at last towards diminishing the dangerous influence of the crown. It had been asked what proof there was that the influence was increased? Let those gentlemen look at the increased public expenditure; let them look at the navy and the army, and at every department of government! He pursued his argument in favour of the Bill with much warmth, and declared the great satisfaction he felt at the promising display of abilities, which the young members had that day made, on both sides of the House. Sir George Yonge defined the distinction between prerogative and influence, and said it was as much their duty to check and prevent the fraud of the latter, as it had been the duty and care of their ancestors to resist the power of the former. he should have thought, if the citizens of Bristol approved of it, they would on their rejection of him, have declared, that however they disapproved of his conduct in general, yet they thought he had acted well in proposing the Bill which was then before them: but they had done no such thing; they had rejected the hon. gentleman, and of course had declared, that they did not approve of his conduct in the late parliament; they had rejected him without any reserve, without any exception. A great deal had been said in the course of the debate about the increased and increasing influence of the crown: that influence could not surely be so very visible to every eye as some gentlemen had endeavoured to persuade the House, when the only proof produced, that such an influence really existed, fully convinced him that it did not exist; he meant here to speak of the resolution of the late par liament, that the influence of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished. If that influence ex-tended so widely in that House as had been asserted, he apprehended such a vote would never have passed; but it shewed rather a bad cause, when the hon. gentlemen of the other side had recourse to a resolution of a parliament which they were constantly abusing: surely they could have very little faith in the determination of a parliament which they themselves every day declared to have been most venal and infamous. Mr. T. Townshend did not know that any hon. gentleman was entitled to talk of opposition as the discarded dependents on discarded ministers. There were in opposition, gentlemen as respectable, as independent, and as virtuous as any who voted with the minister; nor could he conceive that an attachment to those, whom the country looked up to for salvation, and who alone perhaps could bring it out of its present calamitous condition, was to be thrown in their teeth as a matter of reproach; much less did he conceive that it was either fair or decent to assert that every man who acted in opposition to the measures of the present ministers was actuated by the impulse of disappointed ambition or avaricious anxiety. No gentleman had a right to question the manner or the cause of his election; he stood there as independent as any man in that House, and he would support the Bill, not merely because it held out a system of œconomy, but because it went some way Mr. Sheridan reprehended Mr. Courtenay for turning every thing that passed into ridicule, and for having introduced into the House a stile of reasoning, in his opinion, every way unsuitable to the gravity and importance of the subjects that came under their discussion. If they could not act with dignity, he thought they might at least debate with decency. He would not attempt to answer the hon. gentleman's arguments, for it was impossible seriously to reply to what, in every part, had an infusion of ridicule in it. Two of the hon. gentleman's similes, however, he must take notice of. The one was, his having insinuated that opposition were envious of those who basked in court sunshine, and desirous merely to get into their places. He begged to remind the hon. gentleman, that though the sun afforded a genial warmth, it also occasioned an intemperate heat that tainted and infected every thing it reflected on; that this excessive heat tended to corrupt as well as to cherish, to putrify as well as to animate, to dry and soke up the wholesome juices of the body politic, and turn the whole of it into one mass of corruption. If those therefore who sat near him did not enjoy so genial a warmth as the hon. gentleman, and those who like him kept close to the noble lord in the blue ribbon, he was certain they breathed a purer air, an air less infected and less corrupt. Another of the hon. gentleman's allusions was not quite a new one; he had talked of the machine of state, and of the drag-chain of opposition. He would only observe upon this, that a drag-chain was never applied but when a machine was going down hill, and then it was applied wisely. As to any thing else the hon. تو gentleman had said, he should not offer a reply, but should sit down with assuring the hon. gentleman, that the most serious part of his argument appeared to him to be the most ludicrous. Mr. Courtenay said, the hon. gentleman was an enemy to mirth and wit in any house but his own. He was stopped by the chair, on account of the personality of the expression. Mr. Charteris asked, whether it became a man (lord Maitland) whose father was a lord of police, to support a Bill, one object of which was to abolish all these offices? He also was told, that these personal allusions were disorderly. Mr. Dundas objected to the Bill in all its parts. The principle he condemned as being founded in injustice, in a violation of the contract which parliament had made with the crown; and by which the crown had given up considerations more than adequate to the sum of revenue which is now enjoyed. That revenue was therefore to be considered as positive