and at least, perfectly consonant to the well-known firmness and zeal of my right honourable friend. But may not the relative situation of the enemy present them with more specific means of carrying their purpose into execution, than they possessed at a former period, when it was necessary to guard against the dangers which then threatened them from various quarters?

The right honourable gentleman says, you relied on the firmness and attachment of the people two years ago; and is it less now that you have recourse to extraordinary precautions? The attachment and loyalty of the people of this country, I trust, has experienced no diminution. It lives, and is cherished by that constitution which, notwithstanding the assertions of the right honourable gentleman, still remains en. tire. Under the protection and support which it derives from the acts passed by the last parliament, the constitution inspires the steady affection of the people, and is still felt to be worth defending with every drop of our blood. The voice of the country proclaims that it continues to deserve and to receive their support. Fortified by laws in perfect unison with its principles and with its practice, and fitted to the emergencies by which they were occasioned, it still possesses that just esteem and admiration of the people which will induce them faithfully to defend it against the designs of domestic foes, and the attempts of their foreign enemies. The right honourable gentleman discovers the extent of the adversity into which he represents the country to be fallen in some of the measures now proposed for its defence, and which he reprobates by the name of requisitions ;—a species of levy, however, which so long as it was practised in France, he did not consider as deserving of any particular disapprobation. I will not at this moment in. quire, whether requisitions in France were a right and proper measure; but let not the right honourable gentleman at once maintain that the attachment of the people renders these mea. gures of defence superfluous, and in the next moment represent these precautions as proofs of the intolerable pitch of adver sity to which the nation is reduced. The situation in which we

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are placed does not imply a suspicion of our power, though it justifies our precautions. That prosperity is deceitful and dangerous, if it lead to a false security; that the danger, though groundlessly apprehended, or falsely exaggerated, without excrtion upon our part, can alone be of doubtful issue or perilous consequence, is the real opinion which the contemplation of the state of the county is fitted to inspire.

The right honourable gentleman, when he expressed his dislike of the mode of pressing men for the public service, did not specifically apply his objection to the plan of augmenting the militia and raising the new supplies of cavalry; he admits that these may, in some measure, come under the description of personal force. The mode proposed of increasing the militia is not new in its principle. They are to be balloted in the same manner as the established militia of the country. The 60,000 men which it was proposed to add, were to be formed precisely as the 90,000 of which the ordinary number consists. The present addition does not exceed the amount for which, on former occasions, it was thought necessary to provide. In 1756, a bill passed for doubling the number. The right honourable gentleman, however, in pressing his argument, runs before his recollection. The 15,000 men for the land and sea service are to be raised according to the provisions of the act passed two years ago upon this subject. Does the right honourable gentleman then consider this to be pressing? No; it is meant to raise volunteers by contribution among the inhabitants of each parish, and, if they failed to produce the number at which they were rated, they were to pay a certain sum over the sum at which a person to serve could be procured. If the right honourable gentleman reprobates this mode as pressing, what was the language he held upon another occasion, and when a different mode was pursued? In 1794, when voluntary offers of service were introduced for the defence of the country, this mode was reprobated as repugnant to the constitution; and now when men are called upon to con. tribute their property and their personal service to the defence

of their country, it is discovered to be unjust, and stigmatized as requisition! The two honourable gentlemen admit the necessity of precaution, and they reprobate every measure which is proposed; and while they agree that it is necessary to provide for the defence of the state, they are dissatisfied with the means by which security is to be obtained. No withstanding the unanimity with which the resolution will be voted, I cannot augur well for the future co-operation which the measures may obtain, when I consider the sentiments which the honourable gentlemen entertain, and the observations with which their present concurrence is accompanied.

The resolution was afterwards put and agreed to.

December 8, 1796.

THR report of the committee of Ways and Means was brought up, and the resolutions were read a first time. On the motion for their being now read a second time,

Mr. Fox, in very animated language, urged the attention of the House to the circumstance of ministers having granted £1,200,000, to the Emperor of Germany without the consent of parliament, upon which he dwelt for a considerable time.

