the avenging angel in Mr. Addison's admired simile, where he repeats, "I'll lend you an allusion fitter, Though flatt'ring knaves may call it bitter; "So to effect his monarch's ends, That a man who had so expressed his abhorrence of corruption should be detested by the abettors of that corruption, was, he repeated, not at all astonishing. Mr. Sheridan suspected there had been a similar strewing of favours here, and the hon. gentleman opposite had come in for his share, though he certainly would not presume to say, "From budgets with corruptions cramm'd, The contributions of the damn'd." He did not wish to enter much into the subject of the bill then before the house, because it did not warrant much comment. The attempt upon his Majesty was simply the pretext and stalkinghorse for the introduction of it, as there were certainly provisions enow for the protection of his person before; and excepting the clause which constitutes the overawing of parliament treason, there was no new treason. If this law had been enacted some time ago, he observed, the leading part of administration would have been transported; and, indeed, he was sorry for the country's sake that it had not. To state this more clearly, would any one deny this proposition, that when Mr. Pitt, in conjunction with the Duke of Richmond and Mr. Horne Tooke, signed the resolutions at the Thatched House for a plan of parliamentary reform, wherein he represented the house of commons to be corrupt, and not the real representatives of the people, that such a proceeding might have a tendency to stir up the people to the hatred and contempt of the government? He would ask the hon. gentleman whether the principles of Mr. Reeves's book were not calculated to stir up hatred and contempt against the constitution, and whether the punishment pronounced in this bill would be too severe upon him? But any attempt to unmask the corruptions of government and defects of our constitution, was the evil which ministers wished to guard against; and the real object of the bill went to say, the question of a reform in parliament and existing abuses must no longer be discussed As to any gentleman's suggesting to advise his Majesty to give a negative to the bill, from an apprehension that the passing of it would excite the resistance of the country, and lead to actual convulsion, and excite a doubt whether he might not thereby violate the conditions of his swaying the British sceptre, for his own part, he considered this would be a laudable interference on the part of some great hereditary councillor, and would entitle him to immortal honour. Were his Majesty but to say in the house of lords, "I will consider," (Le Roi advisera) he might dismiss his guards, and return with the gratitude of thousands of his subjects. Mr. Sheridan said he wished to move an amendment to the clause (p. 3) which says, "If any person within that part of Great Britain called England shall, &c." by leaving out the words, "that part of Great Britain called England;" when the right hon. secretary stated that he never stood so high with his countrymen (and he wished him an opportunity of standing still higher), and they were loyal, and not tainted with the same seditious spirit as in England; and also, not one hundredth part of the danger existed now which did in 1792; he would ask whether parliament ought not to extend the merciful operation of this law to his countrymen in the north, and whether he could oppose any such amendment? In the Scotch courts the sentence for sedition was unlimited (fourteen years had been pronounced); this bill made it seven years for the second offence. Mr. Sheridan proposed a clause, applying the enactment of the present bill to Scotland, in order to remove from the judges that arbitrary and discretionary power which they had formerly exercised. The house divided-for the clause 27; against it 184. The bill was read a third time and passed. DECEMBER 11. REPORT OF THE HIGH PRICE OF CORN. The report of the select committee appointed to take into consideration the present high price of corn was brought up, and a motion made, "That the house do agree to the resolution proposed by the committee respecting an association of the members of the house, to diminish the consumption of the bread made of wheat flour," &c. MR. SHERIDAN said there was one point which would give him much satisfaction to hear, viz., that the proposed substitutes for the bread now in use would prove equally nutritive; but he was afraid that was not the case. He had been informed that in man cases, in which they had attempted to make bread of different mixtures, it had been found not only unpalatable, but unwholesome. This appeared to him a most material object, because, from the very high price of all the other articles of life, many of the labouring poor were forced to live chiefly on bread. The only remedy he saw for it was to adopt the bill which had been brought in to increase the wages of labourers. Persons who were in a more affluent situation would be enabled to use other articles, which would diminish the unwholesome effects of this bread; but men in that low situation to which he had alluded, would not have it in their power to have recourse to any such means, unless the bill was passed for increasing their wages. With respect to the association proposed, he should object to it in its present form; not that he did not wish the object for which it was proposed to be obtained, but because he was afraid it would set a bad precedent. If members were once called upon in that kind of way, to subscribe to a particular association, it might be extended to others of a different nature. He had no objection to the house coming to a resolution to recommend such an association, and every member in his individual capacity should recommend and enforce it by example in the place where he lived; and he certainly would do it in the parish where he lived; but he could not for one moment consent to sign the association, as at present proposed. The resolution was put and carried. LIBEL ON THE CONSTITUTION. Mr. Sheridan brought up the second report from the committee appointed to inquire who was the author of a pamphlet, entitled, Thoughts on the English Government." It was ordered to be printed. 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 |