quence of triennial corruption, triennial drunkenness, triennial idleness, triennial law-suits, litigations, prosecutions, triennial phrenzy, of society dissolved, industry interrupted, ruined; of those personal hatreds, that will never be suffered to soften; those animosities and feuds, which will be rendered immortal those quarrels, which are never to be appeased; morals vitiated and gangrened to the vitals? I think no stable and useful advantages were ever made by the money got at elections by the voter, but all he gets is doubly lost to the public; it is money given to diminish the general stock of the community, which is in the industry of the subject. I am sure that it is a good while before he or his family settle again to their business. Their heads will never cool; the temptations of elections will be for ever glittering before their eyes. They will all grow politicians; every one, quitting his business, will choose to enrich himself by his vote. They will all take the gauging-rod; new places will be made for them; they will run to the Custom-house quay, their looms and ploughs will be deserted.

The charge therefore of elections ought| never to be lost sight of, in a question concerning their frequency; because the grand object you seek is independence. Independence of mind will ever be more or less influenced by independence of fortune; and if, every three years, the exhausting sluices of entertainments, drinkings, open houses, to say nothing of bribery, are to be periodically drawn up and renewed; if government-favours, for which now, in some shape or other, the whole race of men are candidates, are to be called for upon every occasion, I see that private fortunes will be washed away, and every, even to the least, trace of independence, borne down by the torrent. I do not seriously think this constitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive five triennial elections. If you are to fight the battle, you must put on the armour of the ministry; you must call in the public, to the aid of private money. The expence of the last election has been computed (and I am persuaded that it has not been over-rated) at 1,500,000l. ;— three shillings in the pound more in the land tax. About the close of the last parliament, and the beginning of this, several agents for boroughs went about, and I remember well that it was in every one of their mouths" Sir, your election will cost you 3,000l. if you are independent; but if the ministry supports you, it may be done for two, and perhaps for less," and indeed, the thing spoke itself. Where a living was to be got for one, a commission in the army for another, a lift in the navy for a third, and Custom-house offices scattered about without measure or number, who doubts but money may be saved? The Treasury may even add money; but indeed it is superfluous. A gentleman of 2,000l. a year, who meets another of the same fortune, fights with equal arms; but if to one of the candidates you add a thousand a year in places for himself, and a power of giving away as much among others, one must, or there is no truth in arithmetical demonstration, ruin his adversary, if he is to meet him and to fight with him every third year. It will be said, I do not allow for the operation of character; but I do; and I know it will have its weight in most elections; perhaps it may be decisive in some. But there are few in which it will prevent great expences. The destruction of independent fortunes will be the consequence on the part of the candidate. What will be the conse

[VOL. XXI.]

So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, though those of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction, bribery, bread and stage plays, to debauch them. We have the inflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them. There the contest was only between citizen and citizen; here you have the contests of ambitious citizens of one side, supported by the crown, to oppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambition on the other. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge of elections, and the monstrous expence of an unremitted courtship to the people. I think, therefore, the independent candidate and elector may each be destroyed by it; the whole body of the community be an infinite sufferer; and a vicious ministry the only gainer. Gentlemen, I know, feel the weight of this argument; they agree that this would be the consequence of more frequent elections, if things were to continue as they are. But they think the greatness and frequency of the evil would itself be a remedy for it; that, sitting but for a short time, the member would not find it worth while to make such vast expences, while the fear of their constituents will hold them the more effectually to their duty.

To this I answer, that experience is full [2R]

ficulties of its own, and which are all of them very essential alterations in the constitution. This seems very irregular and unusual. If any thing should make this a very doubtful measure, what can make it more so than that, in the opinion of its advocates it would aggravate all our old inconveniencies in such a manner as to require a total alteration in the constitution of the kingdom? If the remedies are proper in a triennial, they will not be less so in septennial elections; let us try them first; see how the House relishes them; see how they will operate in the nation; and then, having felt your way and prepared against those inconveniences

The shortness of time, in which they are to reap the profits of iniquity, is far from checking the avidity of corrupt men; it renders them infinitely more ravenous. They rush violently and precipitately on their object; they lose all regard to decorum. The moments of profits are precious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It was so in the great plague at Athens; every symptom of which (and this its worst symptom amongst the rest) is so finely related by a great historian of antiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. It appears in soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render the life of man much shorter than it is, would, I am satisfied, find the surest receipt for increasing the wickedness of our nature.

Thus, in my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have the following ill, effects; it would make the member more shamelessly and shockingly corrupt; it would increase his dependence on those, who could best support him at his election; it would wrack and tear to pieces the fortunes of those, who stood upon their own fortunes and their private interest; it would make the electors infinitely more venal; and it would make the whole body of people, who are, whether they have votes or not, concerned in elections, more lawless, more idle, more debauched: it would utterly destroy the sobriety, the industry, the integrity, the simplicity of all the people; and undermine, I am much afraid, the deepest and best laid foundations of the commonwealth.

