cuffion of the conftitution of another country, respecting which it was poffible that he might differ from him. If this were not manifeft eagerness to feek a difference of opinion, and anxiety to discover a cause of difpute, he knew not what was; fince if they came to the claufes of the bill, he did not think there would be any difference of opinion, or at most but a very trifling one. If the right honourable gentleman's object had been to debate the Quebec bill, he would have debated it claufe by claufe, according to the established practice of the House. If his object had been to prevent danger apprehended to the British conftitution, from the opinions of any man, or any fet of men, he would have given notice of a particular day for that particular purpose, or taken any other occafion of doing it, rather than that on which his nearest and dearest friend had been grossly mifreprefented and traduced. That at leaft was the courfe which he fhould himself have taken, and therefore what he naturally expected from another. The courfe which his right honourable friend had chosen to take, was that which feemed to confirm the infinuation urged against him, that of having maintained republican principles as applicable to the British conftitution, in a former debate on the bill. No fuch argument had ever been urged by him, nor any from which fuch an inference was fairly deducible. On the French Revolution he did indeed differ from his right honourable friend. Their opinions, he had no fcruple to fay, were wide as the poles afunder; but what had a difference of opinion on that, which to the Houfe was only matter of theoretical contemplation, to do with the dif cuffion of a practical point, on which no fuch difference exifted? On that Revolution, he adhered to his opinion, and never would retract one fyllable of what he had faid. repeated, that he thought it, on the whole, one of the most He glorious events in the hiftery of mankind. But when he had on a former occafion mentioned France, he had mentioned the Revolution only, and not the conftitution; the latter remained to be improved by experience, and accommodated to circumstances. The arbitrary fyftem of govornment was done away: the new one had the good of the people for its object, and this was the point on which he refted. This opinion, Mr. Fox faid, he wifhed the time might come to debate, if opinions of his were again to be made the fubject of parliamentary difcuffion. He had no concealment of his opinions, but if any thing could make him fhy of such a difcuffion, it would be the fixing a day to catechize him refpecting his political creed, and refpecting opinions on which the House was neither going to act, nor called upon to act at all, He had been thus catechized in 1782, when a right honourable gentleman (Mr. Dundas) in the laft ftage of the then administration, had faid, "Admitting this adminiftration to be bad, where are you to find a better? Will you admit men into power, who fay, that the reprefentation of the people is inadequate, and whofe principles would overturn the conftitution?" On that occafion, he had found an able defender in a right honourable gentlemen, whom he could not expect to be his defender that day; but who had in 1782 demanded in manly and energetic tones, "if the Houfe would bear to be told, that the country was incapable of furnishing an adminiftration more worthy of truft than that whose misconduct was admitted even by its advocates?" He might now have looked for a defender to another quarter, to the Bench on which he fat, and been as much difappointed. Yet the catechizer on that occafion had foon after joined another miniftry, and fupported that very reform of the reprefentation which he then deprecated as more dangerous to the conftitution and the country, than all the misfortunes of that adminiftration. Were he to differ from his right honourable friend on points of hiftory, on the conftitution of Athens or of Rome, was it neceffary that the difference fhould be dif cuffed in that Houfe? Were he to praise the conduct of the elder Brutus, and to fay that the expulfion of the Tarquins was a noble and patriotic act, would it thence be fair to argue that he meditated the eftablishment of a confular government in this country? Were he to repeat the eloquent eulogium of Cicero on the taking off of Cæfar, would it thence be deducible, that he went with a knife about him for the purpose of killing fome great man or otator? Let those who faid, that to admire was to wish to imitate, fhew that there was fome fimilarity of circumftances, It lay on his right honourable friend to fhew that this country was in the precife fituation of France at the time of the French Revolution, before he had a right to meet his argument; and then with all the obloquy that might be heaped on the declaration, he should be ready to fay, that the French Revolution was an object of imitation for this country. Inftead of feeking for differences of opinion on topics, happily for the country, entirely topics of fpeculations, let them come to matter of fact, and of practical application; let them come to the difcuffion of the bill before them, and fee whether his objections to it were republican, and in what he fhould differ from his right honourable friend? He had been warned by high and most respectable authorities, that minute difcuffion of great events, without information, did no honour to the pen that wrote, or the tongue that fpoke the words. If the Committee fhould decide that his right honourable friend fhould purfue his argument on the French conftitution, he would leave the House; and if fome friend would fend him word, when the clauses of the Quebec Quebec bill were to be difcuffed, he would return and debate them. And when he faid this, he faid it from no unwillingnels to liften to his right honourable friend; he always had heard him with pleasure, but not where no practical use could refult from his argument. When the proper period for difcuffion came, feeble as his powers were, compared with those of his right honourable friend, whom he must call his master, for he had taught him every thing he knew in politics, (as be had declared on a former occafion, and he meant no compliment when he faid fo) yet feeble as his powers comparatively were, he fhould be ready to maintain the principles he had afferted, even against his right honourable friend's fuperior eloquence, and maintain, that the rights of man, which his right honourable friend had ridiculed as chimerical and vifionary, were in fact the bafis and foundation of every rational conftitution, and even of the British constitution itfelf, as our statute book proved: fince, if he knew any thing of the original compact between the people of England and its government, as ftated in that volume, it was a recognition of the original inherent rights of the people as men, which no prefcription could fuperfede, no accident remove or obliterate. If fuch were principles dangerous to the conftitution, they were the principles of his right honourable friend, from whom he had