city. Sir, we know perfectly, that any plan which does not, like theirs, corrupt the city, would be displeasing to them; but if they mean what they do not, the protection of the city, I have in my hand a bill capable of being digested into a plan of protection; some heads of it. I will state to you. It pro poses to retain and increase the watch, to pay them not less than they are paid at present; to arm them for defence and offence; but instead of a firelock, to give a sword and a watch-pole, with a bayonet at the end of it. They should cry the hours, have a lanthern, a rattle, and in the centry-box a bell; they should be distributed among the different parishes, some of which should be united; they should be under the command of one chief, or head constable, and he should not be chosen by the Castle, but be under the control of my Lord Mayor. I would have an alderman to preside in each parish, or union with a certain number of parishioners, chosen by those who pay scot and lot, which persons, with him their president, should form a court, that should direct and regulate the watch. I would have in each ward a competent number of constables; I would extend protection to the limits of the Circular-road; I would. have a rotation-office with a salary; and I would retain some part of the present taxes, remitting, however, a considerable portion of them. The citizens, probably, would have no objection to pay taxes for their protection; but hitherto they have paid taxes for corruption, insult, and contumely, and have been trodden on by the very court who had taxed them. The principle of my plan is, to follow the plan of the constitution, which put the military under the civil power.

The

The difficulty does not lie in forming a plan, but in resisting the corrupt and ambitious principle that vindicates the plan which has been formed already; to demolish such a plan shall be my endeavour. I will labour to restore freedom to the capital, and independency to the corporation. liberty of England began its first dawnings in corporate bodies; nay, the corporation of London preserved the freedom of England, when the arbitrary court of Charles I. questioned the rights of Parliament, and made an attack on the persons of some of its members. These members retired into the heart of London, and, from the violence of an unconstitutional government, they found protection in a constitutional city. The capital of the nation is the capital of the constitution, the place of its strength; that high ground to which the remote country is to look for the signal of public danger. This ground has been taken, recover it. The right honourable gentleman has produced, and has established his plan. I offer you mine. He tells you, his, is a plan of peace; you

know it is a plan of corruption. I believe mine will be a plan of peace, and I am sure it is not a plan of corruption; the difference between us is this, I offer freedom and peace, and he treads on freedom under the pretence of peace.

On the question to agree with the committee in the first resolution, the House divided; - Ayes 78, Noes 132; Majority against the resolution 64. Tellers for the Ayes, Mr. Hartley and Sir Henry Cavendish; for the Noes, Lord Delvin,. Mr. Serjeant Toler.

The Attorney-general (Fitzgibbon) then moved that the report be rejected, which was carried without a division.

BARREN LAND bill.

MR. GRATTAN MOVES THE BILL FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF BARREN LAND.

May 1. 1789.

MR. GRATTAN had, in the month of April, moved for and brought in a bill for the improvement of barren land. The object of the bill was to encourage agriculture, by exempting from tithe all unproductive and barren land for a certain period of years after it had been reclaimed.

On this day (the 1st) it was moved that the bill be read a second time. This motion was opposed by Mr. Arthur Brown, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Molyneux, who moved, that the second reading be postponed to the 1st of June.

Mr. GRATTAN. Sir, the first charge against this bill is delay; but that charge is easily answered, by adverting to the period of the session on which it was introduced, in the month of April; a period after which the greatest questions that ever agitated or advanced this kingdom were brought forward, questions of greater moment even than the fears of the clergy about their private interest. Why this bill was not brought forward sooner is obvious; in the beginning of the session you had no executive power. Afterwards the money bills came on and engrossed our whole attention, and then the administration moved to adjourn for three weeks. That was the cause of the delay; but when gentlemen talk of the delay, they only set up a pretence; they have time enough to go into the bill now. The administration is not obliged to make a recess, they need not decline to do the business of the country; but the truth is, they have already carried through this House the business of government, and they care but little about the business of the uation. When gentlemen talk of the impos

sibility of keeping members together at this period of the year, they set up another pretence; they have the art of keeping members; they have certain coercive powers, of which we are not possessed; and they are, besides, perfectly indifferent about keeping members together, provided they have enough to make a House for their own purposes; but the truth is, that the court have agreed to damn this bill, and finding the principle of the bill too strong for them, they resist it by various pretences..

