at the College of Physicians. There was one part of the complaint which never occurred to the noble lord. He touched upon the landed interest; he touched upon the interest of the boroughs; and most logically concluded, that there was no complaint against either; but it never entered into his mind that the minister would have too much interest with them all when assembled in the house of commons. Here he was reminded by the words of a person whom it was hardly regular for him to quote, as a reverend prelate, who had said that the parliament belongs to the crown. If that be so, he would say that he would not debate the remedy, whatever it be, for he was ready to say that the house of commons would be better in any hands than in the hands of the crown. But the noble lord had said, "Show me that the close boroughs have done more harm than popular places." He did not know what the noble lord meant by harm. He could show him that the proprietors of these close boroughs had acted on a system which must be cut up by the roots, or this country cannot stand. He would say that they had bought boroughs, and afterwards voted away the money and the rights of the people, as if both had been their own absolute property. That there had been a man in that house who had seven or eight seats in it; that he was connected with the minister, and that, without one foot of land in Ireland, he was made an Irish peer. He could show him persons who could not, indeed, buy men and sell them, because that was not yet to be done, but who bought and sold boroughs, and with them sold the dearest interests of the people. The noble lord, in part of his speech, put the close boroughs out of the question; indeed he would have acted judiciously in never taking notice of them, for they could not be of any service to his argument. But it seemed that ministers had met with support in the counties. He knew they had; and it was a thing much to be lamented, that men of large wealth should quit the nearest and dearest connections they had, for the purpose of following the dictates of a profligate minister; and, before any justice could be done to that part of the case, the noble lord must have counted all the coronets that have been given away by the present minister. Men who voted away all public principle for favours of this kind, were the most profligate and contemptible characters in the kingdom. What, if a county member knows that his name is entered in the pocket-book of

the secretary of the treasury as a person to be called to the other house, and votes anything that is desired of him in order to obtain that distinction ?-he knew many of that description: they were called men of honour, but they were the reverse of it; they were enemies to the nation in which they lived. They pretended to vote for the cause of justice, and humanity, and religion, when, in point of fact, they were only laughing at the public, and voting away their rights to serve their own ambition. That was a great reason why the people called for a parliamentary reform. It was to a conviction that most public men have nothing in view but their own personal advantage, was owing all the mischief that had lately happened to our service. It was upon that principle the sailors and the soldiers reasoned. The house would set them a better example, by reforming parliament, if they had a spark of honour in them.

With regard to the question, as it had been argued by the chancellor of the exchequer, nothing was said upon the present representation of the people. The noble lord had fallen foul of all the doctrines which the chancellor of the exchequer had ever maintained upon reform, and he was sorry the chancellor of the exchequer had left the house; were he present he most likely would have saved him a good deal of trouble in replying to many parts of the speech of the noble lord.

A great deal had been said about throwing the country into confusion. The minister and his advocates affected to dread the principle of the present measure, because it seemed to proceed upon the Rights of Man, and because they said they were principles which had been adopted in the French revolution, and which principles led to so much horror. In this respect he must deny that the horrors of the French revolution were produced by the Rights of Man. There were bloody calamities in France after the French revolution; nobody disputed it; but that these calamities were produced by these principles he denied. There was not so much as one individual who was concerned either in writing or publishing any of these principles concerned in any of the massacres in that country; and here he must repeat what he said on former occasions, that excess of conduct was the natural effect of all revolutions when men shook off their slavery. When men are under the necessity of recovering their liberty by force, they are naturally intemperate. Man was not born to have pro

perty in men; and if he persists in maintaining that he has, there is no wonder when he falls a victim to his own iniquity and presumption. This ought to be a lesson to us. If the question was put to him, who were the real authors and abettors of these massacres, he should place certain despots in the front of his accusation.

It was impossible for anything to be more unjust than the view which the minister had thought fit to take of all the reformers to-night: he asked the public to look upon them all as so many masked traitors. He denied the justice of that description of them. That there might be among them some men of mischievous intentions, no man would dispute; and when was any great public measure proposed, in which some such characters would not mingle? but that they were considerable, either in number or talents, was what he did not believe. That he was no friend to such persons, but would, on the contrary, endeavour to detect them, he was entitled, by what he had said this day on another subject, to ask the house to believe. But when the minister took the whole complexion of a meeting from the intemperate speeches of a few intoxicated or superficial individuals who might casually attend a public meeting, it proved what he had already said of the minister, that he was ignorant of the nature of a popular assembly; how could he be otherwise? He never entered any assembly except the house of commons, and that was the reason why he could not make a distinction between the honest intentions of the mass of the people, and the absurdities of a few.

