DECEMBER 14.

LIBEL ON THE CONSTITUTION.

The order of the day for the further consideration of the reports of the committee appointed to inquire who was the author of a libellous pamphlet, entitled, Thoughts on the English Government;" when the clerk read the second report of the committee, and the resolution of the house on the 26th of November.

MR. SHERIDAN said, after the resolution which the house had , just heard, he should be much disappointed if there should appear any want of unanimity on the subject of the atrocious libel which had been so successfully traced to its source. He could not, however, help expressing an apprehension from what had fallen on a former evening from one of the right hon. gentlemen on the other side, that a difference of opinion might arise as to the mode of proceeding, and the measures which should be thought most likely to effect the ends of justice, and support the respectability of the house. When the first report was presented, it had been alleged by some that the evidence which had been obtained was not sufficient; by others, that it was fully sufficient to go to a direct prosecution of Mr. Reeves, either as the author, or at least, for acting as the author of the libel; by others, that the committee had stopped short at that point which was conceived to be the most important and necessary; but this mode of argument was founded on a mistake which gentlemen made as to the nature of the committee itself, which was not instituted to try a delinquent, but to inquire after, and ascertain grounds, whereupon to establish the delinquency.

Therefore, in the second report which the committee had made, in order to meet every doubt, they had taken care to leave no room for any similar objections; they had, in consequence, called upon Mr. John Owen, the publisher of the libel, who had been left in a very awkward situation by the state of his evidence on the first; on the last occasion they had questioned him if he still persisted in his refusal to give up the author? to which he replied he did, and could not think himself justifiable in doing otherwise than remaining silent; the committee had deemed this silence on the part of Mr. Owen contumacious towards the committee, and had directed him (Mr. Sheridan) as chairman, to notify the same to the house; this, he said, having done, he could not think himself at all bound to proceed further in the business than was agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience, which would

not permit him at any time to rush upon measures that might by possibility, of even the remotest kind, tend to injure the freedom of the press. This freedom, he remarked, might be materially injured by either corrupting or oppressing those who were engaged in the management of an object of such delicacy and importance, taken either as the organ of liberty or of science; he had on this occasion, too, a more satisfactory reason, which was, that the author had been clearly found out, notwithstanding the confident assertions which had been made by some gentlemen with respect to the ignorance of Mr. Reeves of the patriotic work in question. He took notice of the situation in which Mr. Reeves stood, the distinguished protection he enjoyed, and his immediate connection with, and the little suspicion a publisher could reasonably feel, under such existing circumstances, that libellous aspersions on the house of commons, and much less doctrines tending to lop that house and the house of lords off the trunk of the constitution, could originate from such a source. He then took notice of the evidence of Mr. Thomas Wright, who had given some information concerning an association, of which the author of the libel was the chairman; from this evidence it appeared that Mr. Reeves was the leading person of the memorable club or society of alarmists, who had set the country in a flame with the bugbear tales of plots and conspiracies, treasons hatched and hatching, of designs on the Tower and the Bank, and Jacobin clubs associated to introduce the levelling and republican systems. It might at the first glance seem, that the circumstance of the chairman of such an association as that at the Crown and Anchor being the author of the libel before the house, was of a trivial nature; but if it was considered that the chairman was himself in the constant habit of correspondence and intercourse with the Treasury, that the association of the Crown and Anchor had two thousand other societies branched off and affiliated with their mother society, and that such doctrines as the libel now before the house, by such means obtained the most rapid, and, he might say, fatal circulation throughout the country; when it appeared that the correspondence between Mr. Reeves's mother society and the two thousand nurseries of his principles, would make fourteen folio volumes, he thought the seriousness of such a connection was indeed of but of the most dangerous and alarming consi

