and on that occasion it was not the construction of the parliament which gave it rise, but the general feeling of the people, and which was declared through their representatives. It was not the noble lord in the blue ribbon who was the author of that war; he did no more than execute the ideas of the people, and in his mind, if he was blameable in any thing, it was for executing those ideas with less ardour than they were expressed. He said the present propositions were free from all the objections which had lain against the former plans. The sacred inheritance of property was not to be violated, and men were not to be outraged by peremptory conditions. No man, or set of men, were to be forced to enter into the scheme, unless they approved of the conditions; and yet such were the conditions, that he had no doubt but they would be soon accepted. Mr. Burke, after entertaining the House for a considerable time on Mr. Dundas's conversion from the principles of antireformation, proceeded to discuss the merits of the present question, as well as the manner of bringing it in. It offered one alternative, either to adopt this limited, confined plan of reform, or be perhaps liable to receive one from the duke of Richmond, on a more enlarged scale. Between the minister and the House of Commons, there was the same species of conduct, as if a robber should enter the house of a man, and say, "Let me take away such things as I please, and I shall lock the door, and keep out any other thieves: but if you refuse the offer, then take your chance of losing all." The doctrine which had gained so much ground, and in conformity to which this plan had now been introduced, was that of universal representation. But this measure was only an illusion, from which no solid benefit would ever result. The influence of the country gentlemen in parliament was always known to preponderate, when they were united in opinion. The respectability which attended a man of landed property, called for the most part into a situation which was in itself disagreeable, was rather a situation of duty and constraint, than an object of ambition. These circumstances added so much to the importance of these members, that the advocates of every measure were glad to boast of them as their supporters. Where, then, was the prudence of throwing into that scale, in whose power the balance already was, that share of power which was pretended to be the means of keeping all parts of the House on the same level. Mr. Burke took a very extensive view of the present state of representation, and asked if the proprietors of boroughs had not been already sufficiently paid in the profusion of the honours of this country, without now opening the purse of the nation. He particularly adverted to the conduct of a reverend gentleman (Mr. Wyvill.) He took particular notice of the variety and extent of his correspondence, which he said was not confined to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or to the volunteers of Ireland. Lord Shelburne and Mr. Macgrugar had not been forgotten; and other celebrated names had been handed down to posterity by this reforming divine. After reading several extracts from this correspondence, he proceeded to remark, that the right hon. gentleman who had formerly submitted to the House two plans for a more equal representation of the people, each of which was perfection itself, now came forward with a third, still more perfect than either of the former. He would allow that the present plan had many more palliatives in its composition than either of its brethren, for its operation was not likely to affect any of the members of the present parliament; and he could not sufficiently admire the address of the right hon. gentleman, in thus rendering his plan palatable to all parties. For his part, he considered the whole of it as mere delusion, an ignis fatuus, calculated to mislead and to bewilder. He insisted that the right hon. gentleman had abandoned the ground on which he originally took up this question. Lord F. Campbell declared he could, by no means, consent to countenance any alteration in the constitution. The door once opened for innovation and experiment, the wisest among them could not say where it would end. Mr. Rolle was also decidedly against the motion. If it was suffered to pass that House, there was no security for its being thrown out in the other House; for how could he tell but a new lord, or a new set, might be made on purpose to carry it, if it went up there? There were, Mr. Rolle said, some persons sitting in a certain place, who had no more right to sit in that House than his groom. The Attorney General supported the motion, entering into a recapitulation of several of Mr. Pttt's arguments, and an swering several things that had been said on the other side the question. In the course of his speech, he said there might be persons impudent and indecent enough to declare, that he had no more right to sit in that House than their groom. mores, aut populus regunt, dilecta ex his et consociata Reipublicæ forma laudari facilius quam evenire, aut si eveniat, non diuturna esse potest." That learned and penetrating historian could not presume the duration of a commonwealth consisting Mr. Young observed, that had he been of these mixed states; he knew that the in a situation to attract the Speaker's no- momentum of the democracy, whether tice in an earlier stage of the debate, he acting by the body of the people, or by a should