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Would he not have pronounced it treason? Should we not have heard it was copying the French? And had the words lop off been employed, it would instantly have associated all those ideas, and produced those descriptions which the right hon. gentleman's warmth of fancy conjured up in such glowing colours. An antiquarian or historian, the right hon. gentleman had said, might be exceedingly doubtful whether the Lords and Commons had not been mere branches from the root of monarchy. After language so extraordinary, all his doubts at length vanish, and he thought proper to assert, without qualification or explanation, that the passage, as it stood without any qualification from the context, was perfectly innocent. He hoped the right hon. gentleman would have the courage to support his opinion, and to defend the pamphlet in question. The right hon. gentleman had thought proper to ascribe their hatred to Mr. Reeves to his conduct in 1792, and to date their desire to run him down from that period. For his own part, he was ready to confess that the conduct of that gentleman, in 1792, did not much recommend him to his good opinion; and those persons who had been misled by Mr. Reeves, and induced to follow similar conduct and adopt similar opinions with him, lamented their acquiescence, as they saw, at this time, the measures that were produced in consequence. The right hon. gentleman had triumphantly asked, why they did not prosecute the Corresponding Society, and other seditious writers, as well as this libeller of the House of Commons. The right hon. gentleman might be answered, that to look to pamphlets was not their general system; their object was to look to government, to watch their measures with jealousy; but, on the other hand, when ministers were dealing out prosecutions in the gross, and in some cases stretching the laws beyond their tone, they had suffered this daring breach of privilege and libel on the constitution to go without punishment; a libel, too, which was as much directed against the safety of the monarch, as against any other branch of the constitution. Before he sat down, he begged leave again to ask the right hon. gentleman, whether he would manfully and daringly, without construction, reservation, amendment, or qualification, by reasoning, and by his vote, at another time, support the opinions

and sentiments which he had maintained that night? Mr. Grey concluded by declaring Mr. Reeves's pamphlet to be a most dangerous libel, and a libel seditiously and malignantly aimed at the safety of the monarch.

Mr. Windham believed his declaration had been, that he was not prepared definitively to give an opinion upon the extract; but as far as his judgment went, he thought one of the passages selected only stated an historical fact, "that the Lords and Commons were branches from the monarchy," and the other, what might possibly be a fact, "that the monarchy could subsist without these branches."

The Solicitor General said, that when it was stated that the extract amounted to a breach of privilege, it struck him that it was incumbent on the House to have the pamphlet read. He hoped, therefore, that the motion would be withdrawn until that was done.

Mr. Brandling thought the passage a gross attack on the privileges of parliament, but he could not agree that the consideration of the subject ought to supersede the other business before the House.

Mr. Lambton said, he could not conceal his surprise, after what he had formerly heard from the secretary at war, that he should that day avow himself the assassin of liberty. The right hon. gentleman affected a surprise that the House should be roused at this solitary instance of an attack upon the constitution. Was it a solitary instance? If it came there a solitary instance, it had found__an auxiliary in one high in trust and office. Was the instance solitary, when two bills had been introduced, the one making an intention an overt act of treason, and the other directly subversive of the Bill of Rights?

Mr. Fox said, he was always sorry when he felt himself obliged to arraign the general character of any man: but of Mr. Reeves he must say, that he never could mention him with respect, since he had seen in the public prints a letter respecting him from Mr. Law. He asked, was this a solitary libel? He always doubted the wisdom of prosecuting for opinions; but when opinions were made the grounds for the alarming bills then pending, it was for the House to consider, whether they ought not to hold this libel in equal abhorrence with any that ever came before them. He proposed merely that the

House should publicly declare the sentiments they entertained of that atrocious libel. Ought it to go out into the world, that a gentleman of distinguished talents, and of great influence in the cabinet, held the doctrine which this passage inculcated? If he adhered to that opinion, it was a demonstration that a settled plan of overthrowing the liberties of the people was entertained. He hoped the House would come to no opinion on the passage, till they had heard the context, and that they would agree to the reading of the whole pamphlet.

Mr. Barham gave it as his opinion, that the secretary at war had not expressly maintained any doctrine whatever. If he had done so, he ought to repeat it; if not, his accusers should be refuted. If he seriously maintained the alleged doctrine, whatever respect, nay, whatever admiration he generally felt for him, he would move for his expulsion; so convinced was he, that such doctrines were stated in the passages cited, would tend, if unchecked, to the annihilation of the constitution.

