and, if their arguments were good, so unjust a tribunal. Mr. Sheridan said, if the right honourable gentleman, however, would not consent to divide his bill, he trusted that he would at least consent not to hurry that part of it that related to the new judicature, through the committee, so as to suffer it to be rendered the business of the tail of a day, or the subject of debate at two or three o'clock in the morning.

JULY 20.

WAYS AND MEANS.-HORSE DEALERS.

MR. SHERIDAN rose, and observed, that the proposition, that horse-dealers resident in the borough of Southwark should pay ten pounds for their license, appeared to him extremely liable to evasion. Might not innkeepers very fairly say, they were dealers in horses? and ought not those who kept a great number, either for use, pleasure, or splendour, take out a license as horse-dealers, and under that, shelter themselves from the payment of the duty?

Mr. Pitt replied, that the license was to be taken out by those only whose actual profession it was to buy and sell horses.

JULY 21.

EAST INDIA BILL.

Mr. Powys said, that he had an insuperable objection, not merely to the wording, but to the very principle of the clause, " obliging all persons, on their return from India, to give in a duplicate of their fortunes upon oath." If he understood it right, it went this length; it admitted the oath of a person to be the ground of his own acquittal, or what came nearly to the same thing, it made the oath a bar to a prosecution; for if a man, however guilty of peculation, should make oath that he was not worth more than a particular sum, this oath would be conclusive, and operate as a bar to any prosecution. This would be holding out impunity to the guilty, and consequently such a clause would defeat its own object.

MR. SHERIDAN supported the objection thrown out by Mr. Powys against the principle of the clause. The sacred obligation of an oath would, he feared, sit exceedingly light on the conscience of a peculator; nay, as it was impossible that a servant of the company could have amassed an inordinate fortune by peculation, without having committed perjury in so doing, by the breach of official oaths; so it was very natural to expect

that he would very readily commit a second perjury, in order to cover a former; and there was little reason to hope, that conscience, which had been seared to all sense of religion, duty, and honour, in India, should recover its sensibility merely by a change of climate on a passage from that country to England.

Mr. Dundas observed, "that the overgrown fortunes were generally to be seen among the servants of the company, although they were restricted from trading; and that as to the real trader, however rich he returned to his country, he would respect, cherish, and revere him."

Mr. Sheridan said, he made no doubt but the rich merchant would be respected, cherished, and revered; what treatment he should meet with, if poor, it was not for him to foresee or to foretell.

On the clause being read to exempt generally from the necessity of giving an inventory, and swearing to the truth of its contents, all persons who should arrive from India before the 1st of January, 1787,

Mr. Sheridan said, this clause was in fact an indemnity held out to all peculators, and a warning to them to return to England before the first day of the year 1787, as the means by which they might screen themselves from trial, and their property from being taken from them, as a punishment for the illegal methods by which it might have been acquired. The inventory and oath were deemed the means by which evidence of their peculations was to be procured; these means, therefore, being taken away, impunity of course would ensue.

The clause was afterwards agreed to without a division.

The Chairman next read the clause which precludes from returning to India all persons who had served in that country; and after their return to England, should have resided here or elsewhere in Europe, for a certain space of time, unless arising from ill health.

Mr. Sheridan said this would greatly injure the public service, as the officers of the king's army and navy having once served in India, could not return to it if this clause should pass.

The amendment was afterwards passed, removing Mr. Sheridan's objection, by exempting king's officers.

FIRST CLAUSE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE NEW JUDICATURE TO BE INSTITUTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE BILL.

Mr. Sheridan said, what the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Pitt) had suggested, certainly went a considerable way towards removing the objections that he had entertained against the court

of judicature, which the printed bill held forth, as the tribunal which was to be instituted; it was, however, impossible for him, on the first hearing of alterations so various and so material, to say how far they were all of them improvements or not; but as the report of the bill, when it came out of the committee, was to be printed, with the amendments, he should then be the better able to judge, and to give his opinion upon the subject of the new tribunal as it would then stand.

The clause was agreed to without a division.

JULY 21.

ARREAR OF THE CIVIL LIST.

Mr. Pitt stated, that there had been an excess in every one of the three quarters the late administration had been in office.

