source of the evils in France, and their progress was to be guarded against in this country. The new constitution in France had been called a stupendous fabric of wisdom. He had thought that the right honourable gentleman had possessed a better taste in architecture than to bestow this magnificent epithet on a building composed of untempered mortar. For his own part, when he saw the new temple, he wept. He considered it as the work of Goths and Vandals, where every thing was out of place, disjointed, and inverted. It had been said, that he did not love tests; yet if his intimacy should be renewed with the right honourable gentleman, he might explain to him that it was necessary that some evil should be suffered, in order to obtain a greater good.

In France, it had been asserted by the right honourable gentleman, prevailed the largest religious toleration. It would be judged of what nature was that toleration, when it was understood that there the most cruel tests were imposed. Nay, tests were imposed for the most inhuman of all purposes, in order to deprive those, of whom they were exacted, of their bread. The treatment of the nuns was almost too shocking to be mentioned. These wretched girls, who could only be animated by the most exalted religious enthusiasm, were engaged in the most painful office of humanity, in the most sacred duty of piety, visiting and attending the hospitals. Yet these had been dragged into the streets: these had been scourged by the sovereigns of the French nation, because the priest, from whom they had received the sacrament, had not submitted to the test. This proceeding had passed not only unpunished but uncensured. Yet in the country in which such proceedings had happened, had been said to subsist the largest religious toleration. The present state of France was ten times worse than tyranny. The new constitution was said to be an experiment; but it was not true. It had already been tried and been found to be only produc

tive of evils. They would go on from tyranny to tyranny, from oppression to oppression, till at last the whole system would terminate in the ruin and destruction of that miserable and deluded people. He stated that his opinion of the revolution in America did not at all militate with his opinion of the revolution of France. In that instance he conceived that the people had had some reason for the conduct which they had pursued. There was an expression of his which had been taken exception at, "well disciplined troops." He only meant that every body of men who acted upon a method and in concert were well disciplined. He was sorry for the present occasion. Sufficient to the day was the evil thereof. Yet, let the evil be to him if the good was to many. He hoped that they would not barter the constitution of this country, the eternal jewel of their souls, for a wild and visionary system, which could only lead to confusion and disorder. With regard to pretences of friendship, he must own that he did not like them, where his character and public conduct, as in that instance, had been so materially attacked and injured. The French principles in this country, he had been told, would come to some head. It would then be perceived what were their consequences. Several of the gentlemen were young enough to see a change. They would be enterprising enough to act a part. It would then be seen whether they would be borne on the top, or encumbered in the gravel. In going along with the current, they would most. certainly be forced to execute and approve many things very contrary to their own nature and character.

Mr. Chancellor Pitt said he rose to take notice of the very extraordinary situation in which the House stood, but would say only a very few words: and indeed the only subject to which, as the question then stood, he could speak, was one which excluded him from going into any debate upon it. They had been engaged for some hours in an unfinished debate on a question of order moved in the

middle of the right honourable gentleman's speech on the question of reading the clauses in the Quebec bill, paragraph by paragraph; and the question of order was, whether the right honourable gentleman should be permitted to go on in an argument on the subject of the French revolution which he had begun, but had been frequently interrupted by having been called to order by different gentlemen on the other side of the House. The right honourable gentleman opposite to him (Mr. Fox), had spoken early in the debate on the question of order, and had given it as his opinion that it was disorderly for the other right honourable gentleman to enter into a discussion respecting the late revolution in France; and yet the right honourable gentleman himself had, in his own speech, gone directly to that discussion, and the Committee had since heard two speeches from each of the right honourable gentlemen immediately upon the subject of the Frenchrevolution. For his own part he had all along been of opinion that the right honourable gentleman who opened the first debate had been strictly in order in introducing his opinions on the French revolution, when speaking on a subject of a constitution to be provided for Quebec, although he could not but think that every asperity and censure on that event had, for various reasons, better be avoided; circumstanced as the Committee then stood, he said he felt a considerable degree of embarrassment: he did not think it consistent with decorum to move any amendment to the question of order, nor that any advantage was likely to result from taking the sense of the House upon it. The only advisable thing to be done was to withdraw it; but to that there was clearly an obstacle, though he hoped not altogether an insuperable one. It was usual, he believed, to obtain the consent of the mover of any question previous to its being withdrawn, but in the present case the noble lord who had proposed the question had withdrawn himself. His having left the House, how

ever, might be presumed to be a pretty strong implied consent on the part of the noble mover to its being withdrawn, and therefore he should suggest that measure.

Mr. Pitt then recurred to the first debate, and said, that upon the question whether the clauses of the bill be read paragraph by paragraph, any gentleman who thought the general principle of the bill and the principles of the clauses so objectionable that they could not be so modelled and matured by correction in a Committee as to be made fit to pass, was undoubtedly entitled to state his objections to the bill; and therefore he had thought the right honourable gentleman perfectly in order in the mode he had adopted; but it had been supposed that he had given an opinion that the right honourable gentleman's arguments and doctrines were not to be supported either by him or any of those honourable friends who generally voted for him. Now, it was to be recollected that he had declined giving any opinion whatever on the subject, and had carefully avoided doing so, declaring that he did not think it proper for him, in the situation in which he stood, to enter into discussion of an opinion on the constitution then forming in a neighbouring country. With regard to what the honourable gentleman had said of a misrepresentation by him of that right honourable gentleman's words in a former debate on the Quebec Bill, if he had given any misrepresentation of the right honourable gentleman's speech, he had given it in the right honourable gentleman's own words, and in his presence; if, therefore, he had mistaken or mis-stated any thing the right honourable gentleman had said, it had been in his own power to set him right at the instant, and not let a wrong impression of his words go abroad. The fact was, that in discussing the subject of the new constitution for Canada, he had suggested his intention to propose, as the bill, in fact, did provide, an hereditary council, in imitation of our House of Lords; whereas the right honourable gentleman had

suggested that, in his opinion, an elective council would be preferable; and as the right honourable gentleman had just been talking of the governments of the Independent and United States of America, which were republics, he (Mr. Pitt) had conceived that the right honourable gentleman was inclined to think that a greater infusion of republican principles into the new government of Canada would be better adapted to that province than a constitution more exactly similar to our own, and therefore, in his reply, he had given his sentiments against any greater infusion of republicanism into the new constitution of Canada, than at present subsisted in the British constitution. That was precisely what he had said, and that he conceived was no misrepresentation of the right honourable gentleman's speech. As to the publications which the other right honourable gentleman had stated to have been disseminating throughout this country, with a view to extol the French. revolution and its consequences, and to induce the people to look into the principles of their own constitution, he did not venture to think that there might be no danger arising from them; but when he had said that he saw no cause for immediate alarm from them, it was because he was of opinion that they were the less dangerous at that time, since he could not think the French revolution or any of the new constitutions could be deemed an objection fit for imitation in this country by any set of men, or that such an attempt should ever be made. There was such a fund of good sense in that House, and such a love for the constitution implanted in the minds of the people in general, that he saw no reason to apprehend any one revolution in this country. But although he was not desirous of going with the right honourable gentleman in his comments on the French revolution, and little apprehensive as he was of a similar revolution taking place in this country, yet he agreed with that right honourable gentleman that our own constitution was inestimable; and that not only no other