siderable portion of landed property; your prudence then would provide, that this union of numbers and landed property, shall have no interest in Protestant freedom, and thus you do for the better assuring and preserving the same; you see we adopt names which we do not understand, and set them against things which we might understand. We set up the name of Protestant ascendancy against Protestant power, just as we set up the name of the Revolution against the Protestant freedom. The church has not been forgotten any more than the state, and it has been insisted, that if the Catholics get freedom, they will exercise it to substitute the establishment of their religion in the place of ours. The example of the Presbyterians refutes that argument; they are the majority of Protestants, and they have not destroyed our church establishment. But the argument in its principle is erroneous. Men cannot be free without suffrage, but men may be free without church establishment; and therefore they may be satisfied with the possession of the one, and not dissatisfied without the possession of the other. I have given my sentiments on this the other night. I see no reason to change them. I am not for precipitating any measure, but, loving you as I do, I have thought it necessary to lay before you the whole of your situation, and to resist that tide of error which carries away all recollection. I have given my reasons; hereafter your mind will open; and we shall unite Protestant power with Catholic freedom.

The House then divided on the question, that the petition be rejected; - Ayes 208, Noes 25; Majority 183. Tellers for the Ayes, Mr. David Latouche and Mr. George Ogle; for the Noes, Mr. Forbes and Colonel Hutchinson.

Mr. Latouche then moved, "That the Protestant petition, from the town of Belfast, in favour of the Roman Catholics, be now rejected, which was likewise carried."

FIRE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

March 1. 1792.

ON the 27th of February, when the House was in committee on the spirit-regulation bill, the building caught fire, and, notwithstanding every exertion, this beautiful edifice was burned to the ground. Sir E. Pierce was the original architect; but dying before its completion, the work was continued under the superintendance of Mr. Burgh, Surveyor-general, and was finished in 1731. It was remarkable for the beauty of its architecture.

The members assembled in a large room at the west end of the building, which was fitted up for the occasion; and on this day. (1st), the Speaker informed the House, that, notwithstanding the dreadful accident which had happened, none of the records or journals of the House were destroyed. He bore testimony to the great exertions of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and of the gentlemen of the college.

Mr. GRATTAN said: I am happy at the favourable sense the House entertain of the good conduct of the gentlemen of the university, and I hope this sense will not end in mere approbation. I hope they will be restored to what I shall not call a right, but what certainly was a very ancient indulgence they had enjoyed, that of admission to the gallery under proper regulations. This indulgence may be subject to the abuse of temporary licence, but under the observation and control of the House, and the vigilance of the Speaker, any temporary excesses, must be speedily suppressed.

Major Hobart stated, that if indiscriminate admission was granted to the students of the university, the citizens of Dublin would be excluded.

Mr. GRATTAN said: A right honourable gentleman (Major Hobart,) was mistaken in point of fact, when he asserted that the regulation which excluded the students, tended to accommodate the citizens. The truth is, that by that regulation the citizens as well as the students are excluded; for by it they are obliged to wait for hours in the avenues of the House, in order to beg a disengaged member to introduce them. Hence it is, that on some late very important questions, the gallery was empty. The public did not think the abilities of gentlemen so very captivating, as to undergo a harassing attendance of hours to hear their display; the regulation in fact went to exclude, not to accommodate, the public. As to any inconvenience that may result from admitting the gentlemen of the college, it is an indulgence they had long enjoyed before the present Speaker came to the chair; and though they might sometimes have been guilty of impropriety, that impropriety was immediately checked by the admonition of the House, and no material inconvenience was experienced. At present I think there is very good reason for again indulging those gentlemen. The chair will please to recollect, that the general sense of the House has approved of their conduct, and I hope that approbation will not be coupled with an interdict against them; the chair I am confident, has too just a sense of its own dignity, to submit to a mandatory suggestion