impossible under these circumstances to impute that kind of intention to this letter which the motion before the House tends to ascribe to it. crease of the riots, from the whole of which his lordship drew this general conclusion, that there was a regular plan which pervaded every operation of this apparently wild and immethodical multitude; that they had acted upon a settled system, had been led by some wiser agent than any of the ostensible conductors, and had some deeper source than the apparent cause which was generally thought to have produced them. Was it religion that had induced them to personal persecution against individuals, totally uninterested in the cause they pretended to be defending? Was it zeal for sacred duties that impelled them to the burning of New The Duke of Grafton complimented his lordship for the peculiar elegance of his diction, but contended against the general tenor of his argument, as void of point, and without application. The subject as it now stood before their lordships, was briefly thus-an official letter is brought before the House, the authenticity of which, from the nature of its introduction upon the table, remained no longer in the smallest degree doubtful. What, then, was the next object of consideration? Why, the tenor of that letter-read it-gate, and to the entire destruction of aland deduce its meaning from its terms. What did it say?-in plain words that the inhabitants of London should not be armed. What did the acknowledged law of the land say?-that they shall be armed. It is not therefore in your lordships' power, continued his grace, to misinterpret, and yet it is under the present circumstances totally out of your power to evade annexing some direct interpretation or other to this letter. You must either put an affirmative or a negative construction upon it-you cannot help it-the letter is officially before you the motion is also before you, the motion implies one particular construction upon the letter, and to that you must either agree or disAnd what will be the consequence of such a negative, but the establishment of a regular and clear precedent upon your Journals, that such infringements of the constitution may be committed with impunity, and that, so far from imposing punishment or censure upon the author of such violations, they were even honoured with public approbation, and defended not by the connivance, but the ostensible, declared interference of the legislature. What the noble lord had said, might have had some influence on the House, if they had not been so circumstanced at present, as to be under the necessity of giving a full, unequivocal opinion on the subject. But as there was no alternative left them but pronouncing either Aye or No to the fact, whether the clear purport of the letter in question was not unconstitutional, he did not perceive how these little palliative trifles, urged by the noble lord, could have any weight or influence whatever. sent. Lord Stormont took an extensive retrospect of the origin, and progressive in most every prison in the metropolis? Was it this pure and lenient inducement that had stimulated them to take arms, and arms of such a kind, not the arma quæ furor ministrat, but regular weapons of offence, peculiarly, and technically calculated to the purposes of that particular destruction which they actually perpetrated, and for which, in all human probability, they were previously instructed. Under these circumstances, when destruction derived new horrors from its consistence and regularity, the noble lord at the head of the army received a letter from the city, informing him, that several of the inhabitants had been sending their rusty arms to get them cleaned, and his lordship's advice and directions were solicited on this occasion; knowing, as the noble lord did from indisputable authority, that the causes of the tumults lay deeper than the general conjecture, would it have been wise, would it have been expedient in him to have issued a direction too limited, or to have contracted the powers of prevention which were then so loudly called for in every quarter? How could an intelligible discrimination have been made? If it could, it would not have been wise: the necessity demanded extensive and certain relief, and what the necessity demanded the necessity justified. It was somewhat peculiar, that the Lord Mayor had himself sent similar orders to some quarters of the city, only that instead of preventing the inhabitants from keeping arms, the tenure of his order was to deprive them of weapons. But though the conduct of the Lord Mayor was no justification of that of the noble lord who presided in the army, yet this inference was plainly deducible from this transaction, that the kind of inhabitants. alluded to in each order were the same, following. There could be no weight and that both had an eye to the lower or therefore in the argument, that it was disorderly, and to them only. But what written in a state of hurry and confusion; had infinite weight with him was this. it was written when the danger was over: How had col. Twisleton understood this it was therefore to be presumed that it order? To know that, was to learn only was the effect of deliberation. Was it, how he had acted in consequence. Had he asked, a cabinet letter, or merely lord he entered any sober citizen's house, and Amherst's? [Lord Amherst answered, that deprived him of the legal means of his de- it was his own letter.] It was, however, fence? No: he had exercised the order to be considered as a measure taken upon upon none but those that were, and must due consideration; and it was of so sehave been in the united opinion of all par- rious and alarming a nature, that he hoped ties just objects of it, and it was therefore in some shape or another it would be centhe strongest presumption in the world, sured by parliament. that the general tenor of the letter conveying that order, was not of the kind described by the noble duke, because if it had, the colonel, as an inferior officer, must have of necessity complied