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can stop every speech and seize every speaker, if he chuse to suspect it or him to be seditious:—and if by the wanton and moorish exercise of this privilege he can ensnare the assembly into marks of indignation, then the clause (withdrawn only in appearance) commences its bloody work.
Of unexampled measures the causes and effects might be deemed uncertain; the prophecies of philosophical prescience too often acquire authority only from their accomplishment. But these Billsthough
the application of fire-arms; because (as Burgh most sagaciously remarks) fire-arms do not seize people but murder them! It is now three or four hundred years (said a speaker in the House of Peers—see Debates of the Peers, Vol. v. 172.) since fire-arms first came in use amongst us; yet the law has never suffered them to be made use of by the common officers of justice. Pikes, halberts, battle-axes, and such like, are the only weapons that can be made use of according to law, by such officers, and the reason is extremely plain—because, with such weapons they can seldom or ever hurt much less kill any but such as are really opposing or assaulting them: whereas if you put fire-arms into their hands, they may as probably hurt or kill the innocent as the guilty. See Burgh's political Disquisitions, Vol. iii. page 230. the last of the three volumes was published in 1775. The whole work should be in the possession of every lover of freedom; its remarks on laws and government are as profound as they are pointed, and it is an invaluable treasure to these, whose occupations allow them but little time for reading, on account of the multitude and pertinence of historic facts collected. He who carefully peruses the "Political Disquisitions" will meet with little new information in later writers.
