“for constructive treason.”  It must therefore, probably, be affirmed that these two acts, the Treason Act and the Seditious Meetings Act, went beyond the necessity of the case; that they were not only violations of the constitution—­which, when the measures are temporary, as these were, are not always indefensible—­but that they were superfluous, unjust, and impolitic; superfluous, when they proposed to deal with acts already visitable with punishment by the ancient laws of the kingdom; unjust, when they created new classes of offences; and impolitic, as exciting that kind of disapproval of the acts of government which in many minds has a tendency to excite a spirit of discontent with and resistance to legitimate authority.  And, indeed, it must be inferred that such was the light in which these measures were regarded by a statesman who in his general policy was proud to acknowledge himself Mr. Pitt’s pupil, as he was also the most skilful and successful of his more immediate successors.  Twenty-five years afterward the distress caused by the reaction inevitably consequent on the termination of twenty years of war produced a political excitement scarcely inferior to that with which Pitt had now to deal, and seditious societies and meetings scarcely less formidable; but, as we shall see, Lord Liverpool, taking warning, perhaps, from the mistake into which Mr. Pitt was led on this occasion, though compelled to bring forward new and stern measures of repression, and even to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act for a time, kept strictly within the lines of constitutional precedent, and was careful to avoid confounding sedition with treason.

Notes: 

[Footnote 73:  He had been Lord-chamberlain in Lord Rockingham’s administration of 1765.  He was now Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.]

[Footnote 74:  In Lord Chatham’s or the Duke of Grafton’s ministry of 1766, and in the later administration of Lord Rockingham.]

[Footnote 75:  It may be convenient to take this opportunity of pointing out that, in this administration, Lord Shelburne altered the old, most unreasonable, and inconvenient arrangement by which the departments of the two Secretaries of State were distinguished by the latitude, and called Northern and Southern.  By a new division, one took charge of the home affairs, the other of the foreign affairs.  And in 1794 a third Secretary was added for War, who, by a very singular arrangement, which continued till very recently, had charge also of the colonies.  But, in the year 1855, the Colonial-office was intrusted to a separate minister; and in 1858 a fifth Secretary of State, that for India, was added, on the transfer of the government of that country from the East India Company to the Crown.  When there were only two Secretaries of State, the rule was that one should sit in each House.  At present it is not necessary that more than one should be a peer, though it is more usual for two to be members of the Upper House.  And it is usual also for the Under-secretaries to be members of the House to which the Chief-secretaries do not belong, though this rule is not invariably observed.]