ment against them, but what consisted in misrepresentation; and indeed, for the best of reasons, because the arguments used in opposition to them were perfectly unanswerable. In the present arrangement, whenever there was advantage, it lay on the side of Ireland; but to this country every provision was adverse. It was curious reasoning to account for the clause by which Irish linens, which was their staple commodity, should continue to be imported, duty free, into England, by saying that the same exemption from duty shall be there extended to British linens. It would be as reasonable in France, should she treat with them on similar terms, to say, you shall suffer our wines to be imported duty-free into Great Britain, and we in return will admit your wines duty-free into France, whenever you may have any. There were but two ways by which this country and Ireland could meet on equal terms; either to take off all duties, and admit every indiscriminate article from either country, or to lay general duties, ad valorem, on every commodity. The sixteenth proposition, if worded with a view to promote cavil, and increase ambiguity, could not be more successful; nor could any words be used more likely to be productive of dispute than the words effectual preference.' And the alteration of the fifth proposition to the twelfth was liable to the same remarks. The idea of countervailing duties, carried an absurdity on the very face of it; for as it was not only necessary to equalize the duty of the internal excise, but to bring it to a fair balance, it would also be necessary to consider all the attendant and incidental expenses to which the British manufacturers were unavoidably exposed. There were some taxes in this country which it would be impossible to countervail, as the House, the Servant, and CommutationTax, &c. The commercial complaint of Ireland he always considered ill-founded, though he thought otherwise of their political ones; but whatever ground of complaint they might have, this certainly was not the measure which could in any degree satisfy them. They wanted not this participation; they looked for protecting duties; and were the advantages ten-fold, he would not pay the price demanded for them, except he lost sight of that spirit of liberty with which that country was of late years particularly inspired. He was sorry to hear an hon. gentleman insinuate that a rupture might be the consequence of re fusing this system to Ireland. He confessed, that though the powers of that country were much inferior to this if unemployed elsewhere, he could not without horror reflect for a moment on the possibility of such an event, and there was scarcely any thing he would not surrender to prevent it. In his own person he entertained the most unbounded national partiality for Ireland; he had the most particular attachments there, and there was an excellency in their character which must always endear people of that country to such as had these attachments; yet he was so much of an Englishman, that he could not part with those resources and advantages, on which our national existence depended. He then took a view of the general question, and mentioned the circumstance of an union as extremely desirable, but what could scarcely be obtained, and was thrown at a greater distance than ever by the provisions of this arrangement. Adverting to Mr. Wilberforce's remarks on personal confidence, he said, the hon. gentleman having professed himself to be influenced only by his judg ment in this day's vote, deserved to be commended, and the more so as he exercised that judgment in opposition to the opinions and instructions of his constituents. But other members of parliament did not hesitate to express that they were unacquainted with the merits of the question, but were ready to vote for them, reposing in the confidence and attachment they bore to his Majesty's minister; and in doing this, they made that sacrifice, which was the last a member of parliament should yield; they not only surrendered · their own opinions into the hands of the minister, but at the same time they surrendered the opinion of their constituents. If a member could form no opinion of his own, he ought rather to adopt the opinions of those constituents who sent him into parliament, and whose interests he was engaged to consult, than yield himself to the direction of any individual. In complimenting the minister, it was judicious to adopt invectives against others. His popularity, if he possessed any, had a greater foundation in the conduct of others, than in any action of his own; for no measures of his own had any merit to recommend him to popularity: even his most zealous advocates were obliged to abandon him in one of the principal transactions of the session; but the misconception of the conduct of others was the base 1 which his merit was erected, it was his Gay hope by fancy led." There were ow petitions before the committee which ught certainly to be attended to before ley decided on the question. It had apeared in evidence at the bar, that false nd deluding expectations were held out the manufacturers; and though it was tempted to be controverted in the abence of one of the parties concerned, he as now in London, and ready to corroorate what was stated before. Disaproving so much as he did of the present ystem, he was determined to give it all he opposition in his power; for which eason he intended to try the force of mendments with which he was prepared, nd which, if adopted, would at least quafy the resolutions, and render them less angerous. Mr. Dundas declared, he had been a iend to every proposition that had been aade in favour of Ireland in that House, rom the time that earl Nugent stated his propositions in 1778, to those of the preent day. From the arguments that had een held by the gentlemen opposite to im at the different periods when the ubject had been agitated, he was at a oss to