of men can be found of so base a nature as to undertake an office so degrading. But, to what a trying situation must the person so appealing be exposed! If the spies of government say they doubt his word, he is then to be examined upon oath; and evidence may also be brought on oath to contradict his declaration. To what a situation, I say, is he then reduced! Either he must incur the suspicion of being a perjured man, so strong are the temptations held out to him-or, if he makes a fair avowal of his circumstances, and says his income amounts to £200 (without taking into account the accidental circumstances that may impair it), should it come to be impaired, and the next year amount but to £150-either he must appeal, and divulge the decay of his circumstances, or he must hold up a false front to those with whom he deals; and, should he fail, be accused of having held out false pretences, and have upheld his credit by fraud. If he comes forward, and makes this discovery of his situation, he is accessary to his own ruin; and, if he shrinks from this discovery, he may forfeit his character for integrity. Upon the whole, if you follow up the principle, you must get at all actual property. To this it must ultimately go: but then it would be found a mean and narrow principle, and principally arising from narrow prejudices. If you attempt to call on the highly opulent, whose income may exceed £20,000 per annum, but who spend comparatively little, how are you to ascertain the proportion they should pay? It cannot be done; and if it could, the attempt would be impolitic and unjust. The right hon. gentleman has said, that he wished he could get at the hoards of the miser; that misers ought not to be permitted to delight in pressing their bags under their pillows, without coming forward with their due proportion for the protection which the state gives to their treasure. If such treasures had never been actively employed in industrious commerce, it might be proper to derive a resource from them; but who would toil for an income, if they were not permitted to spare or expend it, according to their own notions, and in the same spirit with which it was amassed? Such a measure is sacred, and not to be touched. The revenue, it is true, depends, in a great measure, on the liberal, or rather prodigal, expenditure of the opulent; but if there is permitted to be no saving, and all must spend to a proportionate extent, then you enforce a maxim destructive of the vital principle of all in

dustry and prosperity. To the sacred principle of saving, I cannot but profess myself a friend, though the habits of my own life have been little regulated on it; and to encroach on this sacred principle, will be utterly to extinguish the spirit which enlivens industry, and from which all private and public wealth can alone be derived. However the right hon. gentleman may be disposed, from the general opposition with which he sees the country receive his proposal, to give a variety of modifications to it, there is no possible modification which can reconcile me to its adoption.

The house divided; for the second reading 175; against it 50.

INCREASED ASSESSMENT OF TAXES.

The order of the day for the third reading of this bill was read.

MR. SHERIDAN rose and said, the hon. gentleman (Mr. Martin) who has just sat down, has called for more explanations of what other gentlemen have advanced than I ever recollect to have heard in this house. In candour I must conclude that the hon. gentleman really wanted information upon the points which he affected not to understand; and that where he did misunderstand or mistake the arguments of others, he did not mean to be guilty of wilful misrepresentation. The speech of the hon. gentleman, however, called upon so many members to explain the points upon which he has commented, that I have been under the necessity to give way to them. I now rise, thus early in the debate, and I feel some satisfaction in reflecting that the adjournment which has taken place gives me an opportunity of presenting myself when the attention of the house was awake, because, had I proceeded last night, I might have found the hon. gentleman (Mr. Martin) wearied and exhausted, and disposed, perhaps, to give me a hint to sit down before I had finished my argument. I have listened to the speech of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Perceval); a speech of great talent, great ingenuity, and considerable vehemence. The sentiments which it contains seemed to be so much in unison with the feelings of those around him, that I flatter myself that the approbation with which it has been received may contribute to shorten the debate, and to supersede the necessity of making long speeches from that side of the

