinion that this warrant is wholly illegal and void."*

Pratt, while a common law Judge, certainly was of signal service to his country. He not only arrested some flagrant abuses in his own time, but he laid down principles upon which other flagrant abuses still continuing, such as the opening of private letters at the post-office by order of the Secretary of State, may still be reached and remedied.

СНАР.

CXLIII.

non

decisions

Justice of

the Common Pleas

It would appear from the Reports, that there were few Lord cases of importance, not of a political nature, debated in the Camden's Common Pleas while Pratt was Chief Justice. The most political important, perhaps, was Doe v. Kersey †, in which he main- while Chief tained, in opposition to the other Judges of his own Court, and also to a unanimous decision of the King's Bench, that witnesses to a will must be disinterested when they attest it, and that it is not enough that their interest is removed before they come to prove it; but though he was overruled, the legislature adopted his opinion, by enacting that the moment of attestation is the period to regard in considering their credibility. In no other case was there a final difference between him and his brethren on the bench, and all his contemporaries unite in bearing testimony to the combination of dignity, impartiality, and courtesy with which he presided over the proceedings of his Court. ‡

After the liberation of Wilkes, and the condemnation of "general warrants" and "search warrants for papers," he be

* Entick v. Carrington, 19 St. Tr. 1002-1030.

† See Doe d. Hendson v. Kersey, 4 Burn. Eccl. Law, 97.; Wyndham v. Chatwynd, 1 Burn. 414.

2 Wilson, 275-292.; Entick v. Carrington; 19 St. Tr. 1073.

CHAP. CXLIII.

His renown at

home and abroad.

July, 1765. He is raised to the peerage.

His speech on the right to tax the colonies.

came the idol of the nation. Grim representations of him laid down the law from sign-posts. Many busts and prints of him were sold, not only in the streets of the metropolis, but in provincial towns and remote villages. A fine portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, with a flattering inscription, "in honour of the zealous assertor of English liberty by law," was placed in the Guildhall of the city of London. Addresses of thanks to him poured in from all quarters, and most of the great municipalities of the empire presented him with the freedom of their corporations. English journals and English travellers carried his fame over Europe, and one of the sights of London which foreigners went to see, was THE GREAT LORD CHIEF JUSTICE PRATT.

On the formation of the Rockingham administration, although the leaders unfortunately consented to have Northington for their Chancellor, they wished to court popularity, and to give a pledge that they meant to follow a different course of policy at home and abroad from their predecessors, who prosecuted Wilkes, and taxed the colonies. Accordingly, their first act was to raise the popular Judge to the peerage, by the style of "Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in the county of Kent.”* The property from which he took his title had belonged to the celebrated antiquary of that name, and had passed, through several changes of ownership, into the possession of the Pratts.

The new Peer took his seat in the House of Lords on the first day of the following session, being looked at with a jealous eye both by Lord Northington, who had opposed his elevation, and by Lord Mansfield, who instinctively dreaded a contest for the supremacy which he had enjoyed there since the death of Lord Hardwicke.

I have already mentioned Lord Camden's maiden effort upon the right to tax America, where he was so rudely assailed by the Lord Chancellor. † The declaratory bill being

The Duke of Grafton, in his "Journal," says, "One of the first acts of our administration was to obtain from his Majesty the honours of a peerage for the true patriot, Lord Chief Justice Pratt, which the King had the condescension to grant to our earnest entreaties; the news of which was received by the nation with much applause."— Part II, p. 47.

† Ante, p. 203.

CXLIII.

