lumny, and says, the industry employed to excite discontent on various pretexts, and in different parts of the kingdom, has appeared to proceed from a design to attempt the destruction of our happy constitution, and the subversion of all order and government.' I desire gentlemen to consider these words, and I demand of their honour and truth, if they believe this assertion to be founded in fact. There have been, as I understand, and as every one must have heard, some slight riots in different parts; I have heard of a tumult at Shields; of another at Leith; of some riot at Yarmouth; and of something of the same nature at Perth and Dundee. But I ask gentlemen if they believe that in each of these places the avowed object of the complaints of the people was not the real one-that the sailors at Shields, Yarmouth, and other places, did not really want some increase of their wages, but were actuated by a design of overthrowing the constitution? Is there a man in England who believes this insinuation to be true?"

Fox next adverting to what had fallen from Wallace, who, in seconding the motion of address, adduced as a proof that there existed in this country a dangerous spirit, the drooping and dejected aspect of many persons, when the tidings of Dumourier's surrender arrived in England,' said " Admitting the fact in its utmost extent, could any man who loves the constitution of England, who feels its principles in his heart, wish success to the duke of Brunswick, after reading a manifesto which violated every doctrine that Englishmen hold sacred,— which trampled under foot every principle of justice, humanity, and true government? It is rather extraordinary that we should think it right to abuse republics at the very moment we are called upon to protect the republic of Holland; to spread the doctrine that kings only have divine right, may indispose our allies to receive our proposed succour. They may not choose to receive into their country our admirals and generals, who being appointed by this king, in divine right, must partake of the same anger, and be sworn enemies to all forms of government not so sanctified. Surely, independent of the falsehood and the danger at home of such doctrines, it is the height of impolicy at this time to hold them in regard even to our neighbours.

"His majesty, in the next passage of his speech," continued Fox, "brings us to the apprehension of a war. I shall refrain at this time from saying all that occurs to me on this subject, because I wish to keep precisely to the immediate subject; but never surely had this country so much reason to wish for peace; never was a period so little favourable to a rupture with France, or with any power. I am not ready to subscribe exactly to the propriety of a resolution never to go to war unless we are attacked; but I wish that a motion was proposed by some person to express our disapprobation of entering upon any war, if we can by any honourable means avoid it. Let no man be deterred by the dread of being in a minority. A minority saved this country from a war against Russia. And surely it is our duty, as it is true policy, to exert every means to avert that greatest of national calamities. In 1789 we all must remember that Spain provoked this country by an insult, which is a real aggression; we were all agreed on the necessity of the case, but did we go headlong to war? No! we determined with becoming fortitude on an armed negotiation. We did negotiate, and we avoided a war. But now we disdain to negotiate.

Why? Because we have no minister at Paris! Why have we no minister there? Because France is a republic! And so we are to pay in the blood and treasure of the people for a punctilio! If there are discontents in the kingdom, Sir, this is the way to inflame them. It is of no consequence to any people what is the form of government with which they may have to treat; it is with the governors, whatever may be the form, that in common sense and policy they can have to do, and if they should change their form and change their governors, their course would remain the same. Having no legitimate concern with the internal state of any independent people, the road of common sense is simple and direct. That of pride and punctilio is as tangled as it is serpentine. Is the pretext the opening of the Scheldt? I cannot believe that such an object can be the real cause. I doubt, even if a war on this pretext would be undertaken with the approbation of the Dutch. What was the conduct of the French themselves under their depraved old system, when the good of the people never entered into the contemplation of the cabinet? The emperor threatened to open the Scheldt in 1786. Did the French go to war with him instantly to prevent it? No! they opened a negotiation, and prevented it by interfering with their good offices. Why have not we so interfered? Because, forsooth, France is an unanointed republic! Oh! miserable, infatuated Frenchmen! Oh! lame and inconsiderate politicians! Why, instead of breaking the holy vial of Rheims, why did you not pour some of the sacred oil on the heads of your executive council, that the pride of states might not be forced to plunge themselves and you into the horrors of war, rather than be contaminated by your acquaintance! The people will not be cheated. They will look round and demand where this danger is to be seen. Is it in England? they see it overflowing in expressions of loyalty, and yet they libel it with imputations of insurrection. In Ireland you know there is danger, and dare not own it; though you know that there a most respectable and formidable convention (I call it formidable, because I know nothing so formidable as reason, truth, and justice) will oblige you, by the most cogent reasons, to give way to demands which the magnanimity of the nation ought to have anticipated-in justice to subjects as attached to their king, as abundantly endowed with every manly virtue, as those of any part of the united kingdom. And while the claims of generous and ill-treated millions are thus protracted, there is a miserable mockery held out of alarms in England which have no existence, but which are made the pretext of assembling the parliament in an extraordinary way, in order in reality to engage you in a foreign contest. What must be the fatal consequence when a well-judging people shall decide --what I sincerely believe that the whole of this business is a ministerial manœuvre? A noble lord says he will move for a suspension of the habeas corpus act. I hope not! I have a high respect for the noble lord; but no motive of personal respect shall make me inattentive to my duty. Come from whom it may, I shall, with my most determined powers, oppose so dreadful a measure. What, it may be asked, would I propose to do in hours of agitation like the present? I will answer openly. If there is a tendency in the dissenters to discontent, because they conceive themselves unjustly suspected and cruelly calumniated, what should I do? I would instantly repeal the test and cor