The next charge against this bill is surprise; an argument just as ill-founded as that of delay; the clergy have been for these thirteen months perfectly apprized of an intention to pass such a bill; thirteen months ago it was brought into this House. It passed here unanimously; and those gentlemen on the side of government, who are now loquacious against it, gave it then an implicit support; it afterwards went to the Lords, where it was debated and amended, and was then, with the amendments, sent back to the Commons, and rejected on account of the impropriety of some of those amendments; but its rejection was perfectly well understood to be with a view of bringing in the bill free from the improper amendments this session of Parliament: the bill was then a subject of clerical controversy, and of paper war; and this is the bill which some of the clergy affirm they do not perfectly conceive, and ask time to understand; and this request is accompanied by a declaration from the enemies of this bill, that the clergy oppose the principle of it, and therefore the argument about delay and surprise falls to the ground; they do not want time, it seems, to enquire into the formation; they do not want to guard themselves by certain clauses against its abuse, they want at once to damn the bill, and some of their advocates have been so imprudent as to declare, that the church should not run the chance of any loss whatsoever in order to improve the country and employ the people. Sir, I must deny the position and the fact on which the supposition is said to be founded. I think the ministers of the Gospel ought to run the hazard of some loss for the benefit of their fellow creatures, in the cultivation of the earth and the industry of mankind; but here I must deny that they will suffer any loss. The country people will not, as is surmised, immediately withdraw their tillage from the arable ground and cultivate mountain only. The members that suppose this may be excellent legislators, but are bad farmers, and so the learned churchmen who fear that event may be incomparable divines, but are execrable farmers; and, in order to expose the futility of their idle fears, it is sufficient to resort to

experience. Such a bill has been the law of England since the reign of Edward the VI. Were the English clergy starved? Did they perish? Where is the historic evidence of a general calamity befalling the churchmen at that period? It is true, they have agistment in England, but with agistment the English clergy must have lost, though not the whole, yet the greater part of their income, if of such a bill as is before you, such a transfer of tillage was the natural consequence. Such a law has been tried in France, as well as England. In 1766 an arrêt was registered, exempting all barren land from tithe. Were the French clergy starved? Did they famish? Did they remonstrate? There is, indeed, a difference between the Irish law, which is to starve the Irish clergy, and the French law, which has been quietly submitted to. The Irish is an exemption for seven years, the French for fifteen. Laws similar to this have been tried in Ireland as well as France

and England. An act of George the II. exempts all barren land from the tithe of flax, hemp, and rape, for seven years. Have the country people gone up into the mountains, and transferred the cultivation of those articles from titheable ground? No. In the south the clergy get a very considerable tithe from flax, 8s. sometimes 12s. the acre; and so little did this law rescue hemp from tithe, that the last session it was found necessary to pass a bill for ascertaining the tithe of hemp, in order to give encouragement to its cultivation; and the clergy were alarmed at such an encouragement, as likely to deprive them of a profitable tithe; though, according to their present reasoning, the culture of hemp must have been transferred to the mountains, and the tithe of it entirely lost. But there is another law now existing, still more in point, an act of the present reign, exempting from tithe for seven years all bogs that shall be reclaimed; how comes it that all the parsons in boggy countries did not starve? That the country people did not transfer their cultivation entirely to bogs, and leave the arable land untilled? Are we to understand that there are no bogs in Ireland, or that the peasant will be inclined to cultivate the mountain exclusively, but can have no temp, tation whatever to cultivate the bog? These instances are enough to expose the futility of the fears of the parson on the present subject; and they are pernicious and fatal friends to the clergy of Ireland, who rest their opposition to this bill on an aversion to its principle, for they contradistinguish the Irish clergy to the English and to French clergy, and place them below both; they represent them, without foundation I am sure, but they represent them as too avaricious on points of private interest, and reluctant to serve either their flock or

their successor, if there exists but the speculation of an iota of private loss.

My honourable friend, therefore, who presented the petition, placed it on more reputable ground than others who have spoken more out on the subject. The truth is, the parson gives nothing except an encouragement, costing him nothing, to till what now produces nothing, but what may, by virtue of that encouragement, be profitable hereafter to the poor, and to himself or his successor. Sir, I foresee the fall of this bill from the ministerial powers arranged against it. A right honourable gentleman, high in the confidence of administration, supports the motion to reject this bill, though he himself voted for it the last session of Parliament. He not only voted for it, but when I brought it in, he returned me thanks for introducing a bill that so entirely agreed with his sentiments, and promised much benefit to the community. He opposed two other bills which I then introduced, one for the flax, another for rape. He did so in consequence of a negotiation, as I was taught to believe, carried on by the ministers with a right reverend prelate, who had acceded to the barren land bill, provided the two others were resisted by administration in the Commons; the recollection of which agreement was supposed afterwards to have escaped the memory of the prelate. When that barren land-bill came back, strangely altered, the right honourable gentleman was much displeased, and conceived, I understood, the necessity of bringing in a proper bill this session; and does he now want to examine the merits of this measure. Is he now to seek about its properties? He tells you that the clergy have now petitioned against it, and that he wishes all of them should have time. Does he mean, that they in the extremest part of the kingdom should have time to form an opposition to his favourite measure? He says, he wishes to hear them by counsel; he is right, and, therefore, he passes over Monday, when counsel will attend at your bar, and adjourns the bill to the 1st of June, when they will not. As to any particular clauses against burning barren land, or defrauding the parson of his reversion, by a bad system of cultivation, or any other clauses which are not calculated to destroy the principles of the bill, I have no objection to them.

Before the session is over, I shall lay before this House some ideas on the general question of tithe. I shall ask leave to bring in a bill for the appointment of commissioners, who shall sit notwithstanding the prorogation of Parliament, shall have power to enquire into the different tithe-rates of the kingdom; and shall lay before the House a plan for ascertaining the

* The Attorney-general, Mr Fitzgibbon.