those doors. Again, he might have some so trained that he need only pull a string, and up gets a repeating member; and if they were so dull that they could neither speak nor make orations, (for they are different things) he might have them taught to dance, pedibus ire in sententia.—This improvement might be ex tended; he might have them dressed in coats and shirts all of one colour, and of a Sunday he might march them to church two by two, to the great edification of the people and the honour of the christian religion; afterwards, like the ancient Spartans, or the fraternity at Kilmainham, they might dine all together in a large hall. Good heaven! what a sight to see them feeding in public upon public viands, and talking of public subjects for the benefit of the public. It is a pity they are not immortal; but I hope they will flourish as a corporation, and that pensioners will beget pensioners to the end of the chapter.

SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN,

ON PENSIONS.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, MONDAY, MARCH 12th, 1787.

MR. FORBES presented a bill to limit pensions; it was read a first time he then moved, that it be read a second time on the following day; this was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who moved, that the bill should be read a second time .on the first of August.

MR. CURRAN said, he felt too much respect for the excellent mover of the bill, and too strong a sense of the necessity of the measure, to give it only a silent support. He rejoiced, he said, in the virtuous perseverance of his honourable friend in labouring for the establishment of our constitution, by securing the independence of parliament. He would offer some reasons in defence of the bill, though he felt the full force of the policy adopted by administration, to make any attempt of that kind either ridiculous or impossible. He observed the gentlemen, he said, consulting whether to bury the question under a mute majority, or whether to make a sham opposition to it by setting up the old gladiator of administration, new polished and painted for the field. They expected, he supposed, that men should shrink in silence and disgust from such a competition. He would, he said, defend the principle of the bill on the grounds of economy, but still more of constitution. He adverted to the frame of our civil state, it depended on an exact balance of its parts, but he said, from our peculiar situation, that equipoise on which our liberty depends must be continually losing ground, and the power of the crown continually increasing. A single individual can be vigilant and active, improving every occasion of extending his power; the

people are not so, they are divided in sentiment. in interest without union, and therefore without co-operation, and from the necessity of bringing the constitution frequently back to its first principles; but this, he said, was doubly necessary to do by law. in a country where a long system of dividing the people had almost extinguished that public mind, that public vigilance and jealousy, with which the conduct of the crown was watched over in Great Britain. But further, he said, it was rendered necessary by the residence of our king in another country.-His authority must be delegated first to a viceroy, and next it fell to a secretary, who could have no interest in the good of the people; no interest in future fame, no object to attract him but the advancement of his dependants. Then, he said, the responsibility that binds an English king to moderation and frugality was lost here in the confusion of persons, or in their insignificance. This, he said, might be deemed an unusual language in that house, but assured the right honourable secretary, he did not speak with any view of disturbing his personal feelings; he did not admire, nor would he imitate the cruelty of the Sicilian tyrant who amused himself with putting insects to the torture; he was therefore stating facts. What responsibility, said he, can be found or hoped for in an English secretary? Estimate them fairly, not according to the adulation that lifts them into a ridiculous importance while they are among you, or the as unmerited contumely that is heaped upon them by disappointment and shame when they leave you. But what have they been in fact?-why, a succession of men, sometimes with heads, sometimes with hearts, oftener with neither.

But as to the present right honourable secretary, he said, it was peculiarly ridiculous to talk of his responsibility or his economy, to the people: his economy was only to be found in reducing the scanty pittance which profusion had left for the enenuragement of our manufactures; or in withholding from the undertakers of a great national object, that encouragement that had been offered them on the express faith of parliament; unless, perhaps, it were to be looked for in the pious plan of selling the materials of houses of religious worship on a principle of economy. But where will you look, said he, for his responsibility as a minister? You will remember his commercial propositions. They were proposed to this country on his responsibility. You

cannot forget the exhibition he made; you cannot have yet lost his madrigal on reciprocity: but what was the event? He went to Great Britain with ten propositions, and he returned with double the number, disclaimed and abandoned by those to whom he belonged, and shorn of every pretension to responsibility. But look for it in the next leading feature of his administration.

We gave an addition of 140,000l. in taxes, on the express compact and condition of confining expense within the limits of revenue. Already has that compact been shamefully evaded: but what says the responsible gentleman? Why he stood up in his place, and had the honest confidence boldly to deny the fact. Now, said he, I should be glad to ask who that right honourable gentleman is? Is he the whole house of commons? If he be, he proposed the compact. Is he the king? he accepted it by his viceroy. Is he the viceroy? he accepted by himself. In every character that could give such a compact either credit, or dignity, or stability, he has either proposed or ratified it; in what character then does the right honourable gentleman deny it? why, in his own; in that of a right honourable gentleman. Can any man then, said he, be so silly as to think that so barefaced a spirit of profusion can be stopped by any thing less than a law ?-Or can any man point out any ground on which we can confide in the right honourable gentleman's affection to the interest or even the peace of this country? At a time when we are told that the people are in a state of tumult little short of rebellion, when you ought to wish to send an angel to recall the people to their duty, and restore the credit of the laws, what does he do?-he keeps three judicial places, absolute, vacant, or sinecure places, as if in this country not officers, but offices are to become superannuated; and he sends the commission with a job tacked to it, to be displayed in the very scene of this supposed confusion.-Would this contemptuous trifling with the public be borne in Great Britain? No, sir; but what the substance of an English minister, with all his talents, would not dare to attempt in that country, his fetch is able to achieve, and with impunity, in this.

But a right honourable member opposes the principle of the bill, as being in restraint of the royal bounty. I agree with him in this sentiment, but I differ from this argument. It becomes the dignity and humanity of a generous people to leave it in the

power of the sovereign to employ some part of the public wealth for honourable purposes, for rewarding merit, for encouraging science.-Nor would it become us to inquire too narrowly into every casual or minute misapplication; but a gross and general application of the people's money to the encouragement of every human vice, is a crying grievance that calls on every man to check it; not by restraining the bounty of the crown, but curbing the profusion of Irish administrations.

The pension list, at the best of times, was a scandal to this country; but the present abuses of it, he said, went beyond all bounds, and almost justified what he would formerly have considered as shameful. If a great officer of state, for instance, finds that the severity of business requires the consolation of the tender passion, he courts through the pension list; and the lady, very wisely, takes hold of the occasion, which, perhaps, could not be taken of the lover, and seizes time by the forelock. Why, sir, we may pass over a little treaty of that sort; it may naturally enough fall under the articles of concordatum or contingences; but that unhappy list has been degraded by a new species of prostitution that was unknown before: the granting of honours and titles, to lay the foundation for the grant of a pension. The suffering any man to steal a dignity, for the purpose that a barren beggar steals a child. It was reducing the honours of the state from badges of dignity to badges of mendicancy.

He then adverted to the modern practice of doubling the pensions of members of that house, who were unhappily pensioners already. Was the secretary, he said, afraid of their becoming converts? Was it necessary to double-bolt them with pensions? Was there really so much danger that little fricksay would repent and go into a nunnery, that the kind keeper must come down another hundred, to save her from becoming honest?

But a right honourable gentleman, he said, had made another objection rather inconsistent with his former :-he feared it would take away the control of parliament on pensions within the limits of the act proposed. The objection was not, therefore, founded in fact, at the same time that the argument admitted that the unlimited power of pensioning was a grievance that ought to be remedied by some effectual control; such, he said, was the prin ciple and the effect of this bill, if carried into a law. It would not restrain the crown; it would not restrain a lord lieutenant;