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Mr. Stanley said, there was a statute now in being, which declared, that if any one shall maintain that one part of the legislature shall be capable of any act of legislation without the concurrence of the other component parts, the person maintaining a doctrine so unconstitutional, shall be adjudged guilty of treason, and suffer the pains of death.

Mr. Windham declared he could not help smiling at the attempt to impute treason to him. His conscience told him he was a faithful and loyal subject; with that he was satisfied, and there he would rest. He declared he had given no opinion at all; and they must be subtile arguers indeed, who could attach criminality to him for what he did not say. "The very head and front of his offending had this extent, no more."--He had denied that the passage would bear the interpre tation which gentlemen gave it. They were at liberty, certainly, to give it what interpretation they pleased, and to argue upon the construction which they chose to put upon it; that, and that only, was the point which he contended.

Mr. Fox declared, he anxiously wished to divest the matter of all obscurity. Did not the right hon. gentleman, he begged to ask, distinctly state, that the passage quoted was innocent and harmless?

Mr. Windham said, that the attack

made upon him was invidious. He had not asserted that the passage quoted was harmless, or that it was not a libel; he had only said, that the passage did not appear to him to warrant the interpretation put upon it. He had heard it that day for the first time, and what followed the extract was not at the moment in his view. He was not considering what would be the proper form of government in England; he had only said, that the sentiment was innocent, inasmuch as it stated, what had been, and what might be, namely, that the other branches were derived from the monarchy, and that the monarchy might subsist without them. Did gentlemen think him such a fool as to contend, that the British constitution could exist without Lords or Commons? It was a most fallacious absurdity to suppose that he would waste words in attempting to support nonsense. No; he did not say the constitution could subsist, but that monarchy could subsist singly; and surely history bore him out in the opinion, though it by no means proved, nor had he the smallest idea of insinuating, that the same free government could prevail under monarchy as under a mixed constitution.

Mr. Fox rose to express his indignation at the explanation, or rather evasion, for so he thought it, he had just heard. Shame upon the man who could so veer and twist about! This book applied to the British monarchy only, and those who supported it could only mean the British monarchy; they must mean that, or they must mean nothing.

Mr. M. A. Taylor declared that such doctrines, coming from a member of administration, gave him a bad opinion of the measures they were bringing forward. He trusted, however, that the spirit of the country would successfully oppose them. The right hon. secretary had called the opposition unprincipled. Had he forgot on which side of the House he sat three years ago, when he vociferously declaimed against the chancellor of the exchequer ? Mr. Taylor declared, that to rebut the charge brought against his party, he would take care to publish the apostacy of the secretary at war: he would show him and the world his former speeches, in one of which he made the memorable assertion of the chancellor of the exchequer, that "he had thrown off the mask."

The Master of the Rolls said, the proper way would be to adjourn the debate,

and to consider on a future day, whether there was ground for prosecution or not. Mr. Fox contended, that the whole of the pamphlet should be read; he was convinced, from the parts of it he had read, that the House would be more confirmed of its unconstitutional and libellous tendency, when they heard the whole of it.

The motion for reading the orders of the day was withdrawn. Then the said pamphlet was delivered in at the table and read. After which,

Mr. Sheridan said, that he supposed, as the House had just heard the pamphlet read, it would be wholly unnecessary for him to use any arguments to prove that it was the foulest, the falsest, the dullest, and the most malicious libel that had ever come under the cognizance of the House. The author was not content with rashly defaming the constitution, and outraging its principles; but he obviously wished to attribute every departure from both to the conduct of the Whigs. It would be idle in him to enter into a detail of the various objectionable passages in the book, which, so far from extenuating, heightened and aggravated the criminality of the leading paragraph. Should it be urged, that it required time to deliberate, he would not press a motion that night to a decision, but content himself with announcing the pamphlet to be a libel, and calling on the House at a future day to apply a punishment for it. If the author was a man of importance enough he ought to be impeached; though when it was considered that he was the mouthpiece of government, and chairman of the association, which originated and circulated those alarms about French principles, that had contributed so much to the unhappy state in which the country stood at that moment, he could not be considered in a light point of view. The libel was unquestionably much more deserving of impeachment than that which Sache verell wrote, and for which he was impeached. The motion he intended to make, he would therefore put into the words used on the case of Sacheverell,* viz. "That the said pamphlet is a malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel, containing matter tending to create jealousies and divisions among his majesty's subjects; to alienate their affections from our present form of government, as esta

* See Vol, 6, p, 806,

blished in King, Lords, and Commons; and to subvert the true principles of our free constitution; and that the said pamphlet is a high breach of the privileges of this House."