house. It was remarkable, however, that the hon. gentleman, amidst a variety of matter on which he descanted, cautiously abstained from touching upon the real question before the house. Many of the topics which he brought forward, I am ready to admit, were fairly introduced, and perfectly regular in parliamentary debate. While I admit the right of the hon. gentleman to argue the subject in his own way, it perhaps might have been better had he altogether abstained from certain points; or, to use a phrase which has become very fashionable since the introduction of the present bill, had he modified his attack upon my right hon. friend. The hon. gentleman never attempted to show that the right hon. gentleman below him was the fittest person to administer the affairs of this country, that he was the ablest minister for the conduct of war, and the most proper person to negotiate with success. The whole scope of his speech was merely to show that the right hon. gentleman was placed in the revenue to bar my right hon. friend, as if it necessarily followed that he alone could be the successor of the present minister. Supposing, as he did, for the sake of argument, that my right hon. friend was qualified to negotiate with a better prospect of success than the chancellor of the exchequer, he said it would be incumbent upon the house, as a preliminary step, to treat with their negotiator. He thought that my right hon. friend could not be invested with that character without danger to the country. What were the grounds upon which this assertion was founded? He accuses my right hon. friend of having considered men as innocent who were acquitted by the verdict of a jury, and having argued upon this acquittal, that there was no proof of the conspiracy of which they were accused. He accuses him of having said, on the discussion to the treason and sedition bills, that resistance would be a question, not of morality, but of prudence. Above all, he founded his apprehension upon words which he supposes to have been lately used by my right hon. friend, that he would take no share in any administration without a total, fundamental, and radical reform. The hon. gentleman has made a very pretty play upon these words. I cannot but suspect, however, that the hon. gentleman, who has been celebrated for epigram, has put these words into the mouth of my right hon. friend, merely for the sake of the point with which he has contrasted them. He finds out that the reform so broadly

stated will not be a total reform; that the fundamental reform will not touch the foundation; and that the radical reform will be confined to the branches without descending to the root. This epigrammatic wit, however, is founded entirely upon the words which the hon. gentleman has purposely added to the expression to which he alludes. They were not used by my right hon. friend. The expression he employed, and which has become more conspicuous from its being made the subject of particular thanks in certain resolutions lately advertised, was that he would take no share in any administration, without a radical reform in the representation, and of the abuses of the present system. Such was the expression of my right hon. friend, and the words which the hon. gentleman has added into the bargain, were merely introduced to point a sentence, and to enliven his speech. The hon. gentleman considers the conduct of those whom he represents as unfit successors to the present men in power, as calculated to encourage the jacobins, and to forward the views of the French. These certainly are formidable evils, but the hon. gentleman quickly discovers some ground of consolation amidst the dangers which he apprehends. He thinks that my right hon. friend would retract the declarations he has made, that he would renounce the principles he has avowed, and that, in office, he would not act upon the professions he held before he came into power. On what part of the conduct of my right hon. friend he founds this assertion, I am at a loss to conjecture. What are the professions made when out of office which in power he has belied? True it is, that such conduct is not unusual with statesmen. True it is, that there have been men who have forfeited such pledges; who have said that there could be no salvation for this country without a radical reform (for this, beyond dispute, was the expression of the right hon. gentleman opposite); who have maintained that no honest man could undertake the administration of this country without that reform; and have, like him, abandoned the words and principles they once held, and resisted, by all the power of corruption, the cause which they laboured to promote. With the right hon. gentleman, the type and image of apostacy before his eyes, it perhaps was natural that the hon. gentleman should consider professions as made only to be renounced. When he reflected that the present minister had not only abandoned the principles

he professed, and violated the faith he pledged to the public, but had become the most zealous persecutor of those whom he had convinced by his arguments, and influenced by his example, there was no wonder that he should distrust professions, and ascribe but little sincerity to the declarations of statesmen. The hon. gentleman apprehends that many dreadful consequences would ensue were this radical reform to be caried into effect. What that radical change of system is to be, the hon. gentleman professes to be ignorant. For my own part I can say, that no man can be more decidedly hostile than I am, to any change of system that could lead to a change of the ancient established constitu tion of this government. But I will tell the hon. gentleman what has been the consequence of that change of system, which has been introduced into the constitution of this country. If any minister of brilliant talents, of splendid endowments, but actuated by principles of the most boundless and colossal ambition, raised up by influence, supported by corruption, should set at nought the rules of parliament, violate the act of appropriation, raise money without the authority of this house, and send it out of the country without the consent of parliament; if he has transgressed the constitution with impunity, if his criminality is suffered to pass even without rebuke-this is nothing less than a radical change of system. If by his folly and incapacity he has raised discontents-if by the burdens which he has imposed to support an impolitic and ruinous system, he has alienated the minds of the people from his government-if to suppress the opposition which such a state of things must naturally produce, he has had recourse to military force, and covered the country with barracks, in defiance of the constitution -such practices constitute a radical change of system. If he has distinguished his administration by severity unknown to the laws of this country-if he has introduced new codes of treason and sedition-if he has doomed men of talents to the horrors of transportation, the victims of harsh and rigorous sentences-if he has laboured to vilify and to libel the conduct of juries—such proceedings originate in a radical change of system. If he has used the royal prerogative in the creation of peers, not to reward merit, but converted the peerage into the regular price of base and servile support-if he has carried this abuse so far that, were the indignant, insulted spirit of this nation roused at length