Speaking for all my colleagues who surround me, as well as for myself, I say, if that case can be established, we must retrace our steps Let us concur, my Lords, in serving-serving do I say! let us concur in saving our country.

together.

My Lords, the two first Resolutions, which Í shall now read, I may assume without detaining the House by any argument upon the subject, because my noble and learned Friend upon the woolsack distinctly disclaimed on a former occasion (I was quite sure that he would), all intention of arguing for any power in the Crown, to suspend or dispense with the laws, or of justifying, upon any such principle, the advice of the Privy Council, by which the Orders complained of were issued.

This we had not forgotten, when the two first Resolutions were drawn up; but it was thought necessary, nevertheless, that they should stand upon the paper, and have precedence of the others; because, as your Lordships will presently see, the Resolutions have a dependence upon one another, and we begin with a declaration against the dispensing and suspending powers of the crown, dead and buried as they were at the revolution, because we

affirm that his Majesty's Ministers have nevertheless advised the King to assume them, and that the Orders in Council are a positive and dangerous assumption of it.

The first Resolution declares,

That the power of making laws to bind the people of this realm is exclusively vested in his Majesty by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons of the Realm, in Parliament assembled; and that every attempt to make, alter, suspend, or repeal such laws, by order of his Majesty in his Privy Council, or in any other manner, than by his Majesty in Parliament, is uncone stitutional and illegal."

The second Resolution declares,

"That the advising his Majesty to issue any Order in Council, for dispensing with, or suspending, any of the laws of this realm, is a high violation of the fundamental laws and constitution thereof.

“That the same cannot in any case be justified, but by some unforeseen and urgent necessity endangering the public safety.

"And that in every such case it is the duty of his Majesty's Ministers to advise his Majesty, after issuing such Order, forthwith to assemble his Parliament, in order both that the necessity of such proceeding may be inquired of and determined; and that due provision may be made for the public safety, by the authority of his Majesty in Parliament."

My Lords, the sound policy of the Constitution, asserted in the last member of this. Resolution, was, perhaps, never so strikingly illustrated as upon the present occasion.

His

Majesty's Ministers, though placed in a conjuncture which they themselves admit to have been wholly without example; though they were engaging in a proceeding for which, of course, they had neither precedent nor analogy to direct them; though, from the measure they were adopting, not only our commerce was to suffer a sudden and universal revolution, but, from its probable reception by America, we were to risque the alliance of a powerful and numerous people, and thereby complete the combination of the whole world against our country: yet they not only did not call Parlia ment together for its counsel, on an occasion so new and so difficult, but even prevented it from assembling, by repeated prorogations. Was Parliament thus repeatedly prorogued because the measure was within the King's power, and because they had so considered it in all its bearings that the assistance of Parliament was unnecessary? My Lords, it was a manifest extension of the King's power, as I shall soon demonstrate to your Lordships; and had it even been clearly within it, the subject was not only too complicated for the private councils of the crown, but Ministers had not at all considered even its certain consequences

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and effects, nor was the subject indeed within the reach of the most enlightened statesman, without the aids which committees of Parlia ment could have furnished:-the truth of this observation is best supported by the fact. They issued the first Order, though it was to have its operation upon distant nations, without the notices which, in less than a week afterwards, they acknowledged to have been indispensible; and they suffered it to find its way, in the gazettes, in that unjust and imperfect state, to every port in America. They were then surrounded by the merchants of London (I wish the siege had been continued), and were obliged to issue new Orders, which were styled Supplemental, but which were manifestly repugnant and inconsistent: These were afterwards illustrated by explanations, which, in their turn, required explanation; and when Parliament was, at last, permitted to assemble, after so many public marks of rashness and precipitation, Ministers have been obliged, day after day, to abandon some of the most essential parts of their system, after they had but too probably increased the irritation which they were at that very moment endeavouring, by a public embassy, to compose.

My Lords, if Parliament had been assembled, how different might have been our present situation. Ministers would then have had only to propose their system, without being committed to it, and, perhaps, fatally committed to other nations. The most eminent merchants would then have furnished independent lights to the committees of Parliament, and the councils of the country would then have been governed by the public' results of those communications, instead of depending, as I fear they have, upon the flatteries and deceptions of the interested and the ignorant.

But, my Lords, the worst is still behind. Ministers, instead of asking indemnity for these illegal acts, upon the footing of their necessity and justice, make them the foundation of an act of Parliament, which we may expect soon to be called upon to consent to. For my own part, my Lords, I would rather cast into the fire the patent which entitles me to sit among your Lordships, than give my consent to any statute, even though I approved of its provisions, if I saw upon the face of it a distinct assumption of the dispensing power of the Crown, not even assumed to be justified under the necessity of the case, but recited on the