Whatever dislike his grace might feel to their system, it could not possibly exceed the detestation which they entertained for the principles and conduct of radical reformers. Their opinion, indeed, was the same which had been delivered by Condorcet, who, when he announced with joy that the patriots of England were labouring in that cause, added, that from such reform the transition would be short to the establishment of a complete republic. The duke, indeed, had consented that the new ministers should postpone the question in England; but in Ireland, he required it should be carried immediately: nor was this all; peace must be procured with France notwithstanding her inveterate hostility to us: and a noble marquis had said, what he seemed to think a matter of much indifference to the house, though to minister it might be a matter of some consideration," that the peace must be made, though the person who made it would proba the new be banged." The principles on which such a peace was likely to be effected could easily be collected: in addition to all our "injustice," in opposing it, we must humble ourselves to the directory, and confess our sincere repentance for the bloodshed and carnage they had occasioned. The marquis had given the house an estimate of the value of our foreign possessions: perhaps the directory, out of pity and in consideration of our humiIity, would deliver us from some part of the burden under which we complained; they might possibly have the goodness to relieve us of Jamaica, to take upon themselves the defence of our Indian possessions; perhaps even to disharge us from the weight of Ben gal; and though we might lose the best part of our commerce, inore than half our revenue, and the whole supply of our naval strength, we should certainly remain a light, disburdened, well-compacted power, peculiarly fitted to resist the future enterprises of France, and to defend ourselves against that tyranny which even the noble lord had described as the utmost of human misery. If these were the conditions of the peace, he seriously believed the marquis's prediction would be verified" the ministers who made it would be hanged;" and he was sure they would deserve to be so. But the house had heard that night another inatter of no slight importance; the corresponding societies had been mentioned: what these societies were, their publications, their meetings, were in the memory of their lordships. Lord Downshire had told them, that even the united Irishmen would not have proceeded to their enormities without these encouragements. Yet with these very socie ties the duke and his party were suspected to have formed a mysterious enigmatical connexion. He trusted this suspicion would be cleared up-he hoped no member of that house could have the smallest difficulty in disavowing the charge, and he solemnly called upon the duke to do so. For himself, and those with whom he had the happiness of being connected, he had explained the motives of their conduct; it was for the house to decide upon the question; it would not affect the principles on which they acted, anxious only to bear their part, whatever it might be, in that noble stand which placed this country at this moment in a state of greater 13 consi consideration and respect in Europe than ever she had acquired at the head of the most triumphant league. If they were anxious for glory, it was the glory of resistance, first in labour, first in danger, and, he trusted, not last in honour! The marquis of Lansdown in reply said, the noble lord derived no inconsiderable aid from a loud voice, a coufident manner, and an authoritative air, the usual concomitants of office. But nothing should prevent his maintaining what no wise representations could do away. He denied the arguments used by the secretary of state he contended that it was not the interest of France, any more than of this country, to divide the German empire, and dissolve a number of the small independent states which were so many years the bulwarks, and preserved the balance, of Europe, and to divide them, so as to add them to three or four great powers. To this the republic was driven. Great Britain had refused them reasonable conditions of peace, which they were anxious to obtain, and their only alternative was to hang round the emperor, and make the best terms they could with him. It was not to the time of Robespierre he alluded, when he spoke of the best opportunity of making peace; though even then advantageous terms might have been made; and he saw no reason why it might not be concluded at this moment. His lordship concluded with lamenting the dangers of the present contest, saying, that in a few months it may be a question about the people's liberties, their lordships' properties; and Heaven forbid it should ever touch the crown! The duke of Bedford rose to observe, that the secretary of state had 66 ma been driven to his usual miserable shifts, and again assimilated his own fate with that of the country, to avert the vengeance of an irritated and injured people. He felt no surprise at being himself calumniated; and he was now determined to trouble them no more, since his conduct, and not the distresses of the country, was made the subject of discussion. Their lordships could best judge whether he had formed any mysterious and enigmatical connexion with the corresponding