APRIL 28.

MR. POWY'S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL TO EXPLAIN AND AMEND THE ACT OF 1776, COMMONLY CALLED THE

QUEBEC BILL.

MR. SHERIDAN justified the motion and said, he wished for something like an answer to two or three questions from the right honourable gentleman, on which would depend whether it would be necessary for him to trouble the house with a motion or not. By the gazette he saw that Sir Guy Carleton was appointed captain-general and governor-in-chief of the provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Was it meant that there were to be lieutenant-governors of the two latter province? and if it were, was it intended that appeals from the latter should be to the king in council at home, or to Sir Guy Carleton as governor and captain-general? Would not the appointment of Sir Guy Carleton as captain-general and commander-in-chief over the three provinces, disturb the present government of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and narrow their privileges and liberties? If these questions were answered, Mr. Sheridan said, it would be unnecessary for him to make any motion; if not, he should move for a copy of the appointment, powers, and instructions given to Sir Guy Carleton as captain-general and governor-in-chief of the provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.

The attorney general, in reply, stated, that there were to be lieutenant-governors but for a short time, and that these were to be the very persons now governors of the two subordinate provinces; at least he knew that, with respect to one, such a measure was in agitation.

MAY 4.

NATIONAL DEBT.

The order of the day having been read for going into a committee for the consideration of the report on the national debt bill, the question was put, "That the speaker do now leave the chair.”

MR. SHERIDAN rising, signified his determined resolution of moving to postpone the question till that day se'nnight; and if he should be so successful as to prevail on the house to agree to that proposition, he should then move certain resolutions grounded on facts, statements, and calculations to be found in the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the receipt and expenditure of the public revenue, which resolutions he should read as

part of his speech. A plan for paying off the public debt had been published by a noble earl (Stanhope) no longer a member of that house, and whose absence he had to lament upon that day. The noble earl's plan appeared to him by far the most preferable of the two compared with that of the right honourable gentleman's opposite to him, which was founded altogether on the report to which he had alluded. It was not, however, his purpose at that time, to enter into any argument respecting the principles of the right honourable gentleman's bill, or to discuss the propriety of applying the surplus supposed to exist in the manner provided by that bill. What he meant to go to was, the examination of the great and important question, whether there actually existed any surplus at all or not? To that point he wished to draw their attention; and although he was well aware, that however interesting the subject was to the nation, it was not one of those in which that house took much delight, or to the discussion of which they were very fond of attending; yet the critical situation of the country, and the magnitude of the object in view considered, he hoped it would be thought entitled to their especial notice. The diminution of the public debt, and the gradual alleviation of the public burdens, were matters well worthy their deliberate attention. It was a duty they owed to their constituents, a duty they owed to themselves, to set about the business with zeal, with earnestness, and with a sincere desire to attain their aim with certainty and effect. In setting about such a business, however, plain dealing was first of all indispensably necessary; above all things, it behoved that house not to deceive themselves; to gloss over nothing; to avoid nothing that told against the desired purpose, but to convince the world not only of the strength and vigour of the national resources, but that the parliament had spirit and stoutness of mind enough, to dare to look the real situation of the country in the face; to examine it thoroughly, and to hold it up publicly, as it really was, without deception of any kind whatever.

Under this impression it was, and not with any despondent ideas of the national resources, that he meant to call their attention to the report on the table; and he conceived that he should be able to prove that it was drawn up upon erroneous principles; that it was replete with mistaken calculations; that the committee had acted under a delusion; and that the effect of the whole

must be fallacious, and not to be relied on, as the ground of a proceeding of so serious and important a nature as a bill containing and enacting a plan for the gradually paying off the national debt. When he said this, he begged leave once for all to be understood, as not meaning to convey any imputation whatever on the gentlemen who composed the committee; they had acted, he was persuaded, on honourable principles, and had rather given way to delusion themselves than meant to deceive or mislead the house. But meaning as he did to object to the report, and to disprove its statements, he must take the liberty of declaring, that he thought the formation of the committee highly objectionable. The right honourable gentleman opposite to him had gone the length of avowing, that he should not be ashamed to deliver lists of his own friends to be ballotted for to form such a committee; and therefore he might be allowed to suppose, that some of the right honourable gentleman's influence was exerted in the selection and appointment of the gentlemen who were returned by the ballot, and who actually had been members of the late committee. Such a committee, so appointed and chosen, he thought extremely improper; because, as every part and party in the house, however they might differ as to the best means of paying off the national debt, were undoubtedly agreed in their opinion, that it ought to be set about as soon as possible, and commenced in the manner most likely to effect it on the best and most advantageous terms for the public, he should have imagined, that on such an occasion, a fair and impartial committee, composed of men of different sentiments, and men who were as likely to draw out the dark side of the question as the light one, would have been the sort of committee best adapted to the occasion. Mr. Sheridan now proceeded to examine the committee's report, the favourite object of which appeared to him to be, to hold up the measures recently taken by the minister of the day for the prevention of smuggling, as the great and principal cause of the supposed increase of the public income. The committee, in the exordium of the report, say, large amount of the taxes proposed since the commencement of the late war, in addition to the then subsisting revenue; the difficulties under which the different branches of our commerce laboured during the continuance of that war; and the great and increasing prevalence of smuggling, previous to the measures

