parliament to make an alteration on its own constitution or condition; and we must come, in fine, to the single point which my imagination can suggest, as a possible ground of distinction, namely, the great and superlative importance and magnitude of this transaction. We have seen that all other cases of a similar nature ejusdem generis, are within the acknowledged powers of parliament, and the daily exercise of those powers. But this is a measure, we must say, of such transcendent importance, as to exceed the ordinary capacities entrusted by the constitution to parliament, and to which the inherent sovereignty of the people itself is alone com mensurate. I can conceive no other rational shape into which this argument can be cast; but is it rational in substance also; or is it not the most palpable and the grossest violation of reason, the widest departure from every sound principle in the theory either of this constitution, or of government in general? It would be strange indeed if this point of superior importance should serve my adversary, since it is the very ground on which I rest most firmly my claim of exclusive cognizance to the parliament. On what principle is the trust of legislation committed to parliament at all? Because no people on earth, not even the smallest population in the smallest territory, could ever exercise a democratic legislation in its entire and theoretical purity. If we look back to that most ancient and simple of all constitutions, I mean the patriarchal or the government of families which has been regarded as the first, and original model and archetype of all succeeding governments, we shall find that even these have rejected a mode of administration which it was, at least, easier to execute within the walls of a single tent, or the bounds of a wandering camp, and amongst a few individuals, than in any other more populous state. Authority was still deposited with selection in fewer hands than the whole even of those narrow communities. The heads of families, the chiefs of tribes; the elders; in a word, some select body or other, administered these small commonwealths. It would lead to unprofitable length if I were to pursue this reasoning with minuteness, as it would be easy to do, up to the conclusion, to which we all assent; namely, that the people of England cannot make law for themselves in any democratic form of con stitution; that they are not provided or acquainted with any institution which should enable them to perform this feat of self-legislation, even if they were desirous of attempting it. They have no comitia : no assemblies of the people in Hyde Park, or St. George's-fields, to the decrees of which the millions of absent Englishmen, owe, or choose to acknowledge any obe dience. And there being a physical impossibility to collect their voices individually, even if that physical and practical impossibility, if I may say so without the imputation of incorrectness, were not the weakest objection to such a mode of legislation, there is an established organ of the general will, qualified by its frame and constitution, to apply the collective wisdom of the nation to its collective interests, and to administer the sovereign power of the state on this secure and solid foundation. The sovereignty of parliament, thus explained, is in the end no more; it is neither more nor less, but identically and precisely the same with the sovereignty of the people itself, appearing in the only visible, tangible or perceptible form in which it can be recognized in this country. It is, then, first, on the vices and inabilities of all other modes by which the voice of the people can be expressed, or even its opinions formed agreeable to their general and collective interests; and secondly, on the peculiar and approved excellence of the constitution which we enjoy, that the authority and sovereignty of parliament has been established. Let us endeavour, for a moment, to imagine some better mode of collecting, in a popular way, the sense of the nation, on any great point of policy or law, or, if you please, on this specific measure. Shall it be by meetings convoked by anonymous hand-bills, in the fields adjoining to this metropolis, and directed by orators on carts, tubs, or other moveable rostra? Every one knows that the union with Ireland, for the discussion of which such assemblies were to be called, would not be the first order of the day. The most pressing sympathies and fellow feelings of such a legislature would be for the suffering felons, traitors, or mutineers, in Newgate and Cold-bath-fields. Their first and second measures, in favour of the liberty and property of the subject, would be to deliver the gaols, and emancipate the bank; and they would soon simplify this intricate and complex constitution, by uniting the Having spoken to the principle, let us see how the question stands on authority. I shall not encumber my argument with the authorities which are familiar in every mouth, to prove a position, not disputed in any quarter, namely, the general supremacy of parliament; and I shall respect your lordships leisure sufficiently to omit the book authorities on this general but fundamental truth, although the passages I might refer to, assert distinctly, as your lordships know, amongst other examples of the universal faculties of parliament, its competence to this specific measure of a legislative union with other countries. There are two sorts of authority: first, the opinions of learned and eminent men. Next, precedent. To begin with the first and to speak of the responsa prudentum. legislative, the judicial, and the executive | legislation, and because it is itself the most powers; as they would abridge the tedious perfect model of human polity, in all matdelays of all those functions, by carrying, ters of legislation, must be yet better enwith their own hands, into instant effect, titled to preference and to exclusive and their own laws and judgments. I remember sovereign jurisdiction, in cases of great to have seen a parliament deliberate in and signal importance, than in any