Mr. Chancellor Pitt was glad of the motion, as it reduced the debate to something like order. He said he considered the introduction of a discussion on the French constitution to rest on discretion and order, which were two distinct things: he explained their difference, and said, for his own part, he would use no vehement language, nor any word that might give umbrage: not conceiving, however, that the right honourable gentleman was disorderly, he should certainly give his negative to the motion.

Mr. Fox said, he was sincerely sorry to feel that he must support the motion, and the more so, as his right honourable friend had made it necessary by bringing on, in so irregular a manner, a discussion of a matter by no means connected with the Quebec Bill, in a manner which he could not help thinking extremely unfair, but which he must consider as a direct injustice to him. If the right honourable gentleman's argument over the way with regard to order was to obtain order, it was a mode of order that would go to stop every proceeding of that House, especially in committees. It was proper to debate the principle of a bill in the second reading of it; and referring to matter that might be analogous, much latitude would be required. The Quebec Bill had been read a second time, and was decided. If gentlemen, therefore, when a bill was in a committee, would come down and state in long speeches, general answers to all possible objections, to clauses that might be proposed, but were never meant to be proposed, debates might be drawn to any imaginable length, and the business of the House suspended at the pleasure of any one of its members. The argument which some gentlemen might possibly move, that the chairman leave the chair, was applicable to every clause, and to every stage of the bill in the Committee; and if on that account every species of volunteer argument was to be held in order, it would be impossible for business to proceed. His right honourable friend, instead of debating

the principle of the bill, in any stage, which was usual, had come down, not to debate the clauses, but to fortify misrepresentations of what he had said in a former debate, which his right honourable friend did not even hear. Order and discretion in debate had been said to be distinct; with him, Mr. Fox declared, they never should be separate. Where the distinction lay he could not see, for he always conceived that order was founded on discretion. He was not in the habit of interrupting any gentleman on the point of order, because, unless the deviation from it was strong indeed, more time was often lost by calling to order, than by suffering gentlemen to proceed: but if he saw any discussion attempted to be introduced in a way not merely irregular, but unfair, he felt himself obliged to endeavour to stop it. Much had been said on the present occasion, of the danger of theory and the safety of practice. Now, what had been the conduct of the gentleman who looked on theory with abhorrence? Not to enter into a practical discussion of the bill, clause by clause, and to examine whether it gave, what it professed to give, the British constitution to Canada; but, having neglected to have done his duty, and attended the proper stage of debating the principle, to enter into a theoretical inquiry of what the principle ought to be, and a discussion of the constitution of another country, respecting which it was possible that he might differ from him. If this were not manifest eagerness to seek a difference of opinion, and anxiety to discover a cause of dispute, he knew not what was; since, if they came to the clauses of the bill, he did not think there would be any difference of opinion, or at most but a very trifling one. If the right honourable gentleman's object had been to debate the Quebec Bill, he would have debated it clause by clause, according to the established practice of the House. If his object had been to prevent danger apprehended to the British constitution, from the opinions of any man, or any set of men, he would have

given notice of a particular day for that particular purpose, or taken any other occasion of doing it, rather than that on which his nearest and dearest friend had been grossly misrepresented and traduced. That at least would have been the course which he himself should have taken, and therefore what he naturally expected from another. The course which his right honourable friend had chosen to take was that which seemed to confirm the insinuation urged against him, that of having maintained republican principles, as applicable to the British constitution, in a former debate on the Bill. No such argument had ever been urged by him, or any from which such inference was fairly deducible. On the French revolution he did indeed differ from his right honourable friend. Their opinions, he had no scruple to say, were wide as the poles asunder, but what had a difference of opinion on that, which, to the House, was only matter of theoretical contemplation, to do with the discussion of a practical point, on which no difference existed? On that revolution he adhered to his opinion, and never would retract one syllable of what he had said. He repeated, that he thought it, on the whole, one of the most glorious events in the history of mankind. But when he had on a former occasion mentioned France, he had mentioned the revolution only, and not the constitution; the latter remained to be improved by experience, and accommodated to circumstances. The arbitrary system of government was done away; the new one had the good of the people for its object, and this was the point on which he rested. This opinion, Mr. Fox said, he wished the time might come to debate, if opinions of his were again to be made the subject of parliamentary discussion. He had no concealment of his opinions, but if any thing could make him shy of such a discussion, it would be the fixing a day to catechize him respecting his political creed, and respecting opinions on which the House was neither going to act, nor called upon to act at all.

He had been thus catechized in 1782, when a right honourable gentleman (Mr. Dundas), in the last stage of the then administration, had said, "Admitting this administration to be bad, where are you to find a better? Will who say, that the repreadmit men into power you sentation of the people is inadequate, and whose principles would overturn the constitution?" On that occasion he had found an able defender in a right honourable gentleman, whom he could not expect to be his defender that day; but who had, in 1782, demanded in manly and energetic tones," If the House would bear to be told that the country was incapable of furnishing an administration more worthy of trust than that whose misconduct was admitted even by its advocates?" He might now have looked for a defender to another quarter, to the bench on which he sat, and been as much disappointed. Yet the catechiser on that occasion had soon after joined another ministry, and supported that very reform of the representation which he had deprecated as more dangerous to the constitution and the country, than all the misfortunes of that administration. Were he to differ from his right honourable friend on points of history, on the constitutions of Athens and of Rome, was it necessary that the difference should be discussed in that House? Were he to praise the conduct of the elder Brutus, and to say that the expulsion of the Tarquins was a noble and patriotic act, would it thence be fair to argue that he meditated the establishment of a consular government in this country? Were he to repeat the eloquent eulogium of Cicero on the taking off of Cæsar, would it thence be deducible that he went with a knife about him, for the purpose of killing some great man or orator? Let those who said, that to admire was to wish to imitate, shew that there was some similarity of circumstances. It lay on his right honourable friend to shew that this country was in the precise situation of France at the time of the French revolution, before

he had a right to meet his argument; and then with all the obloquy that might be heaped on the declaration, he should be ready to say, that the French revolution was an object of imitation for this country. Instead of seeking for differences of opinion on topics, happily for the country, entirely topics of speculation, let them come to the matter of fact, and of practical application: let them come to the discussion of the bill before them, and see whether his objections to it were republican, and on what he should differ with his right honourable friend? He had been warned by high and most respectable authorities, that minute discussion of great events, without information, did no honour to the pen that wrote, or the tongue that spoke the words. If the Committee should decide that his right honourable friend should pursue his argument on the French constitution, he would leave the House: and if some friend would send him word when the clauses of the Quebec Bill were to be discussed, he would return and debate them. And when he said this, he said it from no unwillingness to listen to his right honourable friend: he always had heard him with pleasure, but not where no practical use could result from his argument. When the proper period for discussion came, feeble as his powers were, compared with those of his right honourable friend, whom he must call his master, for he had taught him every thing he knew in politics (as he had declared on a former occasion, and he meant no compliment when he said so), yet feeble as his powers comparatively were, he should be ready to maintain the principles he had asserted, even against his right honourable friend's superior eloquence, and maintain that the rights of man, which his right honourable friend had ridiculed as chimerical and visionary, were, in fact, the basis and foundation of every rational constitution, and even of the British constitution itself, as our statute book proved: since, if he knew any thing of the original compact between the people of England and