with its contents, which he certainly did not. His lordship concluded his speech with saying, that in his judgment the noble lord who was the object of the motion before the House, had acted not only in such a manner as to preclude any possible ground of just reprehension, but that he deserved the highest praise of his countrymen for the zeal, industry, and professional skill which he had demonstrated during the whole progress of these unhappy disturbances. He was therefore most strongly against the motion. Lord Ravensworth blamed administration for their unaccountable remissness. After seeing lord George Gordon's advertisement on Monday, it was astonishing that they could have neglected to take any step for the prevention of disturbance. They had not met upon it till Friday. He had, from a natural curiosity, which he inherited, and which often led him to make morning walks, and look into the world, attended the meeting in St. George'sfields, and followed them foot for foot; they appeared sober and serious, and a hundred men would have dispersed them. He traced them through their several routes, from day to day, till the Thursday following, which he considered as the day of their dissolution; and in all their ravages he could not conceive that there was any plan. It appeared to him, that they proceeded from outrage to outrage by the remissness of government. There appeared no frenzy of religion, but a mere thirst of pillage. It was government that seemed to have the frenzy. It was this frenzy that encouraged the depredations. But Thursday was the dissolution, and this letter was not written till the Monday Viscount Townshend justified lord Amherst. He said it was not to be conceived, that in the situation in which the noble lord was engaged, he could pay nice attention to his expressions; or that a man educated in the field should be acquainted with all the privileges in the Bill of Rights. He said, that he hoped the wreck of the late disturbances would not vanish like the "baseless fabric of a vision." He hoped that it would leave such an impression on their lordships, as would induce them to devise a plan for strengthening the police of this country and for superseding the necessity of calling in the assistance of the military when the civil power was insufficient. He said that ours was the most wretched and incompetent system of police of any country in Europe. Some time ago he had suggested a plan which had been ridiculed as the wildest reverie of political madness. It had since, however, been proved to be the best defence of this city. The plan was a well regulated militia. He begged that their lordships would attend to this, and make it the subject of a future discussion. The Duke of Richmond agreed that much, if not all, of the disturbance and calamity was owing to the remissness of ministers. Their conduct, in every instance, had been blameable. A Russian had been taken in the Sardinian chapel active in felony; he had been fully committed, but had been set at liberty by an order from a Secretary of State, to pay a very improper compliment to the Russian court. Notice was given of the design upon the Fleet 24 hours before the time; the prisoners had had leisure to remove all their goods and furniture, and yet no step was taken to prevent the conflagration. He had heard it said, and if so, it was a shameful conduct, that ministers had retained all the principal and eminent counsel in Westminster-hall, against the not to have been so brought forward. He, who thought himself warranted to urge a public accusation, was bound, his lordship declared, to accompany his charge with such proof as would admit of investigation, otherwise the innocent would be levelled with the guilty, and the bare assertion of any one man's having acted either erroneously or criminally, would go to the extent of a conviction, and thus every idea of justice would be banished, and all men would be liable to be aspersed at random in the cruellest manner, and in consequence of that aspersion, to have their characters destroyed, without having a chance even of proving their innocence. unfortunate lord George Gordon. He hoped for the dignity of justice that this was not true, and if it was, that government would be ashamed of it upon reflection, and correct their error. He now adverted to the doctrine published by lord Mansfield on a former day: that when acts of felony were committing or committed, all men, soldiers as well as common subjects, were justified in proceeding to force, without waiting for the intervention of a civil magistrate. He said, he very much approved of the doctrine in part; but it was liable to an objection which he wished to have cleared up: there was no occasion for the military to wait for the orders of the civil power. Did, then, the common law of the land justify the military for interfering, or was it an extraordinary exertion, which the necessity of the case only could justify, and which demanded an act of indemnity? No distinction was said to be made between the soldier and the ordinary man; they were both to make use of their discretion, and to go to the extremities of force if they saw occasion. Now, when he considered how different the power of the soldier and the ordinary man was, how different their situation, he could not help thinking that this was as completely a military country as any in Europe, and that the civil power was not sufficient to rein in and contract the military. The King could order them to use their force without waiting for the civil magistrate, and this was in the due course of common law; it was justified by the occasion, and required no subsequent indemnity. He begged their lordships to attend to the discussion of this point. The Lord Chancellor left the woolsack, and began with lamenting, that it had of late become a custom, in the course of a debate, for noble lords to take a very large and extensive field, and to indulge themselves in a most unlimited range of animadversion, throwing out loosely and without any sort of connection with