Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/190

180 Speak out, Grildrig,—say yes or no. If you say yes, I shall then inquire by what authority Mr. de Grey, the honest lord Mansfield, and the barons of the exchequer, dared to grant a writ of Habeas Corpus for bringing the bodies of the lord mayor and Mr. Oliver before them; and why the lieutenant of the Tower made any return to a writ, which the house of commons had, in a similar instance, declared to be unlawful.—If you say no, take care you do not at once give up the cause in support of which you have so long and so laboriously tortured your understanding. Take care you do not confess that there is no test by which we can distinguish,—no evidence by which we can determine, what is, and what is not, the law of parliament. The resolutions I have quoted, stand upon your Journals, uncontroverted and unrepealed:—they contain a declaration of the law of parliament, by a court competent to the question, and whose decision, as you and lord Mansfield say, must be law, because there is no appeal from it: and they were made not hastily, but after long deliberation upon a constitutional question.—What farther sanction or solemnity will you annex to any resolution of the present house