Faction and discontent, like diseases, frequently arise in every political body; and during these disorders, it is by the salutary exercise alone of this discretionary power, that rebellions and civil wars can be prevented.

To circumscribe this power, is to destroy its nature: entirely to abrogate it, is impracticable; and the attempt itself must prove dangerous, if not pernicious to the public.

The supreme magistrate, in critical and turbulent times, will never, agreeably either to prudence or duty, allow the state to perish, while there remains a remedy which, how irregular soever, it is still in his power to apply.

And if, moved by a regard to public good, he employs any exercise of power condemned by recent and express statute, how greedily, in such dangerous times, will factious leaders seize this pretence of throwing on his government the imputation of tyranny and despotism! Were the alternative quite necessary, it were surely much better for human society to be deprived of liberty than to be destitute of government.
Impartial reasoners will confess that this subject is not, on both sides, without its difficulties.

Where a general and rigid law is enacted against arbitrary imprisonment, it would appear that government cannot, in times of sedition and faction, be conducted but by temporary suspensions of the law; and such an expedient was never thought of during the age of Charles.[**period inserted] The meetings of parliament were too precarious, and their determinations might be too dilatory, to serve in cases of urgent necessity.