other? St. George's fields in the forenoon; and I It seems to me, therefore, the strangest do not forget, that on the same evening I perversion of reason, and the most palpasaw London and Westminster in flames. ble contradiction and absurdity to place Shall the appeal from parliament lie to the incompetence of parliament on that county meetings, called by the sheriffs, on ground on which its sole and exclusive the requisition of a few dozens of signa- competence most firmly and securely tures: and shall the people of England be rests; I mean the superior importance of bound in this great interest, by a collation this law. of the various and discordant resolutions, passed by a respectable show of hands, at the Georges and different Angels of the kingdom? Shall the magistrates at quarter sessions, shall grand juries at assizes, or, in fine, shall the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, at parish vestries, supersede parliament, on account of their superior wisdom and knowledge; and, above all, because they have received a more authentic and direct delegation from the people at large? Or shall we prefer, rather, those convivial parliaments which hold their sittings occasionally at the different taverns of this city? whose resolutions, moved in the form of toasts, are agreed to in bumpers, and whose laws, proposed in stanzas, to the tune of a ballad, are passed in full chorus. Is not this jovial system of legislation, a mere inversion of the good old constitution, which, if it permits the electors to be drunk, requires the parliament to be sober? But must we, then, to speak seriously, depose the parliament chosen by the people, in favour of these self-elected, self-ballotted parliaments, attended by very small minorities of that parliament which was chosen by the people, after they have withdrawn their attendance from that parliament to which the people sent them? In fine, what is to be the form of this arch parliament, which is to qualify it better than the British parliament, as it now stands, for legislating, just in proportion as the subject is of higher import and dignity, and of greater compass and difficulty, than those ordidinary acts of legislation to which those high authorities are utterly inadequate and incompetent. Is it not, then, manifest, that a legislature in which the sovereignty of the state is vested, because every other political body, known in this country, is deficient in the requisites for common and ordinary To the learning of the corporations of Dublin, and of the freeholders of the county of Louth, and some other counties; to the authority of some members of the Irish bar, I shall oppose the chancellor of Ireland, and the chiefs of the four supreme courts of law in that country. I shall oppose the clear and unequivocal sense of the House of Lords of Ireland, evinced not only by its vote, but by the withdrawing that part of the amendment, proposed originally by lord Powescourt, which involved that question. I shall oppose the opinion of the majority of the House of Commons of Ireland, for I think myself entitled to claim the dissent of that House to this proposition on a fair and candid view of its proceedings. The House once agreed, by a majority, however slender, to entertain the measure; and afterwards rejected it by a ma. jority as slender; for the difference between one and five hardly deserves notice. If to this equality of opinion on the principal measure be added the consideration that the opposers of the union did not even tender this proposition to the 815] Let us now look at precedent. It is the instances of such changes. They are frequent in the history of England. and they all prove the supreme authority. of parliament, even in these highest acts of sovereignty. By whatever means such changes have been brought about; whatever has been the efficient cause, or instrument of such revolutions, they have all derived their sanction and validity from parliament, the seal of which has always been resorted to by the new sovereign, as the only effectual security for his title, whether he stood on a claim essentially good, or on successful usurpation-and the anxiety with which the many repetitions of parliamentary recognition have been sought after, by those who were interested in a new or unquestionable title, is remarkable on this argument. But without dwelling on more ancient examples, it is surely sufficient to recall that of the Revolution which placed king William on the throne, and the subsequent limitation of the crown to the house of Hanover. Will it be said, that the declaration of king James's abdication, and the vacancy of the throne, was a point of less note or value, or of a lower rank in the scale of sovereign functions, than the union with Scotland or Wales, or than. the measure now in contemplation? Will it be said, that the whole transaction of the Revolution was of a lower or meaner class and order, in legislation, than any union, or any other national event that is either known or can be imagined? I do, not fear that it will. By what authority, then, was that great change in one branch of the legislature, and in the condition of the nation operated? To what authority was the prince of Orange advised to resort, for the sanction of his enterprise and the security of his crown? Observe the difference between the circumstances in which he stood, and those in which the present proceeding is tendered to parlia ment. By the flight and abdication of the king, and the consequent vacancy of the throne, an actual and practical dissolution of the government seemed to have taken place, if it can ever do so, in any pos It was in such sible or imaginable case. a predicament, if it could happen in any, that the supposed dormant title of the people to administer the sovereignty in their own persons, so far, at least, as regarded the reintegration of the deficient and truncated government, must have been awakened and called into action. tion-which, however, was yet hardly deemed perfect, until it was consummated by the ratification of subsequent and yet more regular parliaments. The