MARCH 22, 1791. BILL RELATIVE TO UNRECEIVED DIVIDENDS. Mr. SHERIDAN contended against the provision in the bill, which enabled the Treasury, in case the sum left in the bank of England, should be reduced below 100,000l. to issue exchequer bills, as a security to the public creditor. There were various strong arguments against this power.-Constitutionally it was a dangerous power; and as to the creditor, it was surely a bad commutation to substitute paper in the room of specie. By the original contract, the public creditors were to be paid in specie only. Specie is lodged in the hands of the bank for their payment; and that specie is to be taken out of their hands, and exchequer bills placed in their stead. Exchequer bills might or might not be good payment. If the original bargain declared, that even bank notes should not be considered as good payment, it was a violent measure to force upon them, that which the original bargain declared was not to be offered. The committee went through the bill, and the report was ordered to be received upon the ensuing Thursday. APRIL 1. CORN REGULATION BILL. Mr. SHERIDAN presented a petition from the trades house at Glasgow, praying to be heard by counsel against the clauses which respect Scotland. He wished to be informed, whether it was meant to alter the clauses complained of; because he understood such an intimation had been given to the petitioners by the promoters of the bill. If those claims were not altered, he should have to present a petition against them, signed by more than twenty thousand persons. The petition was ordered to be referred to the committee on the bill, with an instruction that the petitioners be heard by counsel. APRIL 11. FINANCE COMMITTEE. Mr. SHERIDAN objected to the mode of appointing the finance committee, as putting it in the power of ministers to procure many of his own friends to decide on the truth of his own statements. Mr. Steele contended that the appointment of a committee by ballot was unobjectionable, even on the ground stated by the honorable gentleman; as every member was at liberty to give in a list of such names as he thought proper. APRIL 12: MR. GREY'S MOTIONS AGAINST ANY INTERFER- On the 29th of March a message was delivered to parliament from the King, stating, that the endeavors which he had used in conjunction with his allies, to effect a pacification between Russia and the Porte, had been unsuccessful; and that the consequences which might arise from the further progress of the war, being highly important to the interest of His Majesty, and his allies, and to those of Europe in general; His Majesty judged it requisite, in order to add weight to his negociation, to make some further augmentation in his naval force; and he relied on the zeal and affection of parliament, for the defraying of such expenses as might be incurred by those additional preparations. The powers who had mediated in the convention of Reichenbach, had endeavored in vain, on the conclusion of that treaty, to incline the Empress of Russia to peace with the Porte, on the same terms of the statu quo, on which it had been determined that peace should be made between the Porte and Austria. The answer constantly returned by the Empress to the pressing solicitations of the allies on this head, was, that she would admit of no interference between her and the Turks; and should consult her own discretion in whatever related to that business, without submitting to the decision of any power whatever. Alarmed, however, at the strength of the allied powers, and above all, at the new external relations, as well as internal situation of Poland, she offered to give up all her conquests on the Turks, excepting the town and dependencies of Oczakow, the country of the Oczakow Tartars, situated between the Bog and the Neister; the possession of which would, on the one hand, be a barrier to the eruptions of the Tartars into the territories of Russia; and, on the other, open at some future period, more conspicuous than the present, to schemes of aggrandizement into the provinces, and the very heart of the Turkish Empire. The King of Prussia, the immediate successor of Frederick the Great, had shewn a prudent and just jealousy of the ambitious designs of Catherine; and by the formation of a close alliance with Poland, and other measures, wisely endeavoured to prevent her views of aggrandizement to all, or nearly all those measures already carried into execution, and to which Great Britain had given her countenance. We had also in concert with Prussia and Holland, offered to mediate a peace in the East of Europe, soon after the fall of Oczakow, in 1788. We restrained Denmark from joining her arms to those of Russia for assisting the Swedes: and this with an avowed determination of supporting the balance of the North. In the summer following, in 1790, we made a new treaty with Prussia, a treaty of more than defensive alliance; of strict and perpetual union, in order to protect not only the interest of the two contracting powers, but the tranquillity and security of Europe. We had now a second time pressed our mediation on Russia, but pressed it in vain. The Czarina not only persisted in her resolution to carry on the present war with the Turks, unless she should be permitted to dictate a peace on her own terms, but seemed to have denounced a war against another of our allies, Poland. So nearly as 1789 she had given notice, that she should consider the new arrangements of the republics as a violation of her treaty and guarantee of a former engagement; and they prepared a plea for hostilities against that unfortunate country at a more convenient opportunity. The seeds of mutual jealousy and alienation had been sown between Great Britain and Russia, from the period that the Czarina, in the time of our distress in the American war, took the lead in the armed neutrality, for the express purpose of resisting and reducing the naval power of this country. At