"The

recently adopted for its suppression, appeared to your committee to render any averages of the amount of the revenue in former periods in a great degree inapplicable to the present situation of the country."

The very reverse of this reasoning ought, in his mind, to have prevailed; and the committee would have done much more wisely to have stated the averages of the amount of the revenue, and of the expenditure of it in former periods, because, as the report stood, there appeared a statement of the present receipt, to which was opposed not the present expenditure, but the expenditure that it was supposed would be the expenditure of the year 1791. Where, Mr. Sheridan asked, was the difficulty, since peace was no new situation to this country? The mode of stating the present receipt, which happened to be remarkably high and favourable, against the probable expenditure of a year at so great a distance, was a mode directly contrary to that ever before resorted to, as the best means of getting at the true situation of the country, and the reverse of what had been the conduct of a near relation of the president of the committee (Mr. Grenville) who, as an honourable baronet (Sir Grey Cooper) on a late occasion had stated, at the close of the last war, came forward with a plan, in which he had expressly declared, that he did not think himself at liberty to take the receipt of the current year, as that was the year immediately after the conclusion of the peace, and in consequence a larger one than usual. He denied that the reasoning of the right honourable gentleman on the present produce of the revenue paid into the exchequer had been just or correct; the mode of argument resorted to by a right honourable gentleman (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) to prove the increasing receipt, had been, by comparing one quarter with another, and inferring, that in proportion to the excess of one quarter over another, so would be the excess of one year over another. That sort of argument he considered as weak and fallacious, and the last quarter's receipt proved it.

Of the excessive amount of our taxes and public debts, concerning which he might perhaps think rather singularly, he should not hesitate to declare, that such an immense burden was thereby imposed upon the country, that it became almost impossible for that house, on any occasion, to withhold the

supplies. So much indeed was mortgaged to the public creditor, that it could scarcely be done without creating an alarm of a nature extremely injurious to the national credit; and therefore, if it was to do over again, he, for one, should oppose the entering into any bargain with the crown for the grant of a stipulated civil-list revenue, since that, added to the other circumstance, fettered that house in its votes, and in so much took away from their rights. If, therefore, the right honourable gentleman was correct in his plan, he was fighting not only for the revenue, but for the constitution of his country, which was certainly very laudable. Mr. Sheridan contradicted the favourite position of the committee, in their report, that the recent increase of the receipt of the revenue had been owing to the measures lately taken to prevent smuggling. He mentioned sugar and several others to prove this assertion; indeed he knew not how those measures could, in any respect, be said to have tended to the increase of the revenue, unless it was in the effect of the commutation tax; and so generally admitted at this time was the perniciousness of that measure, that he supposed they should hear some alteration of it proposed even during the present session, since no man need do more than look at the very sensible pamphlet written by Mr. Rous, to be convinced of the extravagance and absurdity of that tax, which tended to send such immense sums out of the country in a trade which, in point of export, had before been greatly against us. Mr. Sheridan took notice also of the pamphlet of Mr. Baring, styling him a man high in situation at the India-house, and who boasted in his writings that he enjoyed the confidence of ministers. Mr. Baring professed to be the advocate of the tax, but his arguments appeared to tell the other way, and that very forcibly; for what could be more self-evident, than that it was in the highest degree impolitic to encourage the import and use of a foreign luxury, the introduction of which was carried to such an extent, in consequence of the commutation tax, that according to Mr. Baring's accounts, four millions of money would be wanted of the public to enable the company to carry on the trade. This, he believed, was an over-statement; as, doubtless, one million four hundred thousand pounds would do ; but that sum the company must borrow of the bank, and the public be the security, which was exactly the same as if they