WILLIAM AND MARY.

339

State or the Solicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfair-ness or even of rashness. The House, by one hundred and nine-teen votes to one hundred and two resolved that Aaron Smithand the witnesses on both sides should be ordered to attend.Several days were passed in examination and crossexamination;and sometimes the sittings extended far into the night. It soonbecame clear that the prosecution had not been lightly instituted,and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had beenconcerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now havebeen content with a drawn battle: but the Whigs were not dis-posed to forego their advantage. It was moved that there hadbeen a sufficient ground for the proceedings before the SpecialCommission; and this motion was carried without a division.The opposition proposed to add some words implying that thewitnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves: but thesewords were rejected by one hundred and thirty six votes to onehundred and nine; and it was resolved by one hundred andthirty three totes to ninety seven that there had been a dan-gerous conspiracy. The Lords had meanwhile been deliberatingon the same subject, and had come to the same conclusion.They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and they passedresolutions acquitting both the government and the judges ofall blame. The public however continued to think that thegentlemen who had been tried at Manchester had been unjusti-fiably persecuted, till a Jacobite plot of singular atrocity,brought home to the plotters by decisive evidence, produced aviolent revulsion of feeling. *

Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussedin preceding years, and two of which had been carried in vainto the foot of the throne, had been again brought in; the Place

* See the Journals of the two Houses. The only account that we haveof the debates is in the letters of LTIermitnge.

CHAP.

XX.

1

22 *