Proceedings in an action for debt, between the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, plaintiff, and John Horne Tooke, Esq. defendant / published by the defendant.

Tooke, John Horne, 1736-1812.

Date:: 1792

Credit: Proceedings in an action for debt, between the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, plaintiff, and John Horne Tooke, Esq. defendant / published by the defendant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

13/42 (page 13)

$C *3 ] ■jmr frivolous and vexatious Traps.”—What! fine a man fir ‘.hundred pounds, or fix thoufand pounds, forty-two thou- sand pounds, a million of money* without any Jury, or ap- peal? and for the crime of vexatioufly attempting to wreft iftolen goods from a thief! If a man cuts his wife’s throat, .with every aggravating circumltance of deliberate cruelty, oand is found guilty by a Jury 5 he goes to prifon for Six rmonths. But if you reprefent to the Houfe of Commons* ;and offer proof of a continued feries and regular fyftem of [bribery, perjury, riot,- and murder, at an election, to- gether with the utter impofiibility of any decifion of the Re- turn; no fine, no punifhment, no ruin, is fufficient for fucli \frivolous and vexatious charges. Now then, Gentlemen, let us caff our eyes back, and fee 'from what beginnings, to what length this nation has now proceeded. We know, and our anceftors knew, that eve- ry nation muff have a government, and muff have officers appointed to difeharge its duties and execute its truffs. What the people cannot do for themfelves, they muff truff others to perform. And no nation ever did this more libe- rally or more generoufly than our own. But there are two things which the people can perform, and which they cannot fafely truff in any other hands :—the choice of their own reprefentatives, to make the laws by which the whole people are to be bound; and the particular application of thole general law's and of equal juftice to individuals, by a fworn number, an honeft impartial Jury, of the people themfelves. Thefe two rights and powers the people of this country wifely referved to themfelves. They hold them by no law, by no pofitive ftatute. No perfons did give or could give them. They owe them to no Rings, no Lords, no Houfe of Commons ; and neither Kings, nor Lords, nor Houfe of Commons, nor all of them combined and confederated together, can take them away. They may dare to attempt it; but it will be an a£l of Suicide up- on their own Truffs and Stations : and I doubt not that the people of this country would, in fuch a cafe, purfue the Wholefome feverity of the old law of the land, and drive the ftake themfelves through their dead body. Let us confider then, gentlemen, what is now become of thefe two neceffary referved rights. Will any man be frontlefs and hardy enough to deny that the reprefentation of the people is gone ; that it has been ffolen and ufurped from us by tbofe who, little better than beafts themfelves, affeft to treat other men like cattle. And having thus eftablifiied their property in reprefen- tation, fliall thefe Borough-mongers now be permitted to ffretch out their facrilegious hands to ravilh from us alfo$