Those, who have spoken and written upon this subject without doors, do not so much deny the probable existence of these inconveniences, in their measure, as they trust for their prevention to remedies of various sorts, which they propose. First, a Place Bill; but if this will not do, as they fear it will not, then they say we will have a rotation, and a certain number of you shall be rendered incapable of being elected for ten years. Then for the electors, they shall ballot; the members of parliament also shall decide by ballot; a fifth project is the change of the present legal representation of the kingdom. On all this I shall observe, that it will be very unsuitable to your wisdom to adopt the project of a Bill, to which there are objections, insuperable by any thing in the Bill itself, upon the hope that those objections may be removed by subsequent projects; every one of which is full of dif

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The hon. gentleman sees, that I respect the principle, upon which he goes, as well as his intentions and his abilities. He will believe, that I do not differ from him wantonly, and on trivial grounds. He is very sure, that it was not his embracing one way, which determined me to take the other. I have not, in newspapers, to derogate from his fair fame with the nation, printed the first rude sketch of his Bill with ungenerous and invidious comments. I have not, in conversations industriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches of this House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of its muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those, who start up, three at a time, and fall upon and strike at him with so much eagerness, that our daggers hack one another in his sides. My hon. friend has not brought down a spirited imp of chivalry to win the first achievement and blazon of arms on his milk-white shield in a field listed against him; nor brought out the generous offspring of lions, and said to them-not against that side of the forest, beware of that-here is the prey where you are to fasten your paws; and seasoning his unpractised jaws with blood, tell him-this is the milk, for which you are to thirst hereafter. furnish at his expence no holiday, nor

We

Debate in the Commons on the Exclusion of Strangers from the Gallery.] May 18. Mr. Hartley complained of the gallery being shut against strangers, and said, the people of England were at this time peculiarly interested in the conduct of their representatives, and that it was neither fair, nor decent, to shut them out, and prevent them from hearing the reasons given both for and against the measures proposed by gentlemen of either side of the House. He argued this point in a very handsome way on the part of the people, and put the impression, which shutting the doors made upon the minds of their constituents, in various points of view, each tending to shew, that the measure was likely to produce a bad effect without doors, without answering one good purpose within.

Sir Richard Sutton defended the Speaker by declaring, that there was a standing order against the admission of strangers, and that any member had a right to move to have it enforced. A member had lately moved to have it read, and that being the case, strangers were necessarily excluded.

Mr. Hartley said, he was not at all obliged to the hon. baronet for his information, because he was as wise before as he was then. He was perfectly aware of the standing order, but as that had been made long since, and was as potent all the session as just at present, he wished to know why strangers were now excluded, and he had hoped the Speaker would have been so kind as to have informed him, as it was from his authority only, that he wished to learn any thing respecting the orders of that House.

The Speaker said, there was a standing order of the House against the admission of any strangers, that an hon. member had lately moved to have that order read, and that being the case, however much inclined he might himself be to the contrary, he was reduced to the necessity of ordering the gallery to be shut.

Mr. Temple Luttrell strenuously maintained the cause of the strangers, and said the world would not be satisfied with such an excuse as the standing order, nor admit that as a reason, because as the order was not inforced before, they would not be inclined to think there could be any greater reason for its being inforced now, and would rather think the true cause for thus taking it up, was a consciousness that the business in which the House then were employed, was of too dark a kind to meet the eye of day. He shewed the bad consequences likely to attend the shutting out of strangers, if the measure was persisted in, observing that their transactions would be misrepresented, and the people grossly misled. He pledged himself, however, in case the order was persisted in, to take care that the public should know what was done within those walls, and said, that if one order of the House was inforced, to the prejudice of their constituents, he would move for the inforcing of another, by which means the Speaker would be obliged to come down to the House at ten in the morning, and the business be infinitely longer in its progress than it was at present. He concluded with asking the Speaker why strangers had been let in all the former part of the session? If it was contrary to order now, it had been equally contrary to order all along.

The Speaker rose a second time, and said, the reason why he had not ordered strangers to be excluded before was, because he had conceived it to be the sense of the House that they should be admitted; that it was his duty to attend to the sense of the House; that they were masters of their own orders, but while they remained upon the book, he was bound to inforce them whenever he was called upon so to do.

Debate on sundry Clauses in Mr. Burke's Establishment Bill.] The House resolved itself into a committee on Mr. Burke's Establishment Bill, and proceeded to debate the clause for abolishing the several offices of master of the buck hounds, fox hounds, and harriers. After