imagine upon what sound principle f reason or argument any one of them ould object to the present propositions. le recapitulated the language of lord North when earl Nugent had made his ropositions, which had been lost; and he ad himself, in 1783, made those very oncessions, which the noble lord had hen thought proper to oppose. He read rom a manuscript an extract of Mr. Fox's peech in the House about the 9th of April 1782, when Mr. Eden had come ver in such a hurry from Dublin to proose the repeal of the 6th of Geo. 1, and when Mr. Fox had complained of his aving taken that business out of his ands, which he declared he meant to ave brought forward in a day or two. He stated what happened upon that ocasion, and mentioned what had been the easure proposed by Mr. Fox a day or vo afterwards. He afterwards turned to Ir. Eden, and read a part of his speech n the 9th of April to which he had alded. Having finished this extract, he emarked that his right hon. friend was ell known to have turned author on the bject, and expressed himself in very articular terms, when as a Mentor he had structed his political Telemachus upon e subject of Ireland. He argued upon these different topics, and endeavoured to deduce from them, that, to be consistent, lord North, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Eden, must necessarily vote for the propositions. He entered into a defence of them, and contended that a security in our situation with respect to Ireland, the money spent by the Irish in rents here, and a great variety of other advantages, would accrue to this country in consequence of agreeing to the propositions. He praised Mr. Pitt's private virtues, and said, it was his political enemies, and not his friends, that he ever laid the lash upon, or to whom he shewed the smallest share of that haughtiness, severity, and sarcasm, which gentlemen on that side of the House were always imputing to him. He retorted on opposition for their attack on Mr. Pitt, and said, the support the right hon. gentleman opposite (Mr. Fox) and his friends trusted to was not so constitutional; but such as it was, he would not mention it, as it was unfit to be mentioned there. With regard to the pedestal and statue Mr. Burke's fancy had formed of the young minister standing on Mr. Jenkinson's shoulders, he said the right hon. gentleman opposite to him (Mr. Fox) he should conceive had alluded to the pedestal upon which he had endeavoured to place himself, and to have buried the ruins of the constitution under it. Mr. Fox said, that he found it difficult to understand what the right hon. gentleman could mean by a constitutional support of an administration, that was of too delicate a nature to be named; for his part, when he was in office, there was no mystery in the sort of support which he looked and wished for, and that he flattered himself he obtained, which was the confidence of the Sovereign, expressed in his appointment, and the confidence of parliament manifested in his support. Mr. Chancellor Pitt rose to say a few words relative to a subject which he had often heard a good deal of, as well in this and the former session, as in the last session of the late parliament, but which had that night assumed a more poetic and ornamental appearance than he remembered it to have worn on any former occasion, in that happy allusion to a statue and a pedestal with which an hon. gentleman had so ingeniously entertained the House; and after having profited by it so much in argument, he hoped the right hon. gentleman would shortly let him see it in a different dress, as he thought it highly cal which they acted, as even to pass by, o the present occasion, an opportunity o: avowing them]-Having made this at tempt on the dignity of the crown, shoul they proceed to look for such a support a would secure to them the undisturbed possession of their situation, and not satis culated to gratify another sense, if set off with proper colouring, and exhibited, as he supposed it would be, in striking caricature, for the edification of the multitude. He animadverted on Mr. Dundas's allusion to the proper constitutional support of an administration. He said he could not but imagine that the right hon. gen-fied with or desirous of obtaining it throug tleman had wilfully mistaken his right hon. friend, in stating his doctrine to be, "that a minister might have a constitutional support, which it would be indelicate to mention in that House:" this, he said, was by no means his right hon. friend's sentiment. He and his right hon. friend were ready at all times to avow what they looked upon to be the true constitutional support of a minister, but which widely differed from that support which the right hon. gentleman had wished to obtain for his administration, and which delicacy towards the right hon. gentleman had prevented his mentioning. That support which he should himself always look up to as the best and most constitutional, was the confidence of the crown, the confidence of parliament, and the confidence of the nation. This was a support which it ought to be the pride of every minister to enjoy, and which none could ever be ashamed to avow. But could there be supposed to exist a set of men capable of forming an unnatural and almost incredible combination, and by the strength of united numbers forcing out a ministry, whose sober plans and well-digested arrangements were found incompatible with the aspiring views of this newly-cemented phalanx; should they be supposed, after having stormed the cabinet, though neither called there by the choice of the crown nor the voice of the people, and distributed among themselves, according to each man's capacity or ambition, the several departments of administration; and then, as soon as they found themselves seated in the councils of their Sovereign, not satisfied with personal insult and contempt of his feelings, had commenced a regular and uniform system for