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Select Documents of English Constitutional History
Contents:
251.
Camden’s Decision Against General Warrants
(1763. 19 State Trials, 1067.)
* * * HIS lordship then went upon the warrant, which he declared was a point of the greatest consequence he had ever met with in his whole practice. The defendant claimed a right, under precedents, to force persons’ houses, break open escrutores, seize their papers, etc. upon a general warrant, where no inventory is made of the things thus taken away, and where no offenders’ names are specified in the warrant, and therefore a discretionary power given to messengers to search wherever their suspicions may chance to fall. If such a power is truly invested in a secretary of state, and he can delegate this power, it certainly may affect the person and property of every man in this kingdom, and is totally subversive of the liberty of the subject.
And as for the precedents, will that be esteemed law in a secretary of state which is not law in any other magistrate of this kingdom? If they should be found to be legal, they are certainly of the most dangerous consequences; if not legal, must aggravate damages. * * *
* * * It is my opinion the office precedents, which had been produced since the Revolution, are no justification of a practice in itself illegal, and contrary to the fundamental principles of the constitution; though its having been the constant practice of the office, might fairly be pleaded in mitigation of damages.
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Contents:
Chicago: "Camden’s Decision Against General Warrants," Select Documents of English Constitutional History in Select Documents of English Constitutional History, ed. George Burton Adams (1851-1925) and Henry Morse Stephens (1857-1918) (New York: Macmillan Company, 1916), Original Sources, accessed May 28, 2023, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=KPNDT2GZ7SXNADA.
MLA: . "Camden’s Decision Against General Warrants." Select Documents of English Constitutional History, in Select Documents of English Constitutional History, edited by George Burton Adams (1851-1925) and Henry Morse Stephens (1857-1918), New York, Macmillan Company, 1916, Original Sources. 28 May. 2023. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=KPNDT2GZ7SXNADA.
Harvard: , 'Camden’s Decision Against General Warrants' in Select Documents of English Constitutional History. cited in 1916, Select Documents of English Constitutional History, ed. , Macmillan Company, New York. Original Sources, retrieved 28 May 2023, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=KPNDT2GZ7SXNADA.
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