THE law of the land, this great constitutional lawyer affirmed, was fully adequate to all the purposes of good government without the introduction of the present measure. In any public meeting, when a breach of the peace was committed, a magistrate, by the existing law, was entitled to interfere, and, in his support, was authorised to raise the posse comitatus if necessary;* and also by the Riot Act he had the power of dispersing tumultuous assemblies.* The minister was now attempting to brand with the imputation of sedition all those who employed the same language which Mr Pitt himself had once held.*

But under the sanction of the venerable father of this apostate minister, the great earl of Chatham,* he [Erskine] would maintain that the people of England might and ought to defend their rights, if necessary, by the last extremity to which free-men could resort. “For my part,” exclaimed this celebrated advocate of the constitution, “I shall never cease to struggle in support of liberty! In no situation will I desert the cause — I was born a free-man, I will never die a slave!”