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to a certain degree of injury to themselves, but not to their deftruction. In the prefent cafe, the people were deceived, they were caufing their own ruin, and therefore their madnefs ought to be oppofed. If that Houfe failed in the prefent truggle, and its dignity was infulted, its importance in the fcale of the Conftitution would be weakened, and the privi leges of the people fuffer. It was for the people, therefore, that he was contending, and in their caufe that he was combating; nor would he believe, that the people were really adverse to his conduct; thofe who underftood the ground of the difpute, he was perfuaded, were with him. In Weftminster, for inftance, where he lived, and was moft likely to know, he was fure he never had, in any period, the real, warm zeal and hearts of the people more than at present. On a late occafion, it was true, there had been a meeting of his conftituents, at which it was impoffible to be heard; but then, when it was confidered that a noble Lord, whose voice that House well knew the found of, and who was himself an hoft, was prefent, and prevented it, there would be no wonder at the circumftance. Allufions had been made in the courfe of the debate to the battle at Weftminster, the battle at Hackney, and the battle at Reading. Thofe inglorious tumults, he was perfuaded, did no good whatever; of fuch petty warfare it might be faid,

Cumque fuperba foret Babylon fpolianda tropæis

Aufoniis, umbraque erraret Craffus inulta,

Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos,

for there certainly was no triumph, let either party gain a victory in fuch contefts, while the grand concerns of Europe were neglected. He faid he had again expreffed his wifh for an union, whenever it could he brought about with fafety to the honour of the Houfe, whenever the right honourable gentleman had taken the only ftep that could reinftate the House in its former fituation in the Conftitution, when by his refignation and by his quitting his office in obedience to the opinion of that Houfe, he should have relinquifhed and abandoned the unconftitutional ground upon which he ftood. He wifhed therefore that there might be no afperity, no violence, to rankle in the mind, fo as to make an union impracticable. An honourable gentleman oppofite to him, (Commodore K. Stewart) he obferved, had chofen to fay, that his perfonal love of power would prevent him from ever fuffering the government of the country to go on, unless he made a part of it. In a difcuffion where felf was fo much the object, he faid he

certainly

certainly would not difpute with the honourable gentleman on a point, in which he muft have fo much the advantage. But he fhould have imagined that the honourable gentleman, confidering those with whom he lived, confidering those with whom he was connected, confidering the means which the bonourable gentleman knew to be the beft calculated for obtaining perfonal power, the honourable gentleman might have known, that had perfonal power been his object, he might have poffeffed it again and again, if he would have ftooped to adopt fuch means as the honourable gentleman must know had been repeatedly in his power to adopt. But if he had any wish for power, it was not that particular species of perLonal power for which he wished. The whole conduct of his life, the fituation in which he stood, connected with a great and numerous body of men, whofe principle it was to act upon the broad extended bafis of public confidence, and not upon the narrow, pitiful, and destructive ground of private favour, muft prove the falfehood of every affertion, that perfonal power was his object, and that unless he obtained power upon fair, conftitutional and public grounds, he never would ceafe to attack the exifting Adminiftration. It had hitherto been objected against him that he fought with too large a phalanx, that he came with fo great a body, and with fuch numerous friends, that no door was fcarce wide enough to admit them all. He thanked God that they were fo numerous that they could not find a way through the paffage to power which was now the road to it. He did not therefore oppofe the prefent Adminiftration for the fake of perfonal power, he opposed them because they stood upon the ground of fecret Influence, because they stood upon the ground of the House of Lords against the House of Commons, because, by their counte nance in office they fubverted every practical principle of the Conftitution of the country. Because at a time when a firm and efficient Government was alone calculated to retrieve the country, they formed a Government that was weak, infufficient and feeble. Whoever wished for the liberty of the Conftitution, whoever wifhed for energy in government, muft equally unite in wifhing the removal of the prefent Adminiftration. He who was a whig, and carried the prin ciples of whiggifm to extremity, muft with it equally with a tory, who carried to an extreme the principles of toryifm. A whig, who carried principles of whiggifm to an extreme, might be faid, in his enthufiaftic, eager and glorious love of freedom, to forget the true balance of the Conftitution, He

might

might wish to give more to the popular part of the Conftitution than was confiftent with a vigorous, efficacious, and active executive government. He might be faid to be so regardless of the bleffings that liberty beftowed, as to worship his favourite goddess with such a fervour, though with what he had ever thought a laudable zeal, as to carry it to a degree of excefs prejudicial to firmness and vigour. Let the extreme whig, however, forget vigour ever fo much, let him court liberty with the moft anxious eagerness, he never could hope to obtain, nor to protect the darling object of all his actions, without fupporting the weight that Houfe had held in the Conftitution, without a fingle exception fince the revolution. Confiftent with his principles, the extreme whig must wish the deftruction of an Adminiftration formed in direct contradiction to every principle of conftitutional liberty. On the other hand, a tory, who carried his principles to an extreme, and he did not mean that mifled and deluded description of men, who had wished in the last century to fupport the mifguided race of Stuart in all their wild, pretenfions to divine, hereditary, indefeafible right, and had maintained their doctrines with arguments drawn from the unconftitutional tyranny of the Houfe of Tudor, but those who reasoned rationally, though rather perhaps to a degree of excess upon their way of viewing the Conftitution. A tory, in the extreme principles of toryifm, might be faid to overlook the liberty of the fubject in his defire of a vigorous, efficacious, and energetic Government. But however ftrong the bias of a tory might be to the extreme principle of his party, he muft agree with him in this, that there could be no energy, no vigour, no activity, no refponfibility, none of those strong and powerful exertions which he wished to promote, while the present Administration remained. Such a tory must see, that with the continuance, weaknefs, inefficiency, want of real, folid, and useful exertion, muft diftinguish the executive power. The whig, therefore, as well as the tory, and the tory equally with the whig, however oppofite their principles, although the one overlooked vigour in his fearch for liberty, and although the other might be faid to overlook liberty in his fearch for a vigorous Government, both muft equally agree, that to attain their refpectively favourite and darling objects, the removal of the prefent Adminiftration was effential, becaufe while they continued there was neither freedom of Conftitution nor energy of Government. The true, folid, and uncontrovertible bafis, upon which a firm and efficacious Govern