the real subject of debate, a great variety of assertions, aimed at, and designed to bear hard upon particular individuals, who by being so generally and irregularly accused, had no possibility of making their own defence; and if they even attempted to answer the sort of attack that was made upon them, gave some degree of credit, and perhaps more than it really merited, to that, which, in point of parliamentary order, in point of formality, and, in point of candour, ought In the course of the present debate a great deal of loose assertion had mixed itself with the discussion of the motion; some of it very serious in its nature, some too trifling and frivolous to merit a moment's notice. One noble lord had said, that all the late disgraceful and dreadful outrages of the mob had been caused by the phrenzy of administration. This assertion he considered solely as a poetical stroke, a mere ornamental figure of speech, introduced for no other purpose, than that of giving a momentary grace to the argument of the noble lord who used it, and therefore regarding it as a flight of fancy, he should not attempt to follow it. [Lord Ravensworth said aloud, "let the noble and learned lord treat it as he pleases, it is a truth, and I declare it to be a truth."] The noble lord who used the figure, his lordship said, declared it to be a truth, in answer to which, he could only say, that if it were, it was so strong-pinioned a truth, that it required the most eagle-eye'd genius to look up to it, and that it soared so high, and lost itself so totally in the clouds, that it was altogether incompatible with, and beyond the reach of, an ordinary understanding to come up with it. An assertion, of a more material and a much more dangerous sort, was that of the noble duke, relative to the Russian officer, who had been apprehended in the chapel of the Sardinian ambassador. Surely, a matter so commented upon, as the noble duke had thought it becoming him to comment upon this fact, should have been mentioned more guardedly. The noble duke did not pretend that he spoke from his own knowledge upon this subject, neither had he given the House any thing like a reason, whereby they could decide whether his information was authentic or not. It did so happen that he had heard some and before the fact of the Fleet prison having been burnt, was urged as a matter of accusation against the noble lord who was entrusted with the command of the army, it was incumbent on the noble duke to prove, that application for a guard had been made to the noble lord, either directly or indirectly, and that he had refused or neglected to comply with the requisition. Having shewn that however true either of the assertions of the duke of Richmond, namely, that relative to the Russian officer thing of the same story, but it had reached his ears very differently. As far as the relation stated to him went, the Russian officer was an innocent man, and had from the mere impulse of a misplaced curiosity wandered into the Sardinian ambassador's chapel, where he had been seized by the soldiery. Upon enquiry it was found, that the Russian had done nothing illegal, that he was a man of rank, well known to the ambassador, and such a person as was not liable to any imputation of a criminal na. ture. All this, his lordship said, he un-apprehended in the Sardinian ambassador's derstood came out on his public examination, when nothing like a charge being brought forward against him, he was set at liberty. If the fact were so, it certainly was not like the fact described by the noble duke, and therefore he wished the noble duke had not stated it in the manner in which he had brought it forward. chapel, and that relative to the Fleet prison might be, they were not so stated as to carry with them proofs of their foundation, and were liable to much challenge and controversy; his lordship took notice of the doubt which his grace had expressed relative to the military having been directed by the order of council to act at their discretion in the suppression of the late outrages, and without waiting for the orders of the civil magistrate. He said, nothing was more difficult, nothing more imprudent than the discussion of abstract With regard to another assertion of the noble duke, that relative to the Fleet prison, it had not come to his knowledge. But he should have imagined, that had the case been what the noble duke described it to have been, government would un-principles. To debate any abstract prodoubtedly have taken some measures for the prevention of the mischief which ensued. If the mob had really given twenty four hours notice of their intention to set fire to the prison, it must have occurred to the warden or deputy warden of the Fleet, that it was their duty to give immediate notice of what happened, to the particular court, to the jurisdiction of which the Fleet prison was liable, and to which it was an appurtenance, and as the courts of law were sitting on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 6th and 7th of June, such intimation he presumed would have been given, when the warden and his deputy would have received instruction from the proper authority how to act, and in case the court had thought the menace of sufficient import, application would have been made to government for a military guard to prevent the mischief. It did not appear from what the noble duke had said, that the warden or his deputy had stated to the proper court their terrors arising from the circumstance of the mob's having threatened to set fire to the prison, neither had it appeared that any application had been made to government for protection, either by the court of law which superintended the jurisdiction of the Fleet prison, by the warden of that prison, or his deputy, or from any quarter whatever. These were necessary gradations in the business, + position was always dangerous; though it could not possibly do any good, it might lead to much mischief, and more especially where the abstract proposition was grounded upon a variety of extraordinary