IN

VINDICATION OF THE PRECEDING REPORT.

The preceding Report was ordered to be printed for the use of the members of the House of Commons, and was soon afterwards reprinted and published, in the shape of a pamphlet, by a London bookseller.  In the course of a debate which took place in the House of Lords, on Thursday, the 22d of May, 1794, on the Treason and Sedition Bills, Lord Thurlow took occasion to mention “a pamphlet which his Lordship said was published by one Debrett, of Piccadilly, and which had that day been put into his hands, reflecting highly upon the Judges and many members of that House.  This pamphlet was, he said, scandalous and indecent, and such as he thought ought not to pass unnoticed.  He considered the vilifying and misrepresenting the conduct of judges and magistrates, intrusted with the administration of justice and the laws of the country, to be a crime of a very heinous nature, and most destructive in its consequences, because it tended to lower them in the opinion of those who ought to feel a proper reverence and respect for their high and important stations; and that, when it was stated to the ignorant or the wicked that their judges and magistrates were ignorant and corrupt, it tended to lessen their respect for and obedience to the laws themselves, by teaching them to think ill of those who administered them.”  On the next day Mr. Burke called the attention of the House of Commons to this matter, in a speech to the following effect.

Mr. Speaker,—­The license of the present times makes it very difficult for us to talk upon certain subjects in which Parliamentary order is involved.  It is difficult to speak of them with regularity, or to be silent with dignity and wisdom.  All our proceedings have been constantly published, according to the discretion and ability of individuals out of doors, with impunity, almost ever since I came into Parliament.  By usage, the people have obtained something like a prescriptive right to this abuse.  I do not justify it; but the abuse is now grown so inveterate that to punish it without previous notice would have an appearance of hardship, if not injustice.  The publications I allude to are frequently erroneous as well as irregular, but they are not always so; what they give as the reports and resolutions of this House have sometimes been given correctly.  And it has not been uncommon to attack the proceedings of the House itself under color of attacking these irregular publications.  Notwithstanding, however, this colorable plea, this House has in some instances proceeded to punish the persons who have thus insulted it.  You will here, too, remark, Sir, that, when a complaint is made of a piratical edition of a work, the authenticity of the original work is admitted, and whoever attacks the matter of the work itself in these unauthorized publications does not attack it less than if he had attacked it in an edition authorized by the writer.