clear of these difficulties.  It met them by intrusting “the enforcement of the law to be enacted to one person alone.”  The bill proposed “to give to the Lord-lieutenant, and to him alone, the power of suppressing any association or meeting which he might think dangerous to the public peace, or inconsistent with the due administration of the law; together with power to interdict the assembly of any meeting of which previous notice should have been given, and which he should think likely to endanger the public peace, or to prove inconsistent with the due administration of the law.”  And farther, “to interdict any meeting or association which might be interdicted from assembling, or which might be suppressed under this act, from receiving and placing at their control any moneys by the name of rent, or any other name.”  But the act was not to be one of perpetual duration.  It could not be concealed that such a prohibition or limitation of the general right of public meeting and public discussion was a suspension of a part of the constitution; and therefore the ministers were content to limit its operation “to one year and the end of the then next session of Parliament,” feeling “satisfied that there would be no objection to continue it, if there should be any necessity for its continuance.”  And this limitation was a substantial mitigation of its severity.  It made the bill, as Mr. Stanley correctly described it, “not a permanent infringement on the constitution, but a temporary deviation from it, giving those powers which were necessary at the moment,” but not maintaining them an hour longer than they were necessary.

And this seems to be the course most in accordance with the spirit of the constitution, with former practice, with common-sense.  Deeds which violate the letter of the law can be dealt with by the law.  But actions or courses of action which, even if they may be thought to overstep the law, transgress it so narrowly as to elude conviction, can only be reached by enactments which also go in some degree beyond the ordinary law; and, so going beyond it, are to that extent encroachments on the ordinary privileges and rights of the subject, and suspensions of the constitution.  But the very term “suspension” shows that the power conferred is but temporary, otherwise it would be synonymous with abrogation.  And all parties may wisely agree, as they did in this instance, to a temporary suspension of the people’s rights, though there would be none to whom their permanent abrogation would not be intolerable.

The bill, then, for the suppression of the Association passed with universal approval, and it may be regarded as furnishing a model for dealing with similar associations, if ever they should arise.  And as soon as it was passed Mr. Peel introduced the greater measure, that for the repeal of the disabilities.  In drawing the necessary bill the ministers had had two questions of special importance to consider:  firstly, whether