freehold, and as a personal estate, held under the faith and solemnity of a bargain made upon equitable terms. He did not deny the power of parliamentary resumption; they certainly had the right, but he could not divide his ideas of their omnipotence, from those of their justice and discretion; and he conceived that they would at all times limit the exercise of their power within the boundaries of their wisdom. The consequences to be expected from this Bill, were not, in his opinion, adequate to the sum of injury, which it would commit in the principle. Economy was undoubtedly an object of the most desirable kind, and in our present circumstances it was to be coveted and courted by every individual. But he submitted it to the House, whether economy might not be purchased at too dear a rate; when, for the sake of saving 30 or 40,000l. a year, we were to lay violent hands upon property the most sacred, to abolish a number of places which had been created by the wisdom of our forefathers, to support the dignity and the lustre of the British crown; and which were now held by the first characters in the kingdom for services of a public nature, performed by themselves or by their ancestors. He then went into a detail on the several heads of the Bill, reprobating them all as improper to be complied with, but at the same time paying many compliments to the hon. gentleman who had introduced the Bill. Mr. Burke rose, and in a speech of the most beautiful and nervous argument, in which the hon. gentleman's astonishing powers were warmed and roused by the debate, he combated every assertion that had been made against the right, the expediency, or the advantage of the Bill proposed. He did not omit any particular of the smallest consequence that had been advanced, and declared, that he now saw the firm establishment of that influence, which it had been his wish and object to diminish; and he should consider the issue of this struggle as the triumph or the overthrow of parliamentary corruption. The House divided at twelve o'clock on the second reading: Debate in the Commons on the Omission of the word "Ireland" in the Mutiny Bill.] Feb. 20. Mr. Fox objected to the bringing up the report on the Mutiny Bill. He wished to have spoken upon the subject, and should have been glad to have had it re-committed. The Bill, as it passed the committee, he understood, had alterations in it, which directly overturned the constitution of this country, and gave up all right to supremacy over Ireland. He hoped, therefore, the Secretary at War would not press the bringing up the report then, but would adjourn it to the next open day, that the subject might be properly discussed. Mr. Jenkinson said he was of a contrary opinion from the hon. gentleman, respecting the importance of the alterations made in the Bill; but he had no objection to having every part of it fairly discussed. If, therefore, the hon. gentleman would let the report be brought up, he would consent that the third reading should be fixed for any day the hon. gentleman chose to appoint; and as the whole of the alteration the hon. gentleman could wish for, was the insertion of the word "Ireland," it might be done as well at the third reading of the Bill, as if it were re-committed. Mr. Burke said, so many and such great revolutions had happened of late, that he was not much surprised to hear the right So star would follow star, and light, light, Till all was darkness and eternal night. Mr. Fox said, the right hon. gentleman's proposal, of permitting the report to be brought up, and defer the consideration of it to the third reading, would reduce him to the dilemma of either moving that the word "Ireland" be inserted, or that the Bill stand as it did, a matter he was by no means ripe to propose. He wished to have many points discussed, which could only be done in a committee, he trusted, therefore, that the right hon. gentleman would come into his first proposition, because, before he could give it as his opinion, that the word "Ireland" should or should not be inserted, he wished to know the nature of the Irish Mutiny Act, the grounds upon which it went, the reasons for bringing it in, and the manner in which it had passed. Feb. 23. On the order of the day, for the farther consideration of the report on the Mutiny Bill, Mr. Fox rose agreeably to his intimation to the House, to move for the recommitment of this Bill, for the purpose of correcting a very material and important alteration that had taken place in it. He began a most ingenious and eloquent speech with stating, that if he had not been sensible of the difficulty and delicacy of his situation in the question which he was about to agitate, the observation that had fallen from a gentleman high in office, and an old, well-informed member of that House, would have opened his eyes, and convinced him that he was treading upon ground at once difficult and dangerous. The hon. gentleman had said, that the House ought not to attempt to do that which it could not fully and perfectly accomplish and had advised them rather to overlook the attack upon their dignity, by the presentment of a frivolous petition, than attempt a punishment which they could not enforce. This was his sentiment; it was at all times so, since he constantly was of opinion that prudence ought at all times to be consulted in measures of dig nity, and that they ought not to assert powers and authority at a season when their weakness was insufficient to support their claim. To agitate a question, therefore, respecting the powers of supremacy and superintendency, which this country asserted over a sister kingdom, at a time when that kingdom was disposed to militate the principle, must certainly be dangerous ground, and