into weakness, your economy into profusion. These are the doctrines applicable to these times. As men become enlightened, they advance in liberty; in that career seldom are any found retrograde; and in proportion to their advances you must concede to them. It has been said, as an argument against the emancipation of slaves, that the negroes are not sufficiently enlightened for freedom. The French Mulattoes, it is owned, are more capable of enjoying it; and passing from them to the most enslaved nations of Europe; we see that the approach of light makes it necessary for the governor to acknowledge at length that they are human. But, shall the preposterous imagination be fostered, that Englishmen, bred in liberty, the first of human kind who asserted the glorious distinction of forming for themselves their social compact, can be condemned to silence upon their rights? Is it to be conceived that men who have enjoyed, for such a length of days, the light and happiness of freedom, can be restrained and shut up again in the gloom of ignorance and degradation? As well, Sir, might you try, by a miserable dam, to shut up the flowing of a rapid river; the rolling and impetuous tide would burst through every impediment that man might throw in its way, and the only consequence of the impotent attempt would be, that having collected new force by its temporary suspension, enforcing itself through new channels, it would spread devastation and ruin on every side. The progress of liberty is like the progress of the stream; it may be kept within its banks; it is sure to fertilize the country through which it runs; but no power can arrest it in its passage; and short-sighted, as well as wicked, must be the heart of the projector that would strive to divert its course.Mr. Fox concluded by moving to bring in a bill for the repeal of the said acts.

After the motion had been opposed by Mr. Serjeant Adair, Mr. Elford, Sir Richard Glynn, Colonel Fullarton, Mr. Ellison, and others, the House divided:

MR. GREY'S MOTION FOR A REFORM IN PARLIAMENT.

May 26.

R. Grey, in pursuance of previous notice, moved this day, "That leave be given to bring in a bill to amend and regulate the election of members to serve in the Commons House of parliament." He proposed that the county representation should remain nearly on the same footing; only, that instead of 92 county members, there should be 113. For instance, instead of two for the county of York, that there should be two for each riding; and so in other counties where the present representation was not proportionate to the extent of population. In order to put an end to compromises, each county or riding should be divided into grand divisions, each of which should return one representative. With regard to the qualifications of electors, instead of confining the right of election to freeholders, it should be extended to copy and lease-holders, who were bound to pay a certain annual rent, a certain number of years. But the reform which he had to propose, in the other branch of representation, was of a much more extensive nature. It was, that the remaining 400 members should be returned by one description of persons, which were householders. If it were possible, one person should not be permitted to vote for more than one member of parliament. In order to prevent expence, the pole ought, he said, to be taken through the whole kingdom at one time. This was the outline of his plan; to state that it could be obtained at first with exactness, or was not liable to difficulties, would be presumptuous and absurd. But he flattered himself there would be found no insuperable objections to it. The land-owner would find his property suitably represented; the merchant support in the householders; and men of respectability and talents in the different professions would find a fair door open for admission into parliament. The only persons whom he wished to exclude from that House, were men who were neither possessed of landed property, nor engaged in commercial enterprize, nor professors of any particular science, and who, without property, without industry, and without talents, obtained seats in the House of Commons by the influence of great men, for the purpose, not of consulting the good of the people, but of promoting their own interests. The motion was seconded in an elaborate and eloquent speech by Mr. Erskine, and supported by Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Richard Hill, Mr. Milbanke, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Barham, Mr. William Smith, Mr. Pollen, and Sir William Dolben. Mr. Pitt opposed the motion upon precisely the same grounds on which his own propositions on the same subject had been formerly contested. It was also opposed by Mr. Robert Thornton, Sir William Geary, Lord Hawkes

bury, Sir William Young, and Sir Gregory Page Turner. At the close of the debate,

Mr. Fox rose, and spoke as follows:-Much and often, Sir, as this question has been discussed, and late as the hour is, I feel it my duty to deliver my opinion on a measure of high importance at all times, but which, at the present period, is become infinitely more interesting than ever. I fear, however, that my conviction on this subject is not common to the House: I fear that we are not likely to be agreed as to the importance of the measure, nor as to the necessity; since by the manner in which it has been discussed this night, I foresee that, so far from being unanimous on the proposition, we shall not be agreed as to the situation and circumstances of the country itself, much less as to the nature of the measures which, in my mind, that situation and those circumstances imperiously demand. I cannot suppress my astonishment at the tone and manner of gentlemen this day. The arguments that have been used would lead the mind to believe that we are in a state of peace and tranquillity, and that we have no provocation to any steps for improving the benefits we enjoy, or retrieving any misfortune that we have incurred. To persons who feel this to be our situation, every proposition tending to meliorate the condition of the country must be subject of jealousy and alarm: and if we really differ so widely in sentiment as to the state of the country, I see no probability of an agreement in any measure that is proposed. All that part of the argument against reform which relates to the danger of innovation, is strangely misplaced by those who think with me, that, so far from procuring the mere chance of practical benefits by a reform, it is only by a reform that we can have a chance of rescuing ourselves from a state of extreme peril and distress. Such is my view of our situation. I think it so perilous, so imminent, that, though I do not feel conscious of despair, an emotion which the heart ought not to admit, yet it comes near to that state of hazard, when the sentiment of despair, rather than of hope, may be supposed to take possession of the mind. I feel myself to be the member of a community, in which the boldest man, without any imputation of cowardice, may dread that we are not merely approaching to a state of extreme peril, but of absolute dissolution; and with this conviction impressed upon my mind, gentlemen will not believe that I disregard all the general arguments that have been used against the motion on the score of the danger of innovation, from any disrespect to the honourable members who have urged them, or to the ingenuity with which they have been pressed; but because I

