" By this bill the governor, if he
found that a person indicted for murder, or any other capital offence,
incurred in suppressing such tumults, was not likely to obtain an
impartial trial, might send the person so indicted to another colony or
to Great Britain, to be fairly tried there. This bill was to be limited
to four years, and in support of it Lord North argued, that it was
absolutely necessary to give effect to the other coercive measures; that
it was in vain to appoint a magistracy that would act if none could be
found bold enough to act with them and execute their orders; that
these orders would probably be resisted by force; and this force would
necessitate force on the side of government, and probably occasion the
shedding of blood. He asked, what officers would risk this event if the
rioters themselves, or their abettors, were afterwards to sit as
their judges? And he alleged, that a precedent was to be found in our
own laws, in the case of smuggling, it being customary to remove the
trial of smugglers to another county: the Scotch rebels were also,
he said, in 1745, tried in England. North next urged, that particular
privileges ought to give way on some occasions, and that when the public
safety of our own country was endangered even the _Habeas Corpus_ had
been suspended. The bill, he remarked, was not meant to screen guilt,
but to protect innocence. The Americans, he said, must be taught that we
will no longer sit quietly under their insults; and that, being
roused, our measures, though free from cruelty and revenge, would be as
efficacious as they were necessary.
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