degrading him from his importance, as first executive magistrate, to the rank of a cypher in the constitution [Here the gentlemen opposite seeming to disclaim any such idea, Mr. Pitt said, he was glad to find they had changed their political creed, but that he much feared, if the period of their triumph and prosperity had continued, that they would not have stooped so much below the towering principles on the royal confidence, seek it by suc means, as while they overturned ever balance and bulwark of the constitution, by erecting a new and unconstitutional executive authority, and investing it with a new and unconstitutional weight of pa tronage, should afford them the fruit and reward of their struggles, and the dangers they had encountered, and at the sam: time lay a foundation for permanency. stability, and impunity; should such a se of men be found, he desired to know. whether their motives, and the support they sought for, could, with any sort o decorum, be mentioned in that House? Another topic, he said, had formed. considerable share of the arguments of the gentlemen opposite, which it was neces sary he should say a few words upon. Two right hon. gentlemen finding little or no thing objectionable in the plan, as con tained in the whole of the resolutions, the new as well as the old, had spent a great deal of time in pointing out the defects o the former, and afterwards in sounding their triumph, at having been the author of whatever improvement the system had acquired by the accession of the latter. With regard to several of those improvements, he declared that many of them were coeval in his mind with the whole of the plan, and particularly that part of it which related to the preserving to the East India Company their exclusive commerce beyond the Cape of Good Hope. Why, then, it had been objected were not all those amendments laid befor the parliament of Ireland, in order to their passing upon the whole of the ar rangement that approbation or disappro bation which they had been obliged, fron ignorance of its extent, to confine to part only? Because, he said, as it wa first necessary to know what Ireland woul take from this country in point of con mercial privileges, and what she would b satisfied to give in return, it next became necessary for England to regulate and modify the concessions she was to make in such a manner as to secure her own interests, and to preserve to herself he full portion of that general benefit whic 1 by directing him to the discovery of such materials as had enabled him to obviate many of the objections which otherwise might lie against it. Thus it appeared how dangerous it was to give too great a latitude to our eagerness in pursuit of any favourite object; for in the extreme avidity of gentlemen to create difficulties, and to throw obstacles in the way of this arrangement, they had themselves greatly contributed towards diminishing the objections, and of course weakening the opposition that it was to meet. He was notwithstanding, however it might have been intended, under a considerable obligation to those gentlemen, whose severity had been productive of much benefit; and he sincerely wished that their correction, whenever they should think him deserving of it, might be always attended with consequences so desirable. But who was the author of those amendments, or how they were suggested to him, was an inquiry of no consequence to the committee; so inconsiderable an object as that was not now to ingross their attention; all that was necessary for them to consider was, that those amendments were a great im the final adjustment promised to the empire at large. What Ireland would accept was contained in the Irish resolutions, and was the foundation of the treaty; in what manner, and under what regulations and conditions Great Britain would concede, was the superstructure; and therefore to have reversed or altered the order in which they had been brought forward, would have been a most flagrant breach of propriety and uniform procedure. With regard to the triumph which the gentlemen over the way expressed, at having been themselves the authors of the several amendments, it was a triumph which, however he might in a great many instances do it, he would by no means dispute with them. His own personal character, as far as it was connected with that particular branch of the question, however ambitious he should be of the approbation of the House and the public, was no great object with him, when put into competition with the magnitude of the subject before them. He should, indeed, deserve the charge which had been so often made against him of unpardonable presumption and arrogance, could he for a moment indulge an anxious thought for his own per-provement to the general system before sonal importance, on an occasion so highly momentous to his country as the present. Could he be so far unmindful of the duty which his situation imposed on him as to rely on his own solitary judgment, and reject the lights which might be obtained from other quarters, merely to support the vain ambition of acting from himself? No! He had received considerable helps and great assistance throughout the whole of the business, and even since he had first introduced it into parliament. The channels through which he had obtained this assistance, he said, were numerous; although, from the witnesses at the bar, he remembered nothing new; yet from the commissioners of the revenue he had received some information: from his friends, and among them, several members of that House, whose support and confidence he had the honour to enjoy, he had been favoured with much useful and prac- The chairman then reported the third tical advice; nay, he had been indebted resolution, to which Mr. Eden moved two to the gentlemen opposite for many valu- amendments: the first purported to exable ideas, the adoption of which had been cept from the description of goods