the expiration of the commercial treaty between Russia and England, she not only declined to renew it, but obliged our merchants to pay, in duties, 25 per cent more than what was exacted from other countries, though they gave half a year's credit for their exports, and were always a whole year in advance for their imports; and at the same time that she declined to renew any commercial treaty with us, she made one with France, and another with Spain: in addition to which, she entered with those two kingdoms into a quadruple alliance, plainly pointed against Great Britain. In a word, the Empress of Russia, flushed with success and most strongly fortified by treaties of alliance, had assumed a menacing attitude and frowning aspect, which naturally produced a counter confederation, and excited throughout a great portion of Europe, a spirit of jealousy, vigilance, and hostile resistance. Such was the state of Europe, and such particularly that of this country in relation to Russia, at the moment when the message from His Majesty mentioned abroad was taken into consideration in the house of commons. The minister moved for an address on the occasion to His Majesty after the usual form. He supported the measure that was the object of the address, on the ground that we had a direct and important interest in the war between Russia and the Porte. Having entered into defensive alliances, which were admitted to be wise and politic, we ought to adhere to them: Prussia was our ally, and ought to be supported. The progress of the Russian arms against the Porte was alarming. Should the power of the Porte be farther humbled by its aspiring rival, Prussia would instantly feel it, and not Prussia alone, but all Europe-the political system of which might be shaken to its very foundation. On the other side, it was stated, that Prussia could not be endangered by any progress which the Russian arms could make in Turkey. The Empress offered to cede all her conquests between the Neister and Danube; and proposed only to retain those which were situated between the Neister and the Don; but we insisted, that she should surrender all her conquests without a single exception. Our only ground of quarrel, therefore, with the Empress, was, her unwillingness to resign the tract of country above mentioned; which although in general barren and unprofitable, was yet particularly desirable to her, as it contained the town of Oczakow, a place of much importance to the security of the Russian dominions. The address was carried by a majority of only 93. Ayes 228; noes 135. By so numerous a minority, Mr. Grey was encouraged to move, on the 12th of April, eight resolutions, declarative of certain general and undeniable positions, with regard to the interest of this country in the preservation of peace; the just causes, and unjust pretexts for war ; facts that had appeared during the hostilities between Russia and the Porte, which did not seem immediately to involve the interests of Great Britain, or to threaten an attack on her possessions, or those of her allies; and concluding, "that the expense of an armament must be burthensome to the country, and is under the present circumstances, as far as the house is informed, inexpedient and unnecessary. Mr. Sheridan remarked, that although he had several times presented himself in vain to the Speaker's eye, he never felt it more unnecessary to trespass on the time of the house, than at that moment; since,, if ever there was a discussion, which had been supported by the ablest arguments on one side, and with flimsy delusion opposed to them on the other, the cause discussed that day had been that cause. Not even any argument had been offered by the honorable baronet (Sir William Young) who spoke last, and who had traversed over all Europe, traced the history of the navigation and commerce of Russia, from the earliest period; described her back frontiers, and all parts of her dominions; and expatiated with as much familiarity concerning the Dnieper and the Danube, as if he had been talking of the Worcestershire canal, and pictured the empress as a female Colossus, standing with one foot on the banks of the Black Sea, and the other on the coast of the Baltic; yet, in spite of this fund of knowledge and ingenuity, all which the honorable baronet said, did not amount to an argument against the motion, which, in his mind, was entitled to the smallest weight. From the right honorable gentleman opposite to him, (Mr. Dundas) who was something like a minister, though not actually one, he expected to have heard important reasoning; but he presumed he had continued dumb, because if he had risen to speak, it might have been suspected that he knew something, and thus have broken in upon that impenetrable mystery, and that magnificent silence which was to characterise the day, as far as regarded the conduct of those who alone could have afforded the house information, which they had a right to expect. Those who had risen to speak, like the honorable baronet who had just sat down, had professed either that they knew nothing of the cause of the armament, or had indulged in stating what they guessed to be that cause; thus the sum and substance of all the arguments against the motion had been professed ignorance on the one hand, or avowed conjecture on the other. If, then, they were to guess only from conjecture, and to argue from maxims drawn from maps and books, as the last honorable gentleman on the other side had done, could they possibly arrive at any satisfactory knowledge on the subject? Are maxims drawn from maps and books the cause for which an English house of commons are to plunge their country into a war, and waste the blood and treasure of their constituents! The reasons stated by different gentlemen, among their guesses of the causes of the war, were not more different than extraordinary. One right honorable gentleman had assigned something that looked like an argument, which might |