If the Government action under the Proclamations was good in
law, we do not see why they could not use them to prevent a barge-load of rifles being ferried from one side of the Thames Estuary to the other or sent along the Grand Junction Canal. The United Kingdom is the United Kingdom, and as far as the law is concerned it does not matter how
broad is the piece of sea.water which separates its component parts. The subject, we presume, will be argued out in a Court of Law, but we cannot help being surprised that the Govern- ment should have undertaken the highly arbitrary and dangerous task of seizing arms which were being moved from one part of the United Kingdom to another under statutes clearly intended for another purpose. Tyrannical monarchs of the type of Charles I., Charles II., or James II. might, as in the case of ship money, wrest statutes from their true purpose by the use of technical subtleties, but surely that is a practice to which the guardians of Liberal principles and Liberal traditions should not lend themselves.
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