particularly so at a moment when the country was involved in a scene of complicated calamities, and was threatened with the most decisive ruin. He trusted that the House would forgive him, if, in the situation in which he then stood, he should take up a few minutes of their time in stating his sentiments on the question; since he knew from experience, that pains would be taken to misrepresent what he should say, in order to place him in a light unfavourable to the people of Ireland. The insidious pains that had been exerted on a former occasion to misrepresent both him and other gentlemen on the same side of the House, had not altogether failed of producing the intended effect, that of making them odious in the eyes of a people whom they loved and honoured. Difficult and dangerous as the situation was, he could not be induced from any apprehensions of personal consequence to permit a matter, charged with so much apparent danger, to pass unnoticed; at the same time he was not insensible to the unfavourable opinions of his fellow citizens. He had many reasons of friendship and affection for wishing to stand well in the eyes of the people of Ireland; and it was not his purpose to attack the claim which they had set up to legislative independency. They had not a friend in that House more warmly attached to their interests than himself. He wished to share the dangers and the alarming tendency of this Bill, both to the liberties of England and of Ireland; and he thought, that to be silent on such a subject would be tacitly to assist in taking away from the people, in order to enlarge the prerogative of the crown, in demolishing and subverting the liberties of the subject, in order to give the prince the means of becoming absolute. He had been held out, he was aware, as the enemy of Ireland, and the first lord of the Treasury had been declared to be the best friend of that country, though he had uniformly endea voured to support the rights and liberties of the Irish, and to give them all that they lord had positively denied them till they had armed themselves, and then by three specific propositions had given more to force than he had before denied to supplication. requested long ago, and which the noble | pire, for many great and, in his opinion, unanswerable reasons; and that in particular they ought to be careful never to give out of their own hands the power of making a Mutiny Bill. He should have been able to have advanced various reasons for retaining this privilege, the first and most powerful of which would have been a reason of apprehension, lest at some future moment of negligence or corruption, the parliament of Ireland, the assemblies of any of the colonies of America, or of any other of our foreign connections, should be tempted or prevailed on to grant a perpetual Mutiny Bill. If he had advanced this argument, he knew that it would have been immediately said of him, that he pushed speculation to excess, that he was chimerical and libellous in his ideas, for that no house of representatives could be so negligent or corrupt as to grant such a Bill, and no people so blind and supine as to bear it. Might he not, then, now say this, when it was not an argument of speculation but experience; and when the parliament of Ireland had actually granted a perpetual Mutiny Bill to the crown, by which they had vested the sovereign with the power of a standing army, unlimited in point of numbers or duration? In better times than these, Mr. Fox said, he should probably have entered upon the topic in a manner and in language widely different from that he meant to adopt on the present occasion. In better times than these, he should have talked of the superintending power of the British parliament over Ireland, and over every part of the British monarchy; but such was the miserable situation to which the King's servants had reduced this country, that the question was of a very delicate nature indeed, and it was by no means a matter easy to be handled with out disturbing what ought not to be disturbed, and without producing consequences, which every man, who wished well to his country, must wish to avoid. In the present question, he wished to speak and to act agreeably to the sentiments of some of the first and best men in the parliament of Ireland. The powers of supremacy and superintendency of this country, over her distant connections, were topics which he knew were at this time dangerous to be touched, but which had never been so at any former period of our history. Ten years ago it would not have been considered as improper or dangerous to talk on these topics, because then they were considered as necessary to the liberties and the well being of the empire. They were not only considered by that House in this light, but by every part of our extended empire they were allowed and acknowledged the same. It was the weakness of administration that had given rise to different ideas. America had never complained of these powers till her calm and sober requests were refused, and Ireland had not asserted the contrary till relief was denied when her grievances were manifest. But now the topics were dangerous to be touched. The weakness and the wantonness of ministers had introduced into that House difficulties and embarrassments, new and unprecedented, and he must yield to the disagreeable ne cessity of submission. But he might say, that if he had been speaking on this subject ten years ago, he should have found no difficulty in saying, that the superintendency and supremacy of this country was necessary to the liberty of the em There were, in the passing of this Bill, so granted, also several circumstances of a suspicious nature, which implied in pretty plain language, that it was imposed