events, which had occurred in a case of singular emergency. With regard to the late use of the military, surely there was not a man who had been a witness to the scandalous outrages which had alarmed, terrified, and disgraced the cities of London and Westminster within the last fortnight, who did not rejoice that they had been employed, and who was not willing to join his tribute of praise to the general heap, and acknowledge in terms of gratitude, their humane, prudent, and successful conduct. As to the noble duke's doubt, how far the principles of the constitution, and the law of the land, warranted the manner of their being employed, that matter had been discussed on Monday, and if he was to search all the law books that ever were published, in order to pick and cull out the strongest and most fit words and phrases, he should not be able to form an argument more apt on the one hand, nor more correct and distinct on the other, than that which the noble and learned lord (Mansfield) had delivered in the course of that day's debate. The learned lord had left him very little to add upon the subject. Most clearly, in all cases of felony, it was the duty of every man, let his professional character be what it might, to aid and assist in apprehending the felon. Every man likewise, was bound to keep the peace, and though the conservation of it was primarily vested in the crown, and thence branched out into various inferior hands, in cases of public outrage and tumult, it was the duty of all to assist in quelling it, to apprehend the rioters, and to deliver them over to the officers of jus tice; and in case of resistance, or on finding that they could not stop the outrage by any other means, after it had got to the length of pulling down houses, destroying property, or assaulting or wounding his Majesty's peaceable subjects, then, and in that case, all present were warranted to proceed to extremity, and use such weapons as they were furnished with, for the destruction of the rioters. Every man had a right to oppose force to force, on that first principle of the law of nature, as well as of the law of the land, self-defence; so, the military, when present, individually as private persons, or collectively, under military command, if they were insulted and assaulted by being pelted with brick bats, stones, &c. had a right to repel the violence, and defend themselves. And in doing this, the military did nothing, but what every man else was warranted by law to do, because the military, in every part of their conduct, in such case as he had stated, were bound to obey the law; and if they exceeded it, were liable to actions of trespass, &c. just the same as any other persons who wore brown coats, and were not soldiers. In all cases of high treason, insurrection, and rebellion within the realm, it was the peculiar office of the crown, to use the most effectual means of resisting and quashing such insurrection and rebellion, and punishing the instruments of it. But the King, any more than the private person, could not supersede the law, nor act contrary to it, and therefore he was bound to take care that the means he used for putting an end to the rebellion and insurrection, were legal and constitutional, and the military employed for that purpose, were every one of them amenable to the law, because no word of command from their particular officer, no direction from the war office, or order of council, could warrant or sanction their acting illegally. In the rebellion of 1715, and 1745, it was in their lordships' recollection, what were [VOL. XXI.] the measures then pursued, not but he saw he was verging towards the discussion of a situation very different from that in which the late disturbances put the me tropolis, but yet their cases were alike in their respective degrees, and the late insurrection was similar to the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, as far as it went. The outrages had begun first, with a riotous assembling of the people; from such unlawful assembly, the mob proceeded to personal insult, and violence was offered to the members of both Houses, in their way to parliament; thus several were exceedingly ill-treated in coming down to do their duty as individuals composing the two great legislative bodies, and others were totally prevented from coming down at all. From these beginnings the mob proceeded to acts of felony, to the violent entry of private houses, to the destroying the furniture, and setting fire in some cases to the dwellings themselves; their daring increased in proportion as the mischief they had done accumulated; and having lifted the axe of outrage and violence against several of the great branches of the King's government, they were aiming it at the root of the tree itself, and by their having burnt the public prisons and attacked the Bank of England, had already begun their endeavours to destroy the government; it was high time, therefore, for the executive power to interfere in that manner which was most likely to prove effectual in order immediately to quell the outrages, and to bring those offenders to condign punishment, who had busied themselves in the perpetration of the various felonies and treasons that had fixed a national disgrace on the country. Under these circumstances it was, and after it had been in vain endeavoured to quell the riots by the intervention and authority of the civil power, that the military were employed, and therefore the case being so far similar to the rebellion in 1715 and 1745, that there was an actual insurrection, that the laws of the land were trampled under foot and the King's government opposed; the military, as well as every man in a brown coat, were justi fied in the commission of such trespasses and acts of homicide, for the purpose restoring the public peace, as were justifiable in the years 1715 and 1745, for the purpose of putting an end to the rebellions then on foot in the kingdom. Not that he meant to say, that either the soldiers individually or collectively, any more than the [3 B] of |