It was moved and carried that the selling of offices should be prohibited, that the Habeas Corpus Act should be made more efficient, and that the law of Mandamus should be revised.

One gentleman fell on the chimneymen, another on the excisemen; and the House resolved that the malpractices of both chimneymen and excisemen should be restrained.

It is a most remarkable circumstance that, while the whole political, military, judicial, and fiscal system of the kingdom was thus passed in review, not a single representative of the people proposed the repeal of the statute which subjected the press to a censorship.

It was not yet understood, even by the most enlightened men, that the liberty of discussion is the chief safeguard of all other liberties.

[669] The House was greatly perplexed.