poration acts, and take from them thereby all cause of complaint. If there were any persons tinctured with a republican spirit, because they thought that the representative government was more perfect in a republic, I would endeavour to amend the representation of the commons, and to prove that the house of commons, though not chosen by all, should have no other interest than to prove itself the representative of all. If there were men dissatisfied in Scotland, or Ireland, or elsewhere, on account of disabilities and exemptions, of unjust prejudices, and of cruel restrictions, I would repeal the penal statutes, which are a disgrace to our law-book. If there were other complaints of grievances, I would redress them where they were really proved; but, above all, I would constantly, cheerfully, patiently listen-I would make it known, that if any man felt, or thought he felt, a grievance, he might come freely to the bar of this house and bring his proofs. And it should be made manifest to all the world, that where they did exist they should be redressed; where they did not, that it should be made manifest. If I were to issue a proclamation, this should be my proclamation-‘If any man has a grievance, let him bring it to the bar of the commons' house of parliament, with the firm persuasion of having it honestly investigated.' These are the subsidies that I would grant to government. What instead of this is done? Suppress the complaint,check the circulation of knowledge,-command that no man shall read, -or, that as no man under one hundred pounds a year can kill a partridge, that no man under twenty pounds or thirty pounds shall dare to read or think!

"I love the constitution as it is established," he continued, "it has grown up with me as a prejudice and as a habit, as well as from conviction. I know it is calculated for the happiness of man, and that its constituent branches of king, lords, and commons could not be altered or impaired without entailing on this country the most dreadful miseries. It is the best adapted to England, because, as the noble earl truly said, the people of England think it the best; and the safest course is to consult the judgment and gratify the predilections of a country. Heartily convinced as I am, however, that to secure the peace, strength, and happiness of the country, we must maintain the constitution against all innovation, yet I do not think so highly and superstitiously of any human institution as to believe it is incapable of being perverted; on the contrary, I believe that it requires an increasing vigilance on the part of the people to prevent the decay and dilapidations to which every edifice is subject. I think too that we may be laid asleep to our real danger by these perpetual alarms to loyalty, which, in my opinion, are daily sapping the constitution. Under the pretext of guarding it from the assaults of republicans and levellers, we run the hazard of leaving it open on the other and more feeble side. We are led insensibly to the opposite danger,-that of increasing the power of the crown, and of degrading the influence of the house of commons. Let us only look back to the whole course of the present administration, and we shall see that from their outset to the present day, it has been their invariable object to degrade the house of commous in the eyes of the people, and to diminish its power and influence in every possible way. It was not merely in the outset of their career, when they stood up against the declared voice of the house of commons,

that this spirit was manifested,-but uniformly, progressively through their whole ministry, the same disposition has been shown, until at last it came to its full undisguised demonstration on the question of the Russian war, when the house of commons was degraded to the lowest state of insignificance and contempt, in being made to retract its own words, and to acknowledge that it was of no consequence or avail what were its sentiments on any one measure. The minister has regularly acted upon this sort of principle, to the vilification of the popular branch of the constitution. What is this but to make it appear that the house of commons is in reality what Thomas Paine, and writers like him, say it is, namely, that it is not the true representative and organ of the people. Is it not wonderful that all the true constitutional watchfulness of England should be dead to the only true danger that the day exhibits; and that they should be roused only by the idiotic clamour of republican frenzy, and of popular insurrection which do not exist?