The Master of the Rolls said, he was not ready to give an opinion on the pamphlet: he was, however, convinced of what he had before said, that the reading the pamphlet would not have the effect of completely satisfying the minds of the House: and it would ill become them, on such grounds as the bare reading of it by the officer of the House afforded, to found so very grave a resolution. He would not then say a syllable as to the merit or demerit of the pamphlet; but own, that the paragraph did not in the reading of it, sound entirely constitutional. The only part, however, for consideration was, the passage or extract complained of; the rest was only to be considered as a qualification of it; and the House was not at liberty, in discussing the subject, to talk of any particular gentleman as the author of it; as it did not appear, upon the face of it, who was the author. If the words he had heard read were not qualified by context, with the parts antecedent or subsequent, he would be the first to vote a censure. To determine that any censure at all was or was not due, it was absolutely neces sary for him to read the pamphlet. He would therefore move, "That the debate be adjourned till Thursday."

Mr. Pitt concurred in opinion with his learned friend. If it was clearly the tendency of the pamphlet to inculcate such doctrines as those imputed to it, he would not hesitate to say that the House ought to treat it with censure and reprobation. If it asserted that the king could govern without the other two branches of the constitution, there could be in that House but one voice upon the matter. But when it appeared that there were many passages in the pamphlet which stated the impossibility of the king's exercising the functions of government without the co-operation of the two other parts, it would surely be worth the while of the House to pause and consider whether, on taking the whole of the book together, there would be ground enough to warrant a prosecution.

Mr. Erskine said, he should have been surprised at hearing a proposal come from any member, who had heard the pamphlet read, and had valued the privileges of the House, to postpone the deliberation :

but it struck him as singular indeed, that | to act as their ancestors did; and if that a gentleman so learned in the law as the House, in its intemperance and folly, master of the rolls, could not make up should carlessly pass these insults on the his mind upon the tendency of what the Revolution, the consequences would be House had heard; a gentleman who, from dreadful; more especially as they were his practice, was in the daily habit of proceeding with bills founded on princimaking up his mind upon subjects infi- ples utterly subversive of every thing nitely more intricate than the present. for which the Revolution was dear to the The question was, whether the paragraph people. Such libels which the authors which had been originally complained of, conceived to be sanctioned by government, was or was not a libel upon the House of occasioned answers in reply: this action Commons? and he admitted that, in exa- and reaction naturally and necessarily mining the pamphlet, the intention of the produced consequences that kept the pubauthor should be taken altogether. When lic in a ferment; they excited that bitterhe heard the paragraph alluded to read, ness and asperity of feeling in the counhe formed an opinion, exactly as a learned try that occasioned that detestable and gentleman had stated his to be, viz. that damnable system of pretended plots withit would be difficult indeed for any con- out doors, and of projects against the litext to explain the meaning, so as to ma- berties of Englishmen within, that tended nifest the intention of the author to be to undermine the foundation of social orinnocent so much, however, did he wish der, and alienated the affections of the that an opportunity of explaining it might people from the government. He called present itself, that he had attended pa- to the recollection of ministers the cirtiently to the reading of the whole book, cumstances and conduct that brought and having done so, he must declare it Charles 1st to the block, and cautioned to be, in his opinion, a daring and atro- them to beware how they refused to pay cious libel. Any man who would maintain due deference to the petitions of the peoa contrary proposition, he had no scruple ple.-The author of the pamphlet had to pronounce ignorant of the laws of the spoken contemptuously of the Revolution: land. If other members had not attended he had stated it as a measure brought to it; if, from indolence or from a negli- about by plots and conspiracies: he had gent disposition, they had slept upon their said, that it was brought about by dividposts, it was their own fault; they had ing men into different classes: he had deserted their duty, and betrayed their represented the people of England then constituents, by making their own negli- to be, what such miserable shallow pogence an excuse for not protecting the liticians as the author wished to make honour of the House. How was it pos- them at present, by the aid of pensions, sible that a man so familiar with profes- douceurs, and bribes; men capable of resional matters as the Master of the rolls lishing the sentiments of despotism to should be ignorant of the nature of such serve the purpose of certain leaders-to a pamphlet as that which the House had make those of high rank league together heard read? How could he for a moment to reprobate the principles of liberty. doubt whether it was a libel on that House, This wretched pamphleteer had traduced and on the Revolution of 1688? So fully the proceedings of those who put the crown was his own mind made up on the subject, on the head of the House of Brunswickthat he would not hesitate, even on the in- that crown worn by his majesty. What stant, to declare, that were this ignorant man meant, it was for the sworn to try the author, he House by their determination upon his out going out of court im pub guilty. He was surprised felt any difficulty upon a palpable. Gentlemen they indulged their inc men who traduced