societies, or with any set of men who were traitors to their country. He was now called to answer the charge alleged in such extraordinary terms, as nagement, intrigue, and trick," and it might astonish the house that to such charges he made no reply, There was such a thing as true honour, and there were characters who imbibed it from their infancy. Those who possessed it were as little capable of suspecting others of meanness" and mysterious enig matical connexion" as they were of practising it. He should be sorry if the house imagined him capable of descending to such low and degrading resources; but to those who did suspect him he should make no reply, but a declaration of sovereign contempt for them, their character, their conduct, and their opinions! The question was called for, and the house divided, on the duke's motion. public spirit of every rank rising in proportion to the magnitude of the occasion, and animated by the saine sentiments: we deem it an indispensable duty, instead of distracting the council of our sove aign by proposals of change, to renew the declaration of our adherence to the principles which have governed the council, and in which the parliament has uniformly concurred for the security of these kingdoms against foreign attack, and for the maintenance of our religion, laws, and constitution." The resolution was carried nemine contradicente. We shall close this chapter with a short account of the progress of a bill for regulating the publication of newspapers, which was passed in this session. On the 13th of June, the attorney-general brought in a bill for regulating the proprietors and pubishers of newspapers. Mr. Jekyll opposed its being read the third time, from what he called a motive of constitutional jealousy of every thing which appeared an attack upon the liberty of the press. The house, he said, ought to be extremely cautious before they assented to any measure which might diminish that inestimable blessing. It was now upwards of a century since it had been touched; the jurisdiction of the star-chamber, and the power of the licenser of the press, might easily be recollected. This abominable jurisdiction was contrived by the long parliament, and enforced during the two detestable reigns of Charles II. and king James. After the revolution, these regulations continued only six years; and (if he remembered aright) were ended in the year 1694. He knew the attorney-general had affirmed, that this was not an at tack, but a regulation of the liberty of the press: but it created a facility in prosecutions against it, and this was objection enough; for it was the commencemeat of a system tending to destroy freedom; and, with that freedom, public liberty. The censorial power of our press was the great guardian of British liberty, and a celebrated author (M. de Lolme) had assigned it as the cause. This bill would make men of property and respectability retire from newspapers altogether; and they then would fall into the hands of men of desperate fortune and low character, and the consequence would be an increase instead of diminution of the licentiousness of the press. Hand-bills on brown paper would be substituted every day for a useful well-regulated paper. This bill would render innocent persons liable to prosecution, merely because they were proprietors, although they had no share in the management of the publication. He opposed it, therefore, as an infringement on the invaluable blessing of liberty, handed down to us by our ancestors. The attorney-general said, lis object was to restore, not infringe upon it: the true liberty of the press was, that every man might publish what he pleased, but he should be responsible to the public for what he published. Any man might make fair and free remarks on public men and public measures; and such men might carry on their newspapers after this bill had passed as well as before: it only secured to the public that which they had a right to demand, the ap-. pearance of a responsible party in a court of justice, so as to be amena ble to law. So far from this being a means of flinging the newspapers 14 into into the hands of the dregs of the people, it would take it out of such hands, and exclude all persons, who were not visible to those whom they calumniated, from being able to shelter themselves in obscurity. He had so frequently explained himself upon this bill, that he would only now add, it was upon the principle of the liberty of the press he brought it in, to restore this sacred blessing, by rendering those who injured the characters of others answerable for it in the same way that every other man was answerable. Sir Francis Burdett said, that he considered this subject to be of so important a nature, that he could not allow it to pass without stating his objections. The measure came from the king's attorney-general; a quarter from whence any measure should be regarded by Englishmen with suspicion, especially this: it was the offspring of a very doubtful parent, ushered into the world under very unfavourable auspices, and introduced at a tme in which it might reasonably be supposed government would be desirous of keeping its conduct from public investigation. The law was already armed with more than power sufficient for punishing the errors and restraining the excesses of the press; but a government aiming at tyranny