Mr. PITT replied to his observations:

Those who never before had an opportunity of hearing the speeches which the right honourable gentleman has been accus. tomed to pronounce, and of observing the line of argument which he has been accustomed to employ upon every public question which has been agitated in this house, would certainly have supposed, upon the present occasion, that this day, for the first time in his life, the right honourable gentleman had felt real alarm for the liberties and constitution of his country, and for the first time a point had occurred, so intimately connected with the preservation of their political rights, that in the event of a decision hostile to the opinion which he holds, it is to be vindi

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cated by nothing less than an appeal to the people. But it has happened to those who have often had occasion to attend to the right honourable gentleman, to have heard the same danger represented, and the same consequences applied. It is not once twice, or three times that the right honourable gentleman has reprobated with the same emphasis, stigmatised with the same epithets, and denounced as pregnant with ruin to the liberties of the country, measures, which it has been thought necessary to bring forward, and which the wisdom of parliament has thought proper to adopt; nor is it now the first time that the right ho nourable gentleman, and those who sit near him, have made a stand behind the last dike of the constitution. It is not the first, the second, nor the third time, I repeat, that upon points which a great majority of the house and of the country deemed to be connected with the preservation of their dearest interests, the right honourable gentleman has raised the cry of alarm, and has affected to see the downfal of the constitution, and the destruction of our liberties. Not many months even have elapsed since the right ho nourable gentleman stated with the same confidence, and urged with the same fervour, that the liberties of England were annihi. lated, and its constitution gone, if certain bills then pending passed into law; laws under which, I will venture to affirm,that a vast majority of the people of this country agree that the substantial blessings of their free government have been preserved, and the designs of our real enemies have hitherto been frustrated. Nay, not many hours have elapsed since the right honourable gentleman gave a two month's notice of his intention to move the repeal of those acts which he once represented as a grievance. under which he could not sleep.

There is, indeed, something striking, something peculiarly singular, in the manner in which the new constitutional light has broken in upon the right honourable gentleman. This de claration of mind, which has infused so deadly an alarm into the mind of the right honourable gentleman, this declaration by which the constitution is annihilated, was made yesterday! This declaration is admitted to have been made in a way the

most clear and distinct, indeed so clear as to magnify the danger, and to aggravate the offence. This declaration, which he now feels to be so fatal to the liberties of the country, so repugnant to the principles of the constitution, as to render it incumbent upon him to make it the ground of an extraordinary proceeding, and the reason of sigual animadversion against me, did not yesterday strike him as of so much importance as immediately to call him up! It did not inspire with any particular sensation his honourable friend near him*, a gentleman by nature not free from jealousy, and of a vigilance which it is not easy to elude-it had not drawn from him the smallest remark of any kind, that could expose the danger with which it was pregnant. It never disturbed the serenity of his temper, though perhaps not the least liable to irritation, nor had it prevented him from laying before the house the details of his various calculations with the most calm and placid equanimity, the very moment after he had witnessed the death-wound of the constitution! After an interval of debate, it had deranged none of the calculations of the right honourable gentleman, it had not driven out of his head his reasonings of the three per cents. his remarks upon the navy debt, nor a single circumstance of objection which the survey of the subject had presented, nor had it deterred him from allowing the resolutions to be carried with an unanimous vote. But after the right honourable gentleman had slept upon this subject, he discovers that the speech which he yesterday heard with so much indifference, contains principles of such dreadful tendency, and threatens consequences of such fatal operation, as to lead him not merely to propose a censure of the doctrines, or the reprobation of the particular measure; not merely the punishment of the person by whom it was uttered; but which would induce him in the first instance to take revenge for the error or the guilt of a minister, by giving his negative to the whole resolutions, which have no relation to the particular measure in ques tion; which would prompt him to suspend those supplies which