a bill to legalize all similar proceedings of Parliament in future, by enacting that a certificate that the publication of any document had been ordered by either House should be a sufficient defence against any action.  The introduction of such a bill was in some degree an acknowledgment of defeat; but it can hardly be denied to have been not only a judicious step, but the only one practicable, if the contest between Parliament and the courts of law were not to be everlasting; and it met with general approval.  If it was a compromise, it was one that satisfied both parties and both ends.  It upheld the authority of the courts of law, and at the same time it practically asserted the reasonableness of the claim advanced by the House of Commons, by giving it for the future the power which it had claimed.  Nor were people in this day inclined to be jealous of the privileges of Parliament, so long as they were accurately defined.  They felt that it was for the advantage and dignity of the nation that its powers and privileges should be large; what they regarded with distrust was, a claim of power of which no one knew the precise bounds, and which might, therefore, be expanded as the occasion served.

Notes: 

[Footnote 245:  Fifty-two mills and 30,000 persons were thrown out of employment for ten weeks at Ashton in 1830 by the turning out of 3000 “coarse spinners,” who could clear at the time from 28s. to 31s. per week.  The following passage is extracted from an oath said to have been administered by the combined spinners in Scotland in 1823:  “I, A B, do voluntarily swear, in the awful presence of God Almighty, and before these witnesses, that I will execute with zeal and alacrity, as far as in me lies, every task or injunction which the majority of my brethren shall impose upon me in furtherance of our common welfare, as the chastisement of knobs, the assassination of oppressive and tyrannical masters, or the demolition of shops that shall be deemed incorrigible.”—­Annual Register, 1838, pp. 204-207.]

[Footnote 246:  See page 221.]

[Footnote 247:  The question was examined with great minuteness by Lord Brougham a fortnight after the ministerial explanation.  See “Parliamentary Debates,” 3d series, xlvii., 1164.]

[Footnote 248:  It is stated on good authority that Lord Melbourne, in private conversation, justified or explained the line he had taken by his consideration for his friends, scores of whom would have had their hopes blighted by his retirement.]

[Footnote 249:  See “Life of the Prince Consort,” i., 55.]

[Footnote 250:  “Life of the Prince Consort,” i., 57.]

[Footnote 251:  Macaulay’s “History of England,” i., 386.]

[Footnote 252:  This is the name which the Liberal historian of the time, Miss Martineau, gives it.  “The so-called Registration Bill was, in fact, an unannounced new Reform Bill for Ireland.”—­History of the Peace, book v., c. vi.]