upon them by the cabinet of England. It ori ginated in the privy council of this country, and was sent over at a time when Ireland was loud in their claim' of independent legislation. The cabinet took advantage of the heat and the inflammation of Ireland, with respect to independence, and granted them the one thing, provided they would purchase it at the price of the other. They applied to the passions of the country; they seized on parliament in the moment of their warmth, and appealing, perhaps, to other passions than those of patriotic frenzy, they procured the consent of parliament to this, and received a perpetual standing army, in defiance of the Declaration of Rights. Many of the first members of the Irish parliament were sensible of the shock which this Bill gave at once to the liberties of Ireland and of England; and Mr. Grattan called upon the people of this country to stand forward and protect the liberties of both, by preventing the dangers and the effects of a law so violent ། and contradictory to the constitution. It was, therefore, a business in which both nations were equally affected, and in which they ought both equally to unite. For this was a species of conspiracy between the cabinet, and that part of the people of Ireland, who, anxious for independence, were intoxicated with the idea, and inclined to purchase it at any price. The conspiracy was to this effect: We will give you a Mutiny Bill of your own, if you, in return, will grant the crown a perpetual army. Nothing was demanded for this country in return for the favours which had been conferred; nothing in return for the free trade; nothing for the independence; but a provision was made to grant to the crown a perpetual power unwarranted by the constitution. In a moment of heat and clamour, when the minds of the whole country were agitated with the great question, and demanded an important concession, it was the duty of a minister to maintain the duty and the supremacy of the country, as far as was consistent with the liberties of the empire at large; he ought to have yielded to the necessity of the occasion with prudence, but not with intemperance; he ought not to have endangered the liberties of every part of the empire, in order merely to calm the intemperance of the moment. The hon. gentleman stated, that in his ideas on the Bill, he would advance no arguments that he had not taken from books written in Ireland, and by Irishmen. It was at once curious and alarming, that in the Irish Mutiny Bill, the preamble was left out which recited the Declaration of Rights. What could be the inducement of this omission? It contained no enacting law, and, consequently, was in no ways an attack on the legislative independence of Ireland. It was merely declaratory, and as the constitution and the rights in both countries were the same, the declaration of those rights was equally applicable to both. But it was found expedient to leave out the preamble, because the words, "Whereas it is illegal in the crown to keep a standing army in times of peace," were in direct contradiction to the Bill which had been granted. The danger of the Bill would appear in its full magnitude, when gentlemen reflected that all that was necessary now to the maintenance of a standing army in Ireland, unlimited in number and dura. tion, was the power of the purse. His [VOL. XXI.] Majesty was possessed of an hereditary revenue in Ireland, which had considerably increased, and was increasing. By that power, by the power of the hereditary revenue of Hanover, if he had any➡ and by borrowing from other states-if future kings might be tempted by their object to descend to that corrupt expedient, money might be procured to maintain an army that might threaten the very being and liberty of the constitution. He considered the statute of king William, commonly called the Disbanding Statute, reducing the number of troops to 12,000, and which by a late Act had been raised to 15,000, to be still in force with respect to this country, but it was not so agreeable to the present ideas of the people of Ireland, so that there was no sufficient restrictive power on ministers against maintaining in that country an army to any extent. But it might be argued, that without the power of the purse, the power of the army was nothing. begged to answer, that two checks were better than one; that it was much better to have the power of the purse, and the power of the army, than only to have one of those for our security; and this had been the prudence and the policy of Great Britain. She had kept them both in her own hands, and had granted them only for one year. But Ireland had now given a perpetual army, and nothing more was wanting than the money. To this he e; His present Majesty, thanks to his ministers, had no power on the continent from whom he could receive assistance but some future monarch, possessed of wise and active counsellors, might by the aids derived from foreign states raise and maintain 100,000 men in Ireland, and direct them to any achievement of despotism that ambition might frame; and there would be but little security to be found in the resistance that the country might be inclined to make in such a moment. The precaution and the defence were to be taken before the alarm was up, and in this alarm, it was not only Ireland, but England also, that was threatened. With such a prospect before them, it could not be imputed to any motives of attack on the question of legislative independence of Ireland, that this country should take warning, and prepare for its own security. In the same situation if Ireland stood with respect to England, mutatis mutandis, if England was to adopt a similar measure, and grant the crown an unlimited Mutiny [40] |