to be extremely instrumental in bringing his hereafter importable from Ireland into plan to that degree of perfection which it Great Britain; "All goods of the growth, now could boast. Hence, the very efforts produce, and manufacture of places bewhich had been made to impede and over-yond the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits throw his system would in no inconsidera- of Magellan." Mr. Eden stated, that this ble degree contribute towards its success, restriction was necessary, as it would be them, that they tended more effectually to secure and promote the ends for which that arrangement was to be adopted, the general welfare of the empire, and a mutual participation of commercial advantages between its two most considerable members, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The motives, therefore, which had heretofore urged him and his friends to this measure, had now acquired new strength and vigour from the still increasing prospect of utility, safety, and practicability, which those new amendments held out; and he hoped they would also operate in like manner on the House, encouraging them with greater confidence and spirit to put the finishing hand to a system, the necessity of which was so apparent. The committee divided on the motion of adjournment: Yeas, 90; Noes, 195. found upon examination not to be com-sential towards carrying into effect the prised within the terms of the ninth pro- present settlement, that all laws which position, which secures the East India ino- have been made, or shall be made in Great nopoly to Great Britain. The other amend- Britain, for securing exclusive privileges ment was, "That no drawback should be to the ships and mariners of Great Britain, payable under the new plan, till certifi- Ireland, and the British colonies and plancates should be returned from the country tations; and for regulating and restraining to which the export is made according to the trade of the British colonies and planthe form at present practised." Both tations, shall be in force in Ireland (by amendments were admitted by the Chan- Acts to be passed in the parliament of cellor of the Exchequer after some con- that kingdom) in the same manner as in versation, and then the amended resolus Great Britain; and that proper measures tion was agreed to. shall from time to time be taken for effectually carrying the same into execution." Mr. Sheridan asked if the words Acts to be passed in the parliament of Ireland,' had really been moved on Friday morning; for he did not recollect to have heard them till the moment the chairman had read them. Mr. Pitt then stated the fourth resolution, and said, that he brought it forwards though at so late an hour, because he had observed from some gestures on the opposite side of the House, that it was likely to be misrepresented: in order to obviate which, he would introduce it with an amendment, which stated, that the laws of Great Britain to be in force in Ireland, were to be left to the admission and discussion of the Irish parliament previous to being enacted. Mr. Sheridan answered, that the words proposed as an amendment, did not, in his opinion, tend to remove the very reasonable jealousies which the cause could not fail of suggesting, and recommended time for consideration. Mr. Pitt said, that he understood other amendments were intended, and wished to know them, that they might be considered. by Mr. Taylor replied, the words alluded to were most certainly part of the motion put into his hand on Friday morning by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Beauchamp observed, that the House could not be too often reminded of the manner in which the business then under consideration had originated. It had not arisen from any requisition on the part of the parliament of Ireland, but had been suggested on the part of the ministers of Great Britain to the House of Commons in Dublin, by a gentleman, a member of that House, then in high office in that kingdom. The parliament of Ireland had adopted the propositions so sug. Mr. Eden thereupon stated some farther alterations; and added, that with the as-gested, and they had been afterwards prosistance of friends, he was prepared to submit several others on the principle of lessening the objectional parts of the plan, in case it should be forced forwards, which appeared every hour more difficult, without danger to the commerce of the one kingdom and the constitution of the other. Mr. Pitt said, that as he by no means wished to discuss questions of importance in an exhausted House, he would consent to adjourn. The House then adjourned at half past six in the morning. May 24. The House having again resolved itself into the said Committee, Mr. Taylor in the chair, Mr. Pitt moved the fourth Resolution, viz. "That it is highly important to the general interests of the British empire, that the laws for regulating trade and navigation should be the same in Great Britain and Ireland; and therefore that it is es posed to the British House of Commons by the minister. He had not hitherto entered at all into a discussion of the general principle of the system in contemplation; but he could not help expressing his satisfaction, that a final settlement was about to take place with Ireland, on the important subjects of a commercial intercourse and a political connexion. With regard to the commercial system, he was very much inclined to declare his approbation of the plan adopted by his Majesty's ministers, and followed up in the propositions voted by the parliament of Ireland. He thought the admitting Ireland to a participation of the commercial advantages of this country, a fair, a liberal, and a handsome line of conduct for Great Britain to pursue, and such as could not but tend effectually to conduce to harmonize and cement the remaining parts of the empire, and to give strength, energy, and vigour to the whole. He had, he said, every |