brought in, he on a subsequent day opposed it in a set speech, CHAP upon which he had taken immense pains,— which has been rapturously praised, and some passages of which are still in the mouths of schoolboys, but which I must acknowledge seems to me to exhibit false reasoning, and false taste. Having begun by alluding to the charge against him, as "the broacher of new-fangled doctrines, contrary to the laws of this kingdom, and subversive of the rights of Parliament," he thus proceeded, “My Lords, this is a heavy charge, but more so when made against one stationed as I am, in both capacities as a Peer and a Judge, the defender of the law and the constitution. When I spoke last, I was indeed replied to, but not answered. As the affair is of the utmost importance, and in its consequences may involve the fate of kingdoms, I have taken the strictest review of my arguments, I have reexamined all my authorities - fully determined if I found myself mistaken, publicly to own my mistake and give up my opinion; but my searches have more and more convinced me that the British parliament has no right to tax the Americans. I shall not criticise the strange language in which your proposed declaration is framed; for to what purpose, but loss of time, to consider the particulars of a bill, the very existence of which is illegal - absolutely illegal, - contrary to the fundamental laws of nature, contrary to the fundamental laws of this constitution, a constitution grounded on the eternal and immutable laws of nature, a constitution whose centre is liberty, which sends liberty to every individual who may happen to be within any part of its ample circumference ? Nor, my Lords, is the doctrine new; it is as old as the constitution; it grew up with it; indeed, it is its support; taxation and representation are inseparably united. God hath joined them, no British Parliament can put them asunder; to endeavour to do so, is to stab our very vitals. My position is this-I repeat it-I will maintain it to my last hour-taxation and representation are inseparable; this position is founded on the laws of nature; it is itself a law of nature; for whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or representative; whosoever

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CHAP. CXLIII.

attempts to do it, attempts an injury; whosoever does it commits a robbery*; he throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery. Taxation and representation are coeval with, and essential to, the constitution. I wish the maxim of Machiavel were followed-that of examining a constitution, at certain periods, according to its first principles; this would correct abuses and supply defects. To endeavour to fix the æra when the House of Commons began in this kingdom, is a most pernicious and destructive attempt; to fix it in Edward's or Henry's reign, is owing to the idle dreams of some whimsical, ill-judging antiquarians. When did the House of Commons first begin? when my Lords'? it began with the constitution. There is not a blade of grass growing in the most obscure corner of this kingdom which is not-which was not ever-represented since the constitution began; there is not a blade of grass which, when taxed, was not taxed by the consent of the proprietor." He then examines, at great length, the arguments drawn, by analogy, from Ireland, Wales, Berwick, and the Counties Palatine; and, having treated with merited scorn the miserable crotchet, that America was virtually represented in the House of Commons, he thus concluded: "The forefathers of the Americans did not leave their native country, and subject themselves to every danger and distress, to be reduced to a state of slavery: they did not give up their rights; they expected protection, not chains, from their mother country; by her they believed that they should be defended in the possession of their property, and not despoiled of it. But if you wantonly press this declaration, although you now repeal the Stamp Act, you may pass it again in a month; and future taxation must be in view, or you would hardly assert your right to enjoy the pleasure of offering an insult. Thus our fellow-subjects in America will have nothing which they can call their own, or, to use the

These words offended George Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, so much, that he complained of them in the House of Commons, pronouncing them, with great emphasis, to be “a libel upon parliament; " and threatening to bring the printer of the speech to the bar for punishment. But no farther notice was taken of it. — Almon's Biographical Anecdotes, i. 377.

CXLIII.

words of the immortal Locke, What property have they in СПАР. that which another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?" *

Doubts as soundness of Lord

to the

Chatham's

and Lord Camden's

doctrine on

Although the Stamp Act was most properly repealed, and nothing could exceed the folly of accompanying the repeal of it with the statutable declaration of the abstract right to tax, I confess I do not understand the reasoning by which, admitting that the British parliament had supreme power to legislate for the colonies, a law passed to lay a tax upon this subject. them, though it may be unjust and impolitic, is a nullity. I agree that it may be put upon the footing of an act of attainder, without hearing the party attainted in his defence, or an act to take away a man's private property, without compensation; but could Lord Camden, sitting as a Judge, have held such acts to be nullities - hanging for murder the Sheriff who assisted at the execution in the one case, or in an action of trespass, recognising the property of the original owner, in the other? Would not a statute oppressively encroaching on the personal liberty of the colonists, or wantonly interfering with the exercise of their industry, be in all respects as objectionable as a statute enacting that "their deeds and contracts shall be void, unless written upon paper or parchment which has paid a duty to the state?" Nor do I see how our constitutional rights would be at all endangered by acknowledging the undoubted fact, that representation was unknown in this country till the end of the reign of Henry III., and that the Commons did not till long after sit in a separate chamber as an independent branch of the legislature. The assertion that all property and that all classes were represented in England, rather favours George Hardinge's doctrine, "that the Americans were actually represented by the knights of the shire for Kent, because the land in America was all granted by the Crown, to be held in socage of the manor of East Greenwich in that county." However, our patriot displayed a noble enthusiasm on this occasion, and perhaps one ought to be

16 Parl. Hist. 177.

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