would never think the press enough under control, until it was able to commit every outrage without the fear of reproach. To practise injustice without hearing of it, was the grand desideratum and key-stone of tyranny and thus every state aspiring at that object, never failed to complain bitterly of the licentiousness of the press, and of the difficulty of coming at those persons, the proprie tors of public prints, who, if not : venal, were marked out as vic tims. A good and free government had nothing to apprehend, and every thing to hope, from the liberty of the press. But despotisin courted shade and obscurity: it dreaded the scrutinising eye of liberty and if an arbitrary disposed prince, supported by an unprin cipied minister, and backed by a corrupt parliament, was to cast about for means to secure such a triple tyranny, no means better could be devised than the bill upon the table. The great man with whom the minister seemed condemned to form a striking and everlasting contrast (his father), when pressed by the sycophants of his time to allow a measure of this kind to be brought into parliament under his administration, when urged to it in order to suppress the calumnies against his own reputation, replied with a dignity of soul which stamped his character" No-the the press, like the air, is a chartered libertine." The present ministers sought to scare us into their measures, by holding out the dread of a revolution, whilst themselves were the greatest, the only revolutionists from whom we had any thing to fear, from whom we had suffered much, and had still more to expect. They had already nearly completed a great revolution, not in favour of, but against liberty. He then reminded the house of the unconstitutional measures daily introduced: one, he said, he could not forbear naming; the infamous practice (by which the whole law of imprisonment was charged) of sending men to those Bastiles which disgraced the country-those private prisons, where, under the pretence of regulations, punishments were were inflicted upon men as illegal as they were cruel. And what were those regulations so called? To keep men in dismal, heart-sickening solitude-to feed them upon bread and water, and that scantily too-to doom them to hard labour (an indefinite term) exacted by stripes, at the will, perhaps, of a merciless gaoler. If this was not tyranny, he knew not what the definition or essence of tyranny was. Natural it was for such a government to complain of the press: it was part of that revolution which had been brought about, and which the preseat bill would secure, the seeds of which were sown as early as the accession of the present king to the throne; and the effects had been foreseen by the wise lord Chatham, and the country had been forewarned by him. But ministerial corruption blinded the nation then, as it did now; and there was reason to fear it would end, as that great statesman foretold, in the subversion of our old free constitution, and the establishment of a German government. He did not mean this as a term of invective: but he firmly believed there was a plan for governing this country, not according to its old liberal maxims, as established at the Revolution, but according to a system repugnant to every principle of justice and of liberty. The bill appeared the more dangerous, because it was not a direct open attack-it was a measure which sapped and undermined; and, without wearing the garb of violence, like the silent lapse of time, was so much the more certain of its effect. Seeing therefore the mischief, and no adequate good remitting from it, relying upon the sense, spirit, and well-founded jealousies of our forefathers upon this subject, he concluded with saying, he would guide his conduct upon this occasion by their judgment, and decidedly vote against such a bill deriving, as it did, its origin from the attorney-general of the crown. Mr. Ryder rose, and challenged any one to prove that this bill had the smallest tendency to make that criminal which was not criminal by the law of the land before. It did not vary the manner in which libels were to be tried; it was only to prevent the evasons of the proprietors of the newspapers from be. ing answerable for any thing which appeared in their papers. Answerable they always were by law; and this was to compel them to come forward, and abide the event of a fair trial in a court of justice. This was not only the law of England, but of all countries, under all go. vernments, since the press had been invented. Mr. Sheridan contended that it was bad in principle. Government pretended that they could not find the editor of the Courier; but it was not true; there was always a responsible person concerned in that paper, whose name and address must be at the stamp-office. The first object of the bill was to throw all the newspapers into the hands of government. Such he was afraid would still be the effect of it. Persisting in this measure only proved there was a systematic design to put an end to the liberty of the press altogether. The visible publisher of a newspaper had hitherto been considered as the re sponsible person in a court of justice; but now a different plan was adopted. He objected to this there were many who contributed to the publication of very excellent works, useful to the public, who yet had good reasons for con : cealing. |