probably have, in some degree, representation unqualified and adapted expatiated on the very wide field which purely to popular ideas, must quickly the right hon. gentleman had opened to bear down one or both of the other the House: that now much of his work branches of government; and had it been had been done, much he should have moreover told him, that in this pure and urged had been anticipated, and much he direct representation of the numbers of should pass over from a sense that the the people were to originate the resources patience of the House had been exhausted. of war and peace, the primum mobile of That among his former inducements for public revenue, the doubts of Tacitus offering himself to the notice of the House would not have been hypothetical; such was, that not having had a seat in parlia- a state, he could not have pre-conceived to ment when the Chancellor of the Exche-exist a moment. This was not a time of quer brought forward his former propositions, it suited best with the temper of his mind in the first stage of this important business to take an open and decisive part; nor could he esteem the part he took premature, inasmuch as every man of liberal education must, in a great degree, be not only competent to the question, but must have turned his thoughts to the subject, and have grounded thereon a decisive opinion. That he was more particularly induced to rise at the present moment from the learned gentleman who spoke last having taken up anew what had fallen from the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the opening of the debate, and who, as in feeling himself on the strongest ground of argument, had repeated "Who, if legislating anew for this country, would form this House as existing in its present system of representation?" That it rather should be asked, who could have imagined and framed such a constitution? The work not merely of time, as had been stated, but of the most extraordinary series of events, and which could be laid to no account but that of a special Providence. Nor was the question without personal application, more modern allusions apart. It had been agitated by the greatest political historian of antiquity; that great and wise writer, Tacitus, doing as the right hon. gentleman had done, remounting to first principles, and tracing thence the abstract theories of the regal, aristocratic, and democratic branches of government, adduced, as the result of his researches, this remarkable sentence"Cunctas nationes aut reges, aut pri night to trace those errors back to their tention of this House." Much has been | House under engagements, and with abisaid of the cohesion of parties, much on lities too, backed by the popular clamour the other side of individual independency, to urge new claims, new reforms, fresh and of mouldering away every connexion innovations. The right hon. gentleman of men in that House: in the present had adduced, as favourable to his reform, state of public manners it was not to be that its principle was completed in his apprehended, that to buy or to retain plan, and was thus final: the right hon, would lapse into disusage, or that a mi- gentleman might answer for himself, but nister might not engage a consistency of who would say, that a new man should not. support to his measures. The right hon. propose a new mode; and having cut gentleman might 'anticipate, perhaps, the down the prescriptive barrier of the conapplication of the famous sentence in stitution of that House, would he not Montesquieu," But was there no other leave a breach open for every forlorn corruption but venality?" He feared a hope, qui crumenam perdidit, to enter and worse, and of more fatal tendency, than rifle at pleasure? And the more was this the holding out merely places of public to be feared, as prejudices of the people trust to men of ability and adventurers in might join too under the precedent to aid policy, were these county members to be those who, by such ruinous means, would added. In one light, they must be men seek to push him from his stool; for it who had come into that House on the could not be said that the present plan great landed interest of a county; and in a came up to the present declarations of the county, perhaps, there was as much undue reformers. The Chancellor of the Exinfluence as at an election for any borough: chequer had said, that leaving the constiwhen seated there, some future minister tution in its present state, was tending to might find it necessary to attach an au- weaken the love of the people to their counthority to his support, become thus nu- try; a more proper application might be merous and weighty; the coronet was made of those words-to innovate is tendhis only bribe, his only attraction to men ing to weaken the love of the people to their of this description; and an attraction, as country; it was tending to weaken that experience proved, not often resisted. confidence in that House, in a word, that Thus, perhaps, in a short succession of attachment to the old British constitution, ministers, much more of the great landed which arose from a prescriptive venerainterest would pass into the House of tion, and which could not belong to a new Lords, there ever accumulating, and rarely system. Much of patriotism, and its most or never returning. The consequence essential force, was founded on habitual was obvious; the great landed interest the regard, and local and long prepossessions; people would ever look up to in their these were what gave a force of character, counties, and in the national councils; to even to those who lived in, and were prethem would their confidence be directed, judiced to countries, whether under the to them their petitions addressed, and physical disadvantages, as the Laplander, under all the circumstances it were idle to or under political, as France, when comsay, that the revenue and money bills pared with our clime and constitution.