In his life of Lord Camden,[7] who was Chief-justice of the Common Pleas at the time, Lord Campbell expresses a warm approval of this resolution, as one “which would now be considered conclusive evidence of the law.”  But, with all respect to the memory of a writer who was himself a Chief-justice, we suspect that in this case he was advancing a position as an author engaged in the discussion of what had become a party question, which he would not have laid down from the Bench.[8] The resolution certainly did not make it law, since it was not confirmed by any royal assent; and to interpret the law is not within the province of the House of Commons, nor, except when sitting as a Court of Appeal, of the House of Lords.  We may, however, fully agree with the principle which Lord Campbell at the same time lays down, that “privilege of Parliament should not be permitted to interfere with the execution of the criminal law of the country.”  And this doctrine has been so fully acquiesced in since, that members of both Houses have in more than one instance been imprisoned on conviction for libel.

The legality of the species of warrant under which Wilkes had been arrested was, however, a question of far greater importance; and on that no formal decision was pronounced on this occasion, the Lieutenant of the Tower, in his return to the writ of habeas corpus, and the counsel employed on both sides, equally avoiding all mention of the character of the warrant.  But it was indirectly determined shortly afterward.  The leaders of the Opposition would fain have had the point settled by what, in truth, would not have settled it—­another resolution of the House of Commons.  But, though it was discussed in several warm debates, Grenville always contrived to baffle his adversaries, though on one occasion his majority dwindled to fourteen.[9] What, however, the House of Commons abstained from affirming was distinctly, though somewhat extra-judicially, asserted by Lord Camden, as Chief-justice of the Common Pleas.  Wilkes, with some of the printers and others who had been arrested, had brought actions for false imprisonment, which came to be tried in his court; and they obtained such heavy damages that the officials who had been mulcted applied for new trials, on the plea of their being excessive.  But the Chief-justice refused the applications, and upheld the verdict, on the ground that the juries, in their assessment of damages, had been “influenced by a righteous indignation at the conduct of those who sought to exercise arbitrary power over all the King’s subjects, to violate Magna Charta, and to destroy the liberty of the kingdom, by insisting on the legality of this general warrant.”  Such a justification would hardly be admitted now.  But, in a subsequent trial, a still higher authority, the Chief-justice of the King’s Bench, Lord Mansfield, held language so similar, that, once more to quote the words of Lord Campbell, “without any formal judgment, general warrants have ever since been considered illegal.”