subsequent limitation of the crown, after the death of the duke of Gloucester, was also the work of parliament; and I believe so far from deeming that authority incompetent, or wishing to rely on any other higher or more transcendent power, none of those whig statesmen and lawyers who presided in every step of the Revolution, and who had the Protestant succession at heart, would have thought that great object secure, if the limitation to the princess Sophia had stood on a decree of the people, conveyed by any other organ than precisely that which they employed, I mean the parliament. If these great men, then, were content to rest the Revolution itself, that vast and prime concern, embracing every other possible interest of Englishmen, on the single and perfect efficacy of an act of parliament, we are not to wonder if the same men thought the respective par liaments of England and Scotland, the competent, and the only competent instruments to accomplish the union between the two countries. That motion was, indeed, different from | the present, in which we have every branch of the legislature complete, and the whole frame of our government not only perfect and apt to all its purposes, but in the actual and daily exercise of its functions; and in which we are ourselves debating this very question concerning parliamentary powers, within the walls of a subsisting parliament, and in the ordinary discharge of our parliamentary duty. Yet, under the circumstances which I have described, what did the prince of Orange resolve, under the direction of his whig advisers? Did he apply to the people at large in any new and anomalous form? Was it to county meetings, or assemblies in the fields, or, in a word, to any unknown and unusual organ of the public mind, that he applied to sanction his title? Far from it. Even the first Convention, under the authority of which he afterwards summoned the Convention of parliament, was composed, in the first place, of the House of Lords; and next, of those who had been members of parliament in the reign of Charles 2nd. It will not be said, that these persons had any specific delegation from the people, either for this special act, or for any other end; either express, by positive What overweening preference is it of commission, or implied, by their recent our own times, or our own persons, that election. A whole reign had elapsed should make us thus fastidious in casting since they came from the people. by, as of inferior and more imperfect Their delegation and functions had been growth, the constitutional Whiggism and exhausted and had expired long since. wholesome liberty of the reigns of king WilYet so much preferable did this approxi- liam and queen Anne, to intoxicate ourmation to the regular constitutional au- selves and our country with that doublethority, when an entire conformity with refined, that sublimated and adulterated it was impossible; so much preferable did modern drug which is now poisoning the even this shadow, this surviving flavour world? I own, for my part, that I like of the parliamentary character, which to see, on the liberty of my country, and still hung about these relics of a deceased your lordships know the revered authority parliament, appear, when compared with by which I am supported in that sentiment, any new and strange invention for con- that I like to see on my own and my juring up the latent sovereignty of the country's liberty the seal of the old people, and substituting some phantom Whigs, and am apt enough to think that and chimera to represent that sovereignty counterfeit which does not bear this mark. in the room of its only true and acknow- I am above all disposed to fly, as from ledged form, I mean that of parliament, certain ruin, the spurious philosophy, the that the prince of Orange did not think sophisticated and fatal abstractions, which the validity of a Convention parliament, so far from lighting us to the temple of to be summoned by his new authority, Liberty, are but decoys to plunge the would stand on a sure foundation, until world into the toils of wretchedness and its convocation should receive the sanction slavery. I confess, then, that I recoil if not of a subsisting parliament, at least with disgust, and not without alarm, from of a body as nearly and closely resembling every pretence for disavowing or superone as the circumstances admitted. The seding our established government, howConvention parliament was convoked--ever qualified in time, occasion, or limited and that parliament enacted the Revolu- purpose. I cannot think those men [VOL. XXXIV.] [3 G] 39 GEORGE III. Debate in the Lords on the Address 8191 There are a variety of topics, as your lordships well know, to which I have not even alluded, and on some of which I should certainly be disposed to say a few words: but in truth, I have already abused your indulgence not only much too long, but, I am conscious also much too tediously; and I therefore refrain very grateful for having been permitted to state such reasons as have satisfied my mind, on the whole matter, that this measure is expedient in itself, and that parliament is competent to execute it. I have expressed a strong opinion, that the union of these two nations, already united by nature in their interests, must, in the order of human events, necessarily come to pass; and I shall conclude by a sincere and fervent prayer, dictated by the purest and the most ardent desire for the happiness of both kingdoms, that the blessings sure to flow from a consummation so devoutly to be wished, may not be long delayed. Lord Boringdon said, that however anxious he might be for the success of the measure, it should not receive support from him, if he thought it in any way called for the sacrifice of the dignity, the independence, or the liberty of the Irish nation. The noble lord who had opened the discussion had placed, in the strongest point of view, the immense commercial indulgences bestowed by this country on Ireland; and it might reasonably be maintained, that the dignity of Ireland would ။ [820 receive additional splendor, when she |