§ The following protests were entered on the Journals:
§ "Dissentient: 1. Because the bill is cruel; for even when not perverted to any improper purposes, it may deter the victims of civil or religious persecution abroad, from seeking refuge under the lows of a free country.
§ 2. "Because the bill is unjust. It exposes all resident Aliens (such even as may have settled here in consequence of no such law existing at the time) to actual punishment without trial; and it condemns even the most unsuspected among them to an evil, greater than most punishments, a dependance on the arbitrary will of one man.
§ 3. "Because the Bill, is unnecessary, there being no unusual resort of strangers to this kingdom, and no apprehension, real or pretended, that individual foreigners either possess the means or harbour the design of disturbing our internal tranquility.
§ 4. "Because the Bill is unconstitutional. It creates a power liable to abuse, and unknown to our laws; and arbitrary authority has always been thought to degrade those who are the objects of it, and to corrupt those who possess it, and thereby to lead to tyrannical maxims and practices incompatible with the safety of a free people.
§ 5. "Because the Bill is impolitic. It discourages the employment of foreign capital, and the exercise of foreign ingenuity in our country, and obviously tends to embroil us, with other Courts of Europe, by rendering the residence of any obnoxious individuals among us, an act of the State, and no longer a consequence of the hospitable spirit of our municipal laws. VASSALL HOLLAND.
§ ROSSLYN.
§ THANET.
§ "Dissentient: Because, by this Bill, the Secretary of State is authorized to convey an Alien to any foreign port, and there to deliver such alien into the hands of his mortal enemies—to subject him to perpetual imprisonment, to corporal punishment, to torture, or to death.
§ GAGE.
§ VASSALL HOLLAND.
§ "Dissentient: Because I should have thought it exceedingly hard, had I done my duty, and opposed the invasion of revolutionary France to the utmost of my power (as I have always understood an 1858 Englishman should), and failing, had escaped to America, to have been sent back to London, to be shot or hanged, drawn and quartered, for my patriotism.
§ GAGE.
§ "Dissentient: Because the Bill confers an arbitrary power, which may be employed to promote the views and secure the authority of foreign and tyrannical governments, and even if not so employed, may yet be considered by them as intended to serve such purposes. In either case the measure appears to us injurious to the character and interests of Great Britain, and hostile to the liberties and welfare of mankind.
§ ROSSLYN.
§ VASSALL HOLLAND.