I have now set forth the great principles of Magna Charta, and the foundations of these principles, and have endeavoured to show how much English liberty depends on the; preservation of jury trial. I have now to show how the Contagious Diseases Acts destroy these bulwarks of English liberty.

Before doing this, however, it is well to dispose of one vague objection, which may exist in some people's minds, to arguments against these Acts based on the universality of civil rights. There is abroad in many men's minds a vague sort of notion that these Acts in question as they stand on the statute-book of England apply to the army and navy. We cannot perhaps wonder at this mistake—although it is an extraordinary mistake—existing more or less in the minds of the partially informed, when we find that the Member for a learned University, who last session led the opposition in the House to Mr. Fowler's motion for the repeal of the Acts, based his arguments for the existence of these Acts on the State necessity of having a standing army! Such statements as these are calculated to lead the public to imagine that these Acts have at least some connection, more or less remote, with the army and navy, and in this way to allay those just alarms which must necessarily arise from the violation of the constitutional rights of civilians. Now the fact is, that so far from these Acts applying particularly to the army and navy, they in no way whatsoever apply to the army and navy, but entirely and exclusively to the civil population.