MR. SHERIDAN went into a copious discussion of the account. He said, the imputation which Mr. Pitt had thrown on the late administration, he would undertake most unequivocally to refute. The first quarter, in which his right honourable friend was in office, the civil list incurred no arrear. He assigned reasons why there had been an excess in the other quarters; and, after a variety of arithmetical statements and references, he contended, that he had clearly shown that his right honourable friend had not been to blame; for that it was impossible for him to know of demands that were to come upon the civil list, after the quarter's accounts were respectively made up, because many of those demands came from abroad, and some of them from so distant a quarter as the East Indies. Having amply dilated on those points, he took notice of the nature of the present application, and read the following extract from His Majesty's speech to his parliament, during Lord Shelburne's administration: -

"I have carried into strict execution the several reductions in my civil list expenses, directed by an act of the last session. I have introduced a farther reform into other departments, and suppressed several sinecure places in them. I have by this means so regulated my establishment, that my expenses shall not in future exceed my income."

He observed upon this, that it was a promise made to parliament, while an administration was in office, of which the right honourable gentleman made a part; and that, therefore,

the house had some sort of right to expect, that while he was in office, at least, the promise would be kept. The fact, however, he said, was, that it was impossible to confine the civil list within the sum allowed for it. The right honourable gentleman had, therefore, acted prudently and candidly, in declaring, that he would not pledge himself that no future debt should arise. After the sum now asked was voted, the right honourable gentleman must come down again next session and do one of these two things he must either call upon parliament to grant a larger annuity, or propose a reduction of the establishments. Whether the establishments could be reduced was a question about which there might be some doubts; but he should have thought it would have been more advisable for the right honourable gentleman to have stated the whole case to the house; and to have asked, at once, for a sum sufficient to answer every probable demand, not only of the present debt, but every debt that might in future be incurred, if a larger sum was not voted for the civil list, or if the establishments were not reduced. Mr. Sheridan gave Mr. Pitt credit for a due attention to economy; and said, it was very true some of the incidents that made up the article of occasional payments in the quarter ending April 5, 1784, would not again happen; and, as to the expense attending a change of administration, that he was persuaded the right honourable gentleman was sincere in wishing it might not very soon be incurred. He contended farther, that the present application was a virtual repeal of Mr. Burke's bill; and, therefore, to prevent a repetition of a similar circumstance, he recommended the right honourable gentleman to ask, at once, for a sum equal to the occasions of the civil list, so that there might not be any further necessity of applying to parliament for relief.

After this speech a long contest ensued on the point, whether any excess was incurred or not in the administration of the Duke of Portland. At length the sum of £60,000, moved for the discharge of arrears, was granted without a division.

WAYS AND MEANS. -TAX ON QUALIFICATIONS, REGISTERS, AND

LICENSES.

Mr. Sheridan said, the taxes the right honourable gentleman had that day proposed, appeared to him to be, in general, unexceptionable; but if he were to object to any, it would be

to those relative to game, because he could only consider them as proposed with a view to give vigour to the game laws, which were a system of oppression and tyranny! if they were not proposed with that view they would not produce a shilling.

Mr. Pitt said, he was as little a friend to the arbitrary spirit of the game laws as Mr. Sheridan.

Mr. Sheridan said, then let the right honourable gentleman move for a repeal of those laws; that done, his taxes on qualifications will be wise, salutary, and efficient. What, Mr. Sheridan asked, did the committee imagine was the reason of gentlemen being so desirous of this tax, and so willing to pay five pounds instead of two towards it, but with a view to strengthen and secure themselves in the possession of that monopoly, which the abominable and despotic system of the game laws was calculated to create? As soon as the business was over, he said, he would move for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the game laws; and, he trusted, he should have the support of the right honourable gentleman in carrying it through the house.

Mr. Sheridan rose again, and said, he would not immediately move for leave to bring in a bill, as he had mentioned, but he would certainly bring the matter into consideration in a few days; because he was not only convinced that our game-laws were a disgrace to us as a free people, but that the gaine laws made the poachers.

POSTAGE OF LETTERS.

Mr. Sheridan mentioned the gross evasion of the post-office acts of parliament, by a great number of letters sent to town by diligences, stage-coaches, and other carriages. All the great trading towns in particular, he said, carried on this practice, each vehicle having a regular letter-box. These carriages, he said, would still continue a favourite species of conveyance, on account of their great expedition.

Mr. Pitt mentioned the imposition practised on the Post-office by the concealing letters in newspapers, or by writing short scraps on their edges.

Mr. Sheridan advised the right honourable gentleman by no means to throw any impediment in the way of the circulation of newspapers. Let him think a moment what an essential instrument of revenue a newspaper was. It was not merely the stamp,