deration. It was, of all the concurrences which had arisen since the revolution, the most alarming for the liberties of this country, that a man, countenanced as he was by government, with such extensive means of disseminating such detestable doctrines, should, after having circulated the wicked principles of others through every ramification of the "Society for protecting Liberty and Property from Republicans and Levellers," be himself the author of a work which struck at the foundation of the government, which asserted the inutility of the two houses of parliament, and affirmed the sole and exclusive right of the government and the law to exist in the king. When he saw such an association erecting itself on deception and falsehood, and maintaining itself by notorious treachery and boundless corruption: that the author of the libel upon which the house had already decided was the founder of this association, and in possession of such power, he thought it indeed an alarming crisis for this country, and a most important object for the consideration of the house, in the proceedings which they should now institute in order to punish the delinquents for a breach of their privileges. He then entered into a history of the Crown and Anchor Association, which, he said, was commenced in November, 1792; and observed how remarkable it was that the nation was tranquil ; no fears abroad, or at home, no fears but for the issue of the war ; that in one month after the society had been instituted, the nation was alarmed from one end to the other, the guards were doubled, and a host of spies were for the first time employed under the sanction of those countenanced by the King of Great Britain's ministers; arms and ammunition were provided, and the Duke of Richmond suddenly threw himself into the Tower, with all the terror that might arise from an invasion; but with what effect? After secret committees of that house had formed their reports; and after Messrs. Hardy and Tooke had been threatened with all the penalties of treason, it appeared that not even one of those hired spies could prove a single fact in any shape resembling plot or conspiracy, after every effort of power, artifice, and corruption had been exerted to bring forward the most minute and secret expressions and actions of those who had been accused. He then noticed the system of falsehood and conscious fraud upon which Reeves's association commenced; for it appeared from Mr. Wright's evidence, that whilst they adver

tised that they would receive anonymous information, they added, as a nota bene, “all letters and communications are requested to be addressed to the secretary at this place." And who was this secretary? Mr. Wright tells you that it was a man in the clouds, that it was a fiction, that no such person existed, and that even the committee did not know, nor did any one but Mr. Reeves and Mr. Wright, that it was a fictitious name. What must be thought of the credulity of that committee, and what of the conduct of him who instituted such measures, but that it was a complication of fear, of guilt, and imposture? But at the third meeting of the society it appears, that the committee was informed that the secretary was a Mr. Nobody. But it could not be forgotten what effect this anonymous system had upon Mr. Thomas Law, who, in a manner honourable to his head and heart, withdrew from that society, and exposed the dark principles of its institution. And we learn still farther, that the very resolutions which constitute the anonymous system, were carefully kept out of their books and open proceedings. But it was not merely this secret system of spies and informers, the invention of anonymous information, nor the then circulation of the proceedings of that society, which contained many particulars no less libellous than the pamphlet before the house, equally inimical to the freedom of the people of this country, the privileges of both houses, and even to that title upon which alone his Majesty held his crown; but the works of Soame Jenyns, Whitaker, and Arthur Young, had been openly recommended and circulated by that society, and the thanks of Mr. Reeves given for some of those works, in themselves treasonable to the constitution of the nation. In a work of Young's it is stated, "that the corruption of the house of commons will always increase with the power which it may be found to possess." And in the same work it is asserted that, "by an independent parliament, is meant one that will oppose any administration; that in every constitution there are some men without conscience, some without judgment, and others without both; that by corruption those scattered characters are collected and united, and the business of government goes on smoothly ;" and finally, that "an independent house of commons is no part of the British Constitution." When such doctrines are circulated, and when thanks are given by the circulator to the author, it is but fair to consider those sentiments as

adopted, and as made his own; and when connected with the publication of the libel now before the house, the facts connected in one view, formed an attack the most hideous that this country had known for a century to be directed against this government. He lamented that the committee had not been vested with powers more ample; as he was convinced, from what he had already seen, that they could have traced the existence of a regular and deep-laid plot to introduce despotism into this country; and to have shown that the title assumed by that society, professedly to oppose republicans and levellers, was only a cover under which both houses of parliament were meant to be overturned, and tyranny completely established on the ruins of that little freedom which now remained to the country. He then adverted to a precedent of the year 1680, when the Judges Scroggs, Jones, and Weston, were accused of countenancing despotism, wherein one of those judges expressed himself in terms the most harsh against Luther, Calvin, and Zuinglius, and against their followers: these reformers, he said, were men of such sharp spirits, that nothing would serve them but a parliament; but, for his own part, he knew of no authority to whom he could look, nor of any law but what came from the king. Such was precisely the style of Mr. Reeves and his associations; and he hoped the house would see their honour was concerned, and give signal proof of their displeasure with respect to the author of such doctrines. He forbore to fix any furtherr opprobrium on the bills which had lately passed that house; but observed that if the house marked anything in the conduct of Mr. Reeves as unconstitutional, they could not mark it too publicly as a guide and light for others. He could not avoid remarking, however, that by the bills which had just passed, all public meetings in future were to be under the control of magistrates; that in the last commission Mr. Reeves was made a justice of the peace; and that in Westminster the mighty movers of sedition, as they were denominated, chiefly held their meetings. Now a right hon. gentleman had thought that the paid magistrates of Westminster would not be the first to obtrude themselves at any of these meetings, and perhaps he himself might incline to that opinion. He did not think such a man as Mr. Bond would, for instance, who always conducted himself in a fair and modest manner. He begged to be understood, that he made no allusion to that gentleman's former mode