— should not then originate there; whilst He closed with observing on an expresthat House, fallen into disrepute, and even sion of. Mr. Powys, tending to give the to derision, might sit idly disputing about idea, that the business was brought forunimportant matters, or matters they had ward by government, and as a ministerial scarcely weight to interfere in, and idly at- measure. He could not look upon it in tended by 40 members, instead of the that light; he had supported, and should very numerous assembly that dignified the continue to support that administration, present question.-On the call of addi- from a just sense of the abilities, and a fulĺ tional county members, other, and as confidence in the integrity of the minister; dangerous, circumstances might arise, from an integrity which, even in the speech causes widely different and of different which he reprobated, gave a more beautendency. He alluded to the adventurous teous glow and colour to the very lumicandidates, who opposed the aristocracy nous display with which the right hon. of a county, and who, to secure an elec- gentleman had ornamented his subject; tion, might feed the prejudices of the but that, if on a question, so touching the commonalty, might sign tests, and pledg-dearest and most important interest of ing themselves to every self-injurious prepossession, might find their way into that every Englishman, he could surrender his conviction even to the tendered influence of the right hon. gentleman's dearest partiality, or most honourable friendship, he should esteem himself not only unworthy to sit in that House, but in the company of any honourable and good man. Mr. Bankes praised Mr. Pitt, and acknowledged himself a thorough friend to reform; but he said he must reprobate the motion before the House, as it carried a degree of absurdity on the face of it. It declared that the right of voting in those boroughs was not a property to be used in the way of traffic, and yet at the same time a sum was allotted for the purchase of them, thereby suffering those very people to make a property which never was intended for them to have. Mr. Pitt concluded the debate, by taking notice of what fell from his hon. friend (Mr. Bankes), which he confessed hurt him more than had it fallen from any other person: he allowed it was a tender part; but, at the same time it had become a necessary evil, if any reform was to take place. At a quarter before four in the morning, the House divided on Mr. Pitt's motion. Richard Penn, Appleby. Richard Beckford, Arundel. Sir Christopher Sykes, bart. Beverley. Isaac Hawkins Browne, Bridgenorth. John Aubrey, Buckinghamshire. John Call, Callington. Paul Orchard, ditto. Right hon. Isaac Barré, Calne. Sir Henry Peyton, bart. Cambridgeshire. Earl of Euston, Cambridge University. Right hon. William Pitt, ditto. Hon. James Luttrell, ditto. Sir John Rushout, bart. Evesham. John James Hamilton, St. Germains. Samuel Thornton, Kingston-upon-Hull. John Peach Hungerford, Leicestershire. Richard Payne Knight, Ludlow. Lord viscount Maitland, Malmsbury. Lord Muncaster, Milbourne Port. Archibald Macdonald, Newcastle-under-Line. Sir Edward Astley, bart. Norfolk. Sir James Langham, bart. Northamptonshire. Sir William Dolben, Orford University. Earl of Inchiquin, Richmond. Sir Charles Middleton, bart. Rochester. George Bridges Brudenell, Rutlandshire. Edward Phelips, jun. Somersetshire. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Stafford. Sir John Honeywood, bart. Steyning. Sir Joseph Mawbey, bart. Surrey. Sir Philip Jennyngs Clerke, bart. Totness. Thomas Aubrey, Wallingford. Lord Hood, Westminster. Charles James Fox, ditto. Sir Michael Le Fleming, bart. Westmoreland. Henry Beaufoy, ditto. Henry Duncombe, Yorkshire. William Wilberforce, ditto. James Campbell, Culross, &c. Sir Thomas Dundas, bart. Stirlingshire. Tellers. Robert Smith, Nottingham. Hon. E. J. Eliot, Leskeard. Paired off. Daniel Pulteney, Bramber. Debate in the Commons on the Repeal of the Cotton Tax.] April 20. The order of the day being read, for the House to resolve itself into a committee on the petitions against the tax of last year on cottons, cotton stuffs, &c. the Speaker left the chair, and Mr. Gilbert took his seat at the table. Mr. Pitt said, that it would be neces sary for him to make a few observations on the subject before the committee, in order to explain his motives for the decision which he would recommend them to adopt. He wished, first, to call their attention to some circumstances, that had attended the original introduction of this tax. The cotton manufacture had been found to have been for a considerable time in an increasing state, and this under the remarkable circumstance of the first cost on the raw material having considerably risen in its price: hence it naturally appeared to be a proper object of taxation, without any danger of a material injury to the trade, either with regard to home consumption or exportation. The first consideration of course was how to impose this tax; at one time it was sug. |