But the minister had endeavoured to make a great deal of the difference that subsisted between the reformers; and he had said, that all that had been urged upon reform, when he was a party to it, was harmony itself compared to the discordance of late meetings. He thought that there was no harm in every man speaking openly what he thought upon the subject of parliamentary reform; he wished every man's heart to be legible in these times of danger; ingenuous openness was always, and at all times, much better than concealment. He knew not why universal suffrage should have been brought into such contempt; he remembered at some meetings signing his name with the Duke of Richmond in favour of universal suffrage and annual parliaments. He considered it as the right of every man to propose that, if he thought fit; the expediency of such a plan was

matter for discussion and deliberation; if any other plan was better, there was no reason why it should not be preferred; but it seemed now, he confessed he knew not why, to be treated as a species of treason; he was not at all ashamed of having signed it; there was no secrecy about the matter; it was published in all the newspapers: he thought this plan a better one; he thought also that the mass of the people would be satisfied with it; but that every man who thought universal suffrage the best plan, must necessarily wish for anarchy and confusion, was a thing which he would not admit. Some men claimed popularity, as well as other advantages, from their rank; but they were deceived if they thought they could prosecute others for following their opinions without being despised by the public.

It had been stated, that the number of those who wished for a reform in parliament was small. He did not believe it. He believed that the whole body of dissenters wished for a reform without pulling down the fabric of the constitution. He believed, also, that the mass of the people of Scotland had the same wish; for, at present, the whole forty-five were returned by men who had, some of them, not an inch of land in that part of the island.

He was not much of an egotist, nor was he, out of that house, an arrogant man. He was almost ashamed of the praise the minister had bestowed upon him to-day for merely doing his duty, when he spoke of the sailors. He hoped and he trusted, that much calamity as this country feels, we shall never bend our necks to an insolent foe; but will, if necessary, to a man, defend our rights with our lives. He must be allowed to say another word about himself, as it was now necessary. He had been accused of wishing to join with those who wish for anarchy. He would ask those who charged him with so foul a wish, what temptation he had to do so? What provocation had he to excite any opposition against the aristocracy of this land or against its monarchy? He had possessed, at one time, some confidence from the monarch, during the time he filled an office of considerable trust. He had been honoured with the confidence of an

illustrious personage. He had been treated with civility by many of the first families in this country. He knew no occasion he had to regret the attention he had received from that house. He had no desire to break a lance with any orator in any other

place. He, therefore, expected credit for sincerity, when he declared that he supported this motion from his heart, because he thought in his conscience it tended to restore to the people some of the purity of their original excellent constitution, and to save the state from ruin.

The house divided; for the motion 93; against it 258.

MAY 30.

NEW BANK.

Sir William Pulteney moved for leave to bring in a bill for erecting a new bank, in the event of the Bank of England not resuming its payments on the 24th of June next.

MR. SHERIDAN said, he had always desired to see public credit re-established in the person of the bank; and, therefore, he had hitherto opposed the ideas of the worthy baronet upon that subject. But he did not find, by the arguments he had heard, that any idea was entertained that the bank was to resume its payments in cash. He differed from the worthy baronet as to the first duty of the bank. That hon. member looked upon the bank as having been instituted chiefly for the purpose of accommodating government. He wanted a public bank that would proceed on the narrow ground of looking to itself, and to itself only; and he was persuaded, that until that was the case, there would be no such thing in this country as a paper circulation founded upon real credit. If the bank did not open on the 24th of June, he saw no reason, from anything that had been said tonight, for hoping that they would open at all. It was a farce to call that a bank which was never to give for paper anything but paper. It was admitted that the bank had, with great facility, assisted government from time to time.. Now, if the bank was to be considered as bound to continue that assistance, the distresses of the government must continue to be the distresses of the bank. But he maintained that this was a practice which was against the general principle on which the bank ought to act, and on which alone it ought to be supported. The bank should say this" We know nothing of the distresses of government, we look to the notes which we have issued, and we are determined to pay them when they become due." When we had an issue of paper, it was ridiculous to think of confidence in that paper upon any principle but that of its being paid when it