am firmly persuaded that they are totally inapplicable to the circumstances under which we come to the discussion. With the ideas that I entertain, I cannot listen for a moment to suggestions that are applicable only to other situations, and to other times; for unless we are resolved pusillanimously to wait the approach of our doom, to lie down and die, we must take bold and decisive measures for our deliverance. We must not be deterred by meaner apprehensions. We must combine all our strength, fortify one another by the communion of our courage; and by a seasonable exertion of national wisdom, patriotism, and vigour, take measures for the chance of salvation, and encounter with unappalled hearts, all the enemies, foreign and internal, all the dangers and calamities of every kind which press so heavily upon us. Such is my view of our present emergency; and under this impression, I cannot for a moment listen to the argument of danger arising from innovation, since our ruin is inevitable if we pursue the course which has brought us to the brink of the precipice.

But before I enter on the subject of the proposition that has been made to us, I must take notice of an insinuation that has again and again been flung out by gentlemen on the other side of the House, on party feelings, in which they affect to deplore the existence of a spirit injurious to the welfare of the public. I suspect, by the frequent repetition of this insinuation, that they are desirous of making it be believed, or that they understand themselves by the word party feelings, an unprincipled combination of men for the pursuit of office and its emoluments, the eagerness after which leads them to act upon feelings of personal enmity, ill-will, and opposition to his majesty's ministers. If such be their interpretation of party feelings, I must say, that I am utterly unconscious of any such feeling, and I am sure that I can speak with confidence for my friends, that they are actuated by no motives of so debasing a nature. But if they understand by party feelings, that men of honour, who entertain similar principles, conceive that those principles may be more beneficially and successfully pursued by the force of mutual support, harmony, and confidential connexion, then I adopt the interpretation, and have no scruple in saying, that it is an advantage to the country; an advantage to the cause of truth and the constitution; an advantage to freedom and humanity; an advan tage to whatever honourable object they may be engaged in, that men pursue it with the united force of party feeling; that is to say, pursue it with the confidence, zeal, and spirit, which the communion of just confidence is likely to inspire. And if the honourable gentlemen apply this description of party

feeling to the pursuit in which we are engaged, I am equally ready to say, that the disastrous condition of the empire ought to animate and invigorate the union of all those who feel it to be their duty to check and arrest a career that threatens us with such inevitable ruin. For, surely, those who think that party is a good thing for ordinary occasions, must admit that it is peculiarly so on emergencies like the present; it is peculiarly incumbent upon men who feel the value of united exertion to combine all their strength to extricate the vessel when in danger of being stranded.

But gentlemen seem to insinuate, that this union of action is directed more against persons than measures, and that allusions ought not to be made to the conduct of particular men. It is not easy to analyse this sort of imputation, for it is not easy to disjoin the measure from its author, nor to examine the origin and progress of any evil without also inquiring into and scrutinising the motives and the conduct of the persons who gave rise to it. How, for instance, is it possible for us to enter into the discussion of the particular question now before the House, without a certain mixture of personal allusion? We complain that the representation of the people in parliament is defective. How does this complaint originate? From the conduct of the majorities in parliament. Does not this naturally lead us to inquire whether there is not something fundamentally erroneous in election, or something incidentally vicious in the treatment of those majorities? We surely must be permitted to inquire whether the fault and calamity of which we complain is inherent in the institution, in which nothing personal is to be ascribed to ministers, as it will operate in a more or less degree in all the circumstances in which we may find ourselves; or whether it is not an occasional abuse of the original institution, applicable only to these times and to these men, in which they are peculiarly guilty, but from which system representation itself ought to stand absolved.

I put the question in this way, in order to shew that a certain degree of personality is inseparable from the discussion, and that gentlemen cannot with justice ascribe to the bitterness of party feelings, what flows out of the principle of free inquiry. Indeed, this is a pregnant example of there being nothing peculiarly hostile to persons in this subject; it is not a thing now taken up for the first time, meditated and conceived in particular hostility to the right honourable the chancellor of the exchequer. Be it remembered, that he himself has again and again introduced and patronized the same subject, and that on all the occasions on which he has brought it forward it has invariably received my approbation and sup