Government was to be built, was the confidence of that House. Every act of Minifters, as he had faid again and again, was founded in confidence. Not in the mere abstract meaning of the word, but in the folid, actual, and conftant exercife of fubftantial confidence. Was there no act neceffary in the present situation of the country, either for the support of the public credit, the regulation of India, the conduct of foreign alliances, or any other great and neceffary work calculated to fupport or retrieve the glory of the country? and he was fure, if there were vigorous and well-directed exertions to those great and neceffary objects, there was yet enough of ftrength left to render the country great and important amidst the nations that furround us; but there was no one act of this fort to which confidence was not effential. The more that confidence could be extended, the more vigorous and effectual would the measures of Minifters be. For that reafon he wished to extend that confidence to the greatest degree poffible confiftent with the true, juft, and infallible principles of the Conftitution, because he knew, the more it was done, the more it would be poffible to act in the only manner capable of rendering this country powerful, eminent, and refpectable. Because by fuch means he fhould be the more and more enabled to rifk popularity at every step, by laying burthenfome but neceffary taxes, and to act with that firmness, that intrepidity, that bold integrity, which was the only folid ground upon which a Minifter could act fo as to produce real and effectual advantage to the country. Great however as this object was, he faid, he had rather run the rifque of all thofe difficulties, and depend upon the fame confidence that he had hitherto experienced, than confent to any extenfion of it which facrificed the very first and vital principles of the Conftitution. He defired the right honourable gentleman over against him, or any of his friends, to point out a fingle inftance, not only fince the acceffion of the House of Brunswick, but fince the Revolution, where the Minister of the Crown had dared to retain his fituation one moment after he had loft the confidence of that House. He knew there was not one, and therefore, inftead of that glorious and favoured period of hiftory which they revered and admired for the liberty and the glory they had experienced under it, which they revered for thofe illuftrious Princes of the Brunf wick line, under whom they had enjoyed fo many bleffings, and which they wifhed to hand down to the children and grand children, and great grand children of their prefent VOL. XIII. gracious

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gracious Monarch, and which, if the prefent fyftem prevailed, were loft and gone to him, to them, and to themselves for ever; inftead of that glorious period, the adherents of the right honourable gentleman must have. recourfe to the accurfed and unfortunate period of that mifguided race, whofe lives were diftinguished by an uniform attempt to fubvert their liberties and overturn the Conftitution. Those were the only periods to which fuch as fupported the caufe of the fecret advifers of His Majefty against the reprefentatives of the people could have recourfe. An honourable Baronet, who fpoke fome time ago (Sir Richard Hill) and who frequently quoted the Bible, had, upon the prefent occafion, Mr. Fox obferved, chofen to entertain the House with a quotation from a work of a diffe rent defcription, from a fatire of the gay and witty Earl of Rochefter. He begged leave to advise the honourable Baronet, not for the fake of a temporary laugh, to raise in the ideas of all who heard him, the melancholy comparison of the prefent moment, with that fad and difgraceful æra, which though adorned with fome lively, witty, and even claffical writers, was marked by every thing unfavourable to liberty, and fubverfive of the Conftitution. It had been at that æra, that the Prince on the Throne, by the counsel of fecret advifers, oppofed and undervalued the fenfe of the House of Commons; and when the Houfe endeavoured, by every exertion of fpirit, to repeal thofe attempts by humble and dutiful addreffes to the Throne, the King, tired and difgufted with Parliaments, in 1681 diffolved his Parliament, and never called another during the remainder of his reign. The fpirit that arofe in the country, they all knew, ended in producing fubfequent Parliaments, not fubfervient to the Prince, and in the end brought about the glorious Revolution, and drove from the Throne of England that unfortunate and misguided race, to whofe hiftory, and to whofe hiftory alone, the right honourable gentleman and his friends were obliged to appeal for precedents to defend his conduct, and justify the fituation into which he had thrown his country. When they attempted to quote the hiftory of fucceeding periods, they were under the neceffity of mis-ftating every particular, in order to make them anfwer their purpofe. This had been done in a moft extraordinary manner by a learned gentleman (the Solicitor General) in a former debate. The learned gentleman had on that occafion ftated, that the House, in 1701, had addreffed His Majefty King William, to remove Lord Somers, Lord Orford, Lord Halifax, and the Ear! of Portland

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