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advantageous to author of this called a revoed so by Whigs

and to consider on a future day, whether there was ground for prosecution or not. Mr. Fox contended, that the whole of the pamphlet should be read; he was convinced, from the parts of it he had read, that the House would be more confirmed of its unconstitutional and libellous tendency, when they heard the whole of it.

The motion for reading the orders of the day was withdrawn. Then the said pamphlet was delivered in at the table and read. After which,

Mr. Sheridan said, that he supposed, as the House had just heard the pamphlet read, it would be wholly unnecessary for him to use any arguments to prove that it was the foulest, the falsest, the dullest, and the most malicious libel that had ever come under the cognizance of the House. The author was not content with rashly defaming the constitution, and outraging its principles; but he obviously wished to attribute every departure from both to the conduct of the Whigs. It would be idle in him to enter into a detail of the various objectionable passages in the book, which, so far from extenuating, heightened and aggravated the criminality of the leading paragraph. Should it be urged, that it required time to deliberate, he would not press a motion that night to a decision, but content himself with announcing the pamphlet to be a libel, and calling on the House at a future day to apply a punishment for it. If the author was a man of importance enough he ought to be impeached; though when it was considered that he was the mouthpiece of government, and chairman of the association, which originated and circulated those alarms about French principles, that had contributed so much to the unhappy state in which the country stood at that moment, he could not be considered in a light point of view. The libel was unquestionably much more deserving of impeachment than that which Sacheverell wrote, and for which he was impeached. The motion he intended to make, he would therefore put into the words used on the case of Sacheverell,* viz. "That the said pamphlet is a malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel, containing matter tending to create jealousies and divisions among his majesty's subjects; to alienate their affections from our present form of government, as esta

See Vol, 6, p, 806,

blished in King, Lords, and Commons; and to subvert the true principles of our free constitution; and that the said pamphlet is a high breach of the privileges of this House."

The Master of the Rolls said, he was not ready to give an opinion on the pamphlet: he was, however, convinced of what he had before said, that the reading the pamphlet would not have the effect of completely satisfying the minds of the House: and it would ill become them, on such grounds as the bare reading of it by the officer of the House afforded, to found so very grave a resolution. He would not then say a syllable as to the merit or demerit of the pamphlet; but own, that the paragraph did not in the reading of it, sound entirely constitutional. The only part, however, for consideration was, the passage or extract complained of; the rest was only to be considered as a qualification of it; and the House was not at liberty, in discussing the subject, to talk of any particular gentleman as the author of it; as it did not appear, upon the face of it, who was the author. If the words he had heard read were not qualified by context, with the parts antecedent or subsequent, he would be the first to vote a censure. To determine that any censure at all was or was not due, it was absolutely neces sary for him to read the pamphlet. He would therefore move, "That the debate be adjourned till Thursday."

Mr. Pitt concurred in opinion with his learned friend. If it was clearly the tendency of the pamphlet to inculcate such doctrines as those imputed to it, he would not hesitate to say that the House ought to treat it with censure and reprobation. If it asserted that the king could govern without the other two branches of the constitution, there could be in that House but one voice upon the matter. But when it appeared that there were many passages in the pamphlet which stated the impossibility of the king's exercising the functions of government without the co-operation of the two other parts, it would surely be worth the while of the House to pause and consider whether, on taking the whole of the book together, there would be ground enough to warrant a prosecution.

Mr. Erskine said, he should have been surprised at hearing a proposal come from any member, who had heard the pamphlet read, and had valued the privileges of the House, to postpone the deliberation :

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