"Sir," he concluded, "I have done my duty. I have with the certainty of exposing myself to the furor of the day-delivered my opinion at more length than I intended; and perhaps I have intruded too long on the indulgence of the house. I have endeavoured to per suade you against the indecent haste of committing yourselves to these assertions of an existing insurrection, until you shall make a rigorous inquiry where it is to be found; to avoid involving the people in the calamity of a war, without at least ascertaining the internal state of the kingdom, and prevent us from falling into the disgrace of being, as heretofore, obliged perhaps in a week to retract every syllable that we are now called upon to say."

He concluded with moving an amendment, simply pledging the house, "that inquiry should be made into the facts stated in his majesty's speech."

In the debate of the 1st of February, 1793, on Pitt moving an address of thanks to his majesty, Fox, after arguing that no just pretext for going to war with France existed, said: "That war was unjust which told not an enemy the ground of provocation, and the measure of atonement; it was as impolitic as unjust,-for without the object of contest clearly and definitely stated, what opening could there be for treating of peace? Before going to war with France, surely the people who must pay and suffer, ought to be informed on what object they were to fix their hopes for its honourable termination! After five or six years' war, the French might agree to evacuate the Netherlands as the price of peace; was it clear that they would not do so now, if we would condescend to propose it in intelligible terms? Surely in such an alternative, the experiment was worth trying. But then we had no security against the French principles:-What security would they be able to give us, after a war, which they could not give now? If there were any danger from French principles, to go to war without necessity was to fight for their propagation. On these principles, as reprobated in the proposed address, he would freely give his opinion. It was not the principles that were bad and to be reprobated, but the abuse of them; from the abuse, not the principles, had flowed all the evils that afflicted France. The use of the word equality by the French was deemed highly objectionable. When taken as they meant

it, nothing was more innocent; for what did they say? all men are equal in respect of their rights.' To this he assented; all men had equal rights, equal rights to unequal things; one man to a shilling,another to a thousand pounds; one man to a cottage,-another to a palace; but the right in both was the same,—an equal right of enjoying, an equal right of inheriting or acquiring,-and of possessing inheritance or acquisition. The effect of the proposed address was to condemn, not the abuse of those principles, and the French had much abused them, but the principles themselves. To this he could not assent, for they were the principles on which all just and equitable government was founded. He had already differed sufficiently with a right honourable gentleman (Burke) on this subject, to wish not to provoke any fresh difference; but, even against so great an authority, he must say, that the people are the sovereigns in every state; that they have a right to change the form of their government, and a right to cashier their governors for misconduct, as the people of this country cashiered James II., not by parliament, or any regular form known to the constitution, but by a convention speaking the sense of the people; that convention produced a parliament and a king. They elected William to a vacant throne, not only setting aside James-whom they had justly cashiered for misconduct but his innocent son. Again they elected the house of Brunswick, not individually, but by dynasty; and that dynasty to continue while the terms and conditions on which it was elected are fulfilled, and no longer. He could not admit the right of doing all this but by acknowledging the sovereignty of the people as paramount to all other laws. But it was said, that although we had once exercised this power, we had in the very act of exercising it, renounced it for ever. We had neither renounced it, nor, if we had been so disposed, was such a renunciation in our power. We elected first an individual,— then a dynasty,—and lastly, passed an act of parliament in the reign of queen Anne, declaring it to be the right of the people of this realm to do so again without even assigning a reason. If there were any persons among us who doubted the superior wisdom of our monarchical form of government, their error was owing to those who changed its strong and irrefragable foundation in the right and choice of the people to a more flimsy ground of title. The justifiable grounds of war," he argued, were insult, injury, or danger. For the first, satisfaction; for the second, reparation; for the third, security, was the object. Each of these too was the proper object of negotiation, which ought ever to precede war, except in case of an attack actually commenced. How had we negotiated? When the triple league was formed to check the ambition of Louis XIV., the contracting parties did not deal so rigorously by him as we were now told it was essential to the peace of Europe that we should deal by the French. They never told Louis that he must renounce all his conquests, in order to obtain peace. But then it was said to be our duty to hate the French for the part they took in the American war. He had heard of a duty to love, but a duty to hate was new to him. That duty, however, ought to direct our hatred to the old government of France, not to the new, which had no hand in the provocation. Unfortunately the new French government was admitted to be the successor of the old in nothing but its faults and its offences. It was a successor to be hated and to be