learned them. During the American war they had together rejoiced at the fucceffes of a Wallington, and fympathized almoft in tears for the fall of a Montgomery, From his right honourable friend he had learned that the revolt of a whole people could never be countenanced and encouraged, but must have been provoked. Such had at that time been the doctrine of his right honourable friend, who had faid with equal energy and emphafis, that he could not draw a bill of indictment against a whole people. Alr. Fox declared he was forry to find that his right honourable friend had fince learnt, to draw fuch a bill of indictment, and to crowd it with all the technical epithets which difgraced our statute book, of false, malicious, wicked, by the inftigation of the devil, not having the fear of God before your eyes, &c. Having been taught by his right honourable friend, that no revolt of a nation was caufed without provocation, he could not help feeling a joy ever fince the conftitution of France became founded on the rights of man, on which the British conftitution itself was founded. To deny it, was neither more nor lefs than to libel the British conftitution; and no book his right honourable friend could cite, no words he might deliver in debate, however ingenious, eloquent and able, as all his writings and all his fpeeches undoubtedly were, could induce him to change or abandon that opinion; he differed upon that fubject with his right honourable friend toto cælo. Having proceeded thus far, Mr. Fox declared he had faid more than he had intended, poffibly much more than was either wife or proper; but it was a common error ariling from his earnestness to be clearly understood; but if his fentiments could ferve the other fide of the Houfe, which had countenanced the difcuffion of that day, apparently in order to get at them, they had acted unneceffarily. They might be fure of him and his fentiments on every fubject, without forcing on any thing like a difference between him and his right honourable friend, and having once heard them, they might act upon them as they thought proper. Mr. Burke said, that though he had been called to order fo Mr. Burke many times, he had fat with perfect compofure, and had heard the most diforderly fpeech that perhaps ever was delivered in that Houfe. He had not purfued the conduct of which an example had been fet to him, but had heard, without the leaft interruption, that fpeech out to the end, irregular and diforderly as it had been: his words and his conduct throughout had been mifreprefented, and a perfonal attack had been made upon him from a quarter he never could have expected, after a friendship and an intimacy of more than twenty two years; and not only his public conduct, words, and writings, had been alluded to in the severest terms, but confidential converfations and private opinions had been brought forward, with a view of proving that he acted inconfiftently; and now a motion was introduced, which hindered him, in a great meafure, from having an opportunity to afcertain, by facts, what he had ftated as opinions. He could not help thinking, that on the fobject of the French revolution, he had met with great unfairness from the right honourable gentleinan, who had faid as inuch as that he had acted and fpoken rafhly, without information, and unfupported by facts to bear out his deductions, and this had been treated in a manner that did little juftice to his feelings, and had little appearance of decency on the part of the right honourable gentleman. However, when, and as often as this fubject came to be difcuffed fairly, and facts that he was poffeffed of allowed to be brought forward, he was ready to meet the right honourable gentleman hand to hand, and foot to foot upon it. Much was faid againft proceeding without good information. He was ready to ftate his proofs for all the facts he had alledged, to which public proof was at all applicable; that indeed there were a few particulars on which he did not chufe to take iffae; becaufe, in the prefent state of things in the happy country of France, he might fubject his relators to the fashionable fummary juftice of the lanterne. Under a very few referves of that kind, he was ready to enter into the difcuffion concerning the facts in that book, book, whenever he pleased. He might poffibly fall into minute and trivial mistakes, but he was fure he was fubftantially right in every fubftantial matter of fact. To the few matters on which he must decline offering proof, he pledged himfelf, upon his honour, that he had fufficient to fatisfy a fober and confiderate judgement. But this, it seemed, was not the cause of quarrel; it was not because this authority, or that example, were mentioned, but he was accufed of mifreprefenting what the right honourable gentleman had faid on a former day, when he owned he was not prefent, and which he difavowed in the moft pofitive terms. He denied any reference to that, or any other speech of the right honourable gentleman, and contended that he had argued on this, as he wifhed to do on every other occafion, in a candid, plain, and fimple manner. With regard to the fubject which he meant to introduce in the Committee on the Quebec bill, the right honourable gentleman was no ftranger to the grounds he meant to go upon. He opened to him very particularly the plan of his fpeech; how far he meant to go; and what limits he propofed to put upon himfelf. His reasons for forming thofe opinions, he had mentioned in the fulleft and most particular manner to him, at his own house, and walked from thence to that Houfe with him, converfing all the time on that fubject. The right honourable gentleman had then entirely difagreed with him upon it, but they had no quarrel upon it, and what the right honourable gentleman had faid upon the fubject, he did not now wish to ftate. He would not, however, be perfuaded, from what the right honourable gentleman faid, to give up his purpose of ftating to the Houfe, upon this occafion, his mind with regard to the French conftitution, and the facts which led him to think as he did; and certainly in this he thought there could be nothing diforderly, efpecially when fo much had been already introduced, not about the conftitution of Quebec, but about the American conftitution. He had afferted that dangerous doctrines were encouraged in this country, and that dreadful confequences might enfue from them, which it was his fole with and ambition to avert, by ftrenuously fupporting the conftitution of Great Britain as it is, which, in his mind, could better be done by preventing impending danger, than by any remedy that could afterwards be applied; and he thought himself justified in saying this, because he did know that there were people in this country avowedly endeavouring to disorder its conftitution and government, and that in a very bold manner. The practice now was, upon all occafions, to praife, in the highest ftrain, the French conftitution; fome, indeed, qualified their argument fo far, by praifing only the French revolution; but in that |