ed, and was only subjected to regulations for its more beneficial exercise, it was unreasonable to complain of its being extinguished. The solicitor, speaking of the purity and independence of the British parliament, took this occasion to condemn the system adopted by the French, of allowing salaries to the representatives of the nation. Hence, be asserted, arose the calamities of France. It was a practice which had long been relinquished by this country, and which denoted the prudence of the people and government. He also advanced another maxim, which was, that revolutions were always the work of minorities: these usually consisted of spirited and active individuals, who were not deterred by difficulties, and whose resolution and perseverance rendered them indefatigable, and enabled them finally to overcome the majorities that opposed their designs. These majorities being composed of the peaceable and well-affected to government, though acting with loyalty, did not exert themselves with a fervour equal to that of their antagonists, whose vigour and animation in pursuing the objects for which they were contending, inspired them with exertions too violent to be resisted by men, who had only ordinary motives to influence

them, while the others were prompted by that multiplicity of passions which actuate men who are striving to exalt themselves above others, and to expel them from the seat of power, in order to Occupy it themselves. From the various reasonings that had been used in support of the bill, he inferred, that as the laws in force did not sufficiently apply to the numerous meetings and associations,

where the seditious principles complained of were encouraged, laws that might clearly be directed against them, ought of course to be enacted.

In reply to the solicitor-general, Mr. Erskine positively denied the bill's consistency with the principles of the British constitution. Neither in the reign of Charles II. nor of William III. nor in those that followed, though two of them were marked by rebellions, had the ministry dared to attempt such an infringement on the liberty of the subject; and yet the first of these reigns was immediately after those commotions that had brought a king to the scaffold: the second was noted for the obstinacy with which the dherents to a dethroned monarch exerted themselves in his cause, even to the attempting the very life of the prince upon the throne. In the height of therebellion of 1745, no minister had ventured to fetter the nation in the manner proposed by the present bill. Even the very framers of it, when they sus pended the habeas-oorpus-act, and were preparing their materials for the late trials, had abstained from this glaring invasion of national freedom. No plots had since arisen, corroborated with any proofs, to arm ministers with a just pretence for so outrageous an attack on the constitution; the fundamentals of which were so materially affected by it, that the right to petition, on which the security of the people against oppression essentially depended, would be utterly destroyed. The

bill forbad all discussion that was not sanctioned by a magistrate. Did not such a clause empower magistrates appointed by, and removable at, the will of the crown, to be judges of the nature of the petitions [D2]

of

of the people? was it presumable that such persons would permit a petition, militating against any ministerial measure, to be brought forward in a popular meeting? but whatever the favours of absolute powers might advance in support of such a bill, it took away at once the right inherent in the people to resist a tyrannical government. The public meetings had been charged with speaking bold language; but there were occasions that warranted the boldest language. The people of England had inalienably the right to defend their liberties to the last extremity such were the sentiments of the great lord Chatham, and such were his own. In no situation would he desert that cause, and was determined never to die a slave. It was, in the mean time, with the heaviest concern, that he observed a circumstance pregnant with much calamity: this was the estrangement of the higher classes from the lower: this had been the radical cause of the evils that had

befallen France. Previously to the revolution there were but two. orders of society in that country, a haughty and domineering nobility, and a wretched oppressed multitude. Hence arose the resentments of the lower classes, who beheld themselves tyrannised over by a profligate court and government, to which, for that reason, they did not conceive themselves bound to submit. Arguing from this weighty precedent, Mr. Erskine warned the possessors of power, and the owners of great property in this country, to beware of the fatal examples before them, and not to abet a law by which the people's liberties must necessarily be abrogated, and a spirit of revenge excited in them which would inevitably break forth soon

or late. Compulsion and the dread of force might induce them to submit awhile to their oppressors; but it would be a sullen submission, and though it might even last a few years, the remembrance of liberty would still survive, and prompt them, in an evil hour for the destroyers of their freedom, to resume it on some auspicious opportunity, and to take the most signal vengeance upon its enemies. In corroboration of his sentiments, Mr. Erskine referred to the speech of the chief justice, at the late trials for high treason at the Old Bailey.

66

Among the objects of the attention of freemen, said the chief justice, the principles of government, the constitutions of particular governments, and, above all, the constitution of the government under which they live, will naturally engage their attention, and provoke speculation. The power of communication of thoughts and opinions is the gift of God, and the freedom of it is the source of all science, the first fruit and the ultimate happinesss of society; and therefore it seems to fol low, that human laws ought not to interpose, nay, cannot interpose, to prevent the communication of senti ments and opinions in voluntary assemblies of men." So dangerously was the bill framed, that it was in the power of any one individual present at a meeting to occasion its dissolution, by speaking a few seditious words, that would instantly authorise the presiding magistrate to put an end to it on that pretence; but was it not clear that, for a paltry grati fication, a hireling might be found to afford this pretence to a ministe rial justice for executing the mandates of his employer? It was false that no law existed to prevent seditious proceedings: a magistrate

had

rican war.

had it always in his option to dissolve a disorderly assembly when it was evidently accompanied by a breach of the peace; and by the riot-act he was explicitly empowered to disperse meetings held on unlawful purposes. Mr. Erskine next proceeded to expose the change of sentiments in the English on matters of government. Mr. Burke had, he said, already taken notice of this alteration so long ago as the Ame"We begin, his words were, to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality: the principles of our forefathers become suspected to us, because we see them animating the present opposition of their American descendants. The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom, appear much more shocking to us than those vices which are generated from the rank ness of servitude." Thus, said Mr. Erskine, neither the idea, nor the term of equality, were strangers to our language till lately, as some time-servers would insinuate. It were wiser in the higher ranks to cherish this idea, than to affect a secession from the commonalty, and to hold it beneath their dignity to make one common cause with them. The great ought seriously to weight the consequences that must certainly ensue from a contest between them and the little. It would indicate a spirit of disunion in this country, of which the French would not fail to avail themselves; far worse would be the conditions of a treaty with them in such a case, than if they found us united in disposition and interests. Mr. Erskine, reverting to the motives alledged in support of the bill, said, because, while the sovereign was going to parliament, at a time when

:

a complication of calamities had rendered the poor desperate, a few wretches were guilty of outrages to him, for which they might have been punished by statutes long existing, the whole nation is at once to lose the privilege on which it justly sets the highest value. The statute enacted in the thirteenth of Charles II. was, he observed, the acknowledged precedent of the present bill by the tenour of that statute one hundred thousand individuals might assemble in order to concert together a petition: the only prohibitions contained in that act, were, to hawk the petition about for those to sign, who might not know of the grievances complained of, and that more than ten persons should present the petition to the king. It also empowered magistrates to interpose their autho rity when overt acts of tumult took place, and to require security against any breach of the peace; but no meeting nor communication of thoughts were forbidden; tumultuously petitioning was the only thing forbidden. How different, exclaimed Mr. Erskine, was this act from the bill now depending, which even prevented men from petitioning. He concluded by animadverting on the language once used by Mr. Pit himself, on the subject of parliamentary reform. "We had lost America, were the minister's words, through the corruption of an unreformed parliament, and we should never have a wise and honourable administration, nor be freed from the evils of unnecessary war, nor the fatal effects of the funding system, till a radical reform was obtained." But the man who had spoker these true and memorable words was the same who now charged with sedition all [D 3]

those

those who thought and spoke as he had done, and who reprobated the measures, which, after he had so bitterly complained of them in that speech, he had now thought proper to adopt.

A reply was made to Mr. Erskine by Mr. Anstruther and lord Mornington. The first repeated the various arguments adduced in favour of the bill, and the second produced a variety of passages out of several publications, in order to prove its propriety. The latter was violently arraigned on this account by Mr. Sheridan.

The bill was defended by Mr. Dundas, who took occasion to observe, that no member of that house had so frequently distinguished himself by appeals to the people as Mr. Fox, combating ministers in popular meetings one half of the day, and attacking them with equal fervour in parliament during the remainder. He had acted the same part during the American war to as little purpose, however, as it would appear he had done at present. Mr. Dundas inveighed, with great asperity, against some particulars in his political conduct and connections, which he exerted himself to describe in the most disadvantageous colours,

These reproaches drew a severe answer from Mr. Fox, who pointed ly reminded him of the maxim held forth by his coadjutor Mr. Pitt, that popular harangues were "the best and most useful duty, which representatives in parliament could discharge to their constituents." In appealing to the public he had done no more than his duty, which enjoined him, whenever the conduct of ministers appeared in a questionable light to inform the people of his sentiments relating to

their designs. The bill he expli citly defined, a daring attempt to overthrow the fundamental prin ciple on which the constitution stood; the universal freedom of discussion. With regard to the inefficacy of his remonstrances against the American war, he readily admitted that he had uniformly, and on all occasions, condemned that war from first to last, and that all his remonstrances against it, as the honourable gentlemen had justly observed, had been to no purpose. But whether this ought to be made matter of shame or reproach to himself, or of triumph to the honourable gentleman, he left the house, the world, and even the honourable gen. tleman, to judge.-A deep silence at these words took place for a few moments on both sides of the house, and every eye was turned on Mr. Dundas, who, contrarily to his usual manner, discovered, or at least was thought to discover, symptoms of discomposure. The debate closed with two hundred and thirteen votes for the second reading of the bill, and forty-three against it.

The second reading of the bill, for the better security of the king's person, was moved in the house of commons on the nineteenth of November; when the question being put, Mr. Fox opposed it on account of the absence of many members; but the motion passed by sixty-four against twenty-two.

In the mean time, the public was no less occupied than parliament itself, in the discussion of the two bills pending in both houses. The novelty of the measures proposed, their inimical tendency to the long established usages of the nation, their direct aim at its liberty, and the daringness of ministers in bring ing forward so undeniable an infringement

fringement of rights, that had been respected by all preceding administrations: these combined motives excited an alarm, which was felt in every part of the nation. All people, without exception, cordially avowed their loyalty to the sovereign, but as vehemently protested against the passing of the two bills, as unconstitutional, and clearly subversive of the main foundation of English liberty, the right of the people to assemble and to communicate their sentiments reciprocally upon those subjects, which they thought necessary to bring into discussion, and to frame petitions upon them to the king and the legislature. The determinate steadiness and perseverance of the public on this critical occasion was the more remarkable, that every effort was used by the ministerial party to prevent those popular exertions against the designs in agitation: but these were viewed with so suspicious an eye, that every argument in their justification vanished before the discontent they seemed to have universally excited. Numbers even of those who did not disapprove the conduct of ministers in other respects, could not bring themselves to approve the two bills in contemplation. Those even who supported them, as requisite during the fermentation at present pervading all classes, frankly acknowledged them to be contrary to the principles of the English constitution, the freedom of which, however, unless restrained by some temporary regulations, threatened to become licentiousness, and to precipitate the public into all those miseries that had been so woefully experienced by their unhappy neighbours, the French. But those who thus maintained the necessity of these bills, pleaded only for a

limited duration of them. As they were indubitably an abridgmen of national liberty, they ought, it was strongly asserted, to last no longer than the occasion that gave rise to them. When the disputes of the day, and the feuds they produced were at an end, they ought instantly to be repealed, and the full exercise of the ancient liberties of the nation, to be restored with out the least diminution upon any pretence. Thus argued the majo rity of those who favoured the bills.

But a far superior majority would admit of them on no pretence whatever. They were, it was in, dignantly affirmed, the component parts of a system that began to unfold itself in too visible a manner not to be perceived, and too alarming a one not to be resisted by every real friend to the liberty of his country. This resistance was indeed proposed by some to be carried to the most resolute extremity; and had not the immense power of government been prudently weighed, the proposal would, in the opinion of numbers, have been carried into execution: but though a resistance of so dangerous a nature gave way to the cool reflections of the better advised, every other species of opposition took place against the two bills in question. Meetings and consultations, both private and public, were held every where. Clubs and associations were formed for the purpose of opposing them by every method not liable to the cognizance of the law. Never had there appeared, in the memory of the oldest man, so firm and decided a plurality of adversaries to the ministerial measures as on this occasion: the interest of the public seemed so deeply at stake, that individuals, not only of the decent, but of the [D4]

most