The last is that of Lord Macclesfield, which happened in the year 1725.

So that the oldest process known to the Constitution of this country has, upon its revival, some appearance of novelty.

At this time, when all Europe is in a state of, perhaps, contagious fermentation, when antiquity has lost all its reverence and all its effect on the minds of men, at the same time that novelty is still attended with the suspicions that always will be attached to whatever is new, we have been anxiously careful, in a business which seems to combine the objections both to what is antiquated and what is novel, so to conduct ourselves that nothing in the revival of this great Parliamentary process shall afford a pretext for its future disuse.
My Lords, strongly impressed as they are with these sentiments, the Commons have conducted themselves with singular care and caution.
Without losing the spirit and zeal of a public prosecution, they have comported themselves with such moderation, temper, and decorum as would not have ill become the final judgment, if with them rested the final judgment, of this great cause.
With very few intermissions, the affairs of India have constantly engaged the attention of the Commons for more than fourteen years.

We may safely affirm we have tried every mode of legislative provision before we had recourse to anything of penal process.

It was in the year 1774 [1773 ?] we framed an act of Parliament for remedy to the then existing disorders in India, such as the then information before us enabled us to enact.