The addresses in answer to the speech were voted with great unanimity in both houses; and the minister received from the leaders of oppofition, no less than his own partifans, the most liberal commendations for his spirited and judicious conduct. The subsidy to Hesse, by which twelve thousand men were at a vast expence retained for a term of years in the service of Britain, paffed without a diffentient vote; and in a short time treaties of amity and alliance were concluded between the courts of London, Berlin, and the Hague, by which the two former guaranteed the stadtholderate in perpetuity to the ferene house of Orange, as an effential part of the constitution of the united provinces.

By the treaty between the kings of Great Britain and Pruffia, each of the high contracting powers engages, in cafe of attack, to furnish the other with a fuccor of fixteen thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry, or an equivalent in money, within the term of two months from the date of the requifition. Thus was Britain once again fatally entangled in the intricate and inextricable toils of continental engagements.

The army establishment, which had been reduced from seventy to fixty-four regiments at the termination of the war, was now at the motion of the minister raised to the customary complement, notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of Mr. Fox, under whose administration the reduction had taken place, and who justly boasted that he was the first minister since the revolution who had been accused of establishing too small a standing army in time of peace. A very great naval promotion had also taken place, in the contemplation of a war with France; in which it was remarkable that fixteen captains had been selected for flags, while a much greater number of officers, feveral of whom were men of the most distinguished gallantry and merit, had been unaccountably passed over in filence and neglect.

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In consequence of this injurious partiality a motion was made in the house of commons, that the house should refolve itself into a committee to enquire into the conduct of the admiralty on the business of the late promotion." This motion was destined to encounter the vehement oppofition of Mr. Pitt, who declared, " that if this refolution paffed, the next thing he prefumed would be to resolve that the members of that house were better judges of naval concerns than professional men at the head of the marine department." To this Mr. Fox justly replied, that this argument, if admitted in its full extent, would effect the total annihilation of the constitutional powers of parliamentary control. If a complaint were lodged against the conduct of a judge, it might be said, "What do you know of the law? Leave it to the courts below-and thus of every other department in army, church, and state." Upon a division the motion was negatived in a house of near three hundred members by a majority of seventeen voices only. And the first lord of the admiralty, lord Howe, became upon this occafion the subject of very fevere and general cenfure and reproach. His lordship foon afterwards resigned his office, and was succeeded by the earl of Chatham.

Nearly at the fame time the earl of Mansfield refigned the chief justiceship of England, which he had held with high and undiminished reputation for the long period of thirty-two years, to the attorney general, fir Lloyd Kenyon, created lord Kenyon.

Perpetual disputes having arifen, as had been foreseen and foretold, between the two boards of direction and control, established by Mr. Pitt's India regulation bill, the minister thought proper in the course of the feffion to bring in his famous DECLARATORY ACT, by which various new and important powers were conferred on the board of control, under pretext of explaining and determining the sense of the former bill. This measure met with a most animat

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ed and formidable oppofition. Colonel Barré protested that he had from the first discerned the traces of a system of Indian patronage, of which he believed the bill under difcussion to be a great advance to the final completion; and if it should be fuffered to pass, a fatal stab would be given to the constitution.

Mr. Sheridan called upon the house to compare the power of Mr. Fox's commiffioners with those which were now afferted to belong to the board of control. Lord Fitzwilliam could not send out a dispatch; he could neither declare war, nor make peace, in India; he could neither collect the revenues of the company, nor apply them to the purposes he should think proper, without having first the pleasure of the king fignified to him through the medium of the fecretary of state. The board of control could do all this. The minister had now violated that compact with the company on which he originally and profefsedly stood -how then could he escape the ignominy of deliberately breaking his most solemn engagements?

Mr. Burke defired to be informed by administration, " whether, when they brought in the act of 1784, and complained that Mr. Fox's bill took too much, they had honostly stated that all they meant to take was the military power, the political direction, the management of the revenue, and as much as they could get of the commerce ? The question then to have put to the house would have been, in whose hands they were willing this power should be entrusted? In the hands of seven of the most respectable men in the kingdom, of parliamentary appointment, or with the shreds and remnants of office? The public had been at that time infatuated, hurried on to madness. The mob of 1784 had destroyed the house of commons, and in so doing they had destroyed the palladium of their privileges; but he now indulged the hope of feeing the house rise like a phœnix regenerated from its ashes." The queftion of commitment was carried by a majority of fifty-seven voices voices only, and on being carried into the house of lords it experienced a second oppofition scarcely less violent than the first. It paffed at length, accompanied with a protest figned by fixteen peers, in which the declaratory bill was reprobated as friendly to corrupt intrigue and cabal-hoftile to all good government---and abhorrent to the principles of our conftitition. The patronage of the company was faid to be enjoyed by the commissioners in the worst of all poffible forms, and without that responsibility which was the natural security against malversation and abuse. In some degree to palliate this odious measure, by which the company were for ever deprived of all efficient authority in India, they were empowered by a fubfequent bill to borrow for the relief of their financial embarraffments the fum of 1,200,000l. for which, notwithstanding the flou rishing condition of their affairs, they stood in immediate and urgent neceffity.

In the early part of the feffion the great India delinquent Mr. Haftings had delivered in his anfwer to the impeachment of the commons, who immediately proceeded to the appointment of a committee of managers to make good the fame. When Mr. Francis had been in the last session propofed as one of the committee to prepare the articles, he had been objected to on the ground of the perfonal animofity known to fubfift between him and Mr. Hastings, and which had been unfortunately productive of an encounter, wherein the life of Mr. Francis had been imminently endangered.

Mr. Fox on the present occafion again moved the house that the name of Mr. Francis be added to the lift of managers. He urged, " that the house were not fitting as judges of Mr. Haftings-not even in the capacity of grand jurors; the bill had been found, and they were now become his accufers and prosecutors. Did it disqualify a man from acting as an accufer, that he was animated with an honeft indignation against the crimes and the criminal whom

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whom he attempted to bring to justice? The enmity which Mr. Francis cherished against Mr. Hastings was not a private but a public enmity, founded on a just sense of the abufes he had committed, and the truft he had perverted. Mr. Francis had with infinite application and ability developed, by means of his local and perfonal knowledge, the whole mystery of Indian corruption; he had enforced it on the reluctant conviction of that house. Would the house, now they had adopted the accusation, and made it their own, prevent its author from supporting it at the bar of the house of lords, where only he could fupport it with

effect?"

Mr. Francis himself with great dignity and animation entered into a general vindication of his character and conduct. "Upon his return from India he had been called upon, he faid, to give evidence before a committee of the houfe of commons. Could he without treachery to the public refuse every information in his power? To act in the capacity of a whispering adviser, or an obfcure and covert witness, he disdained. In his own opinion, and in that of men of the highest reputation whom he had confulted, he acted far more honorably in declaring himself the responsible accufer of Mr. Hastings-in avowing his principles, and abiding by their consequences. He was happy to find that the objection against him implied no imputation upon his character, no fufpicion upon his actions. He trufted that no one would think it poffible that he meant to folicit the house to alter their resolution. He owed, indeed, every afsistance in his power to carry into effect the task now undertaken. Exclusively of that confideration, what could he defire better than to be excused from any farther concern in this toilsome, invidious, and most unthankful office?"

Mr. Pitt contented himself with saying, "that the queftion was in his opinion a question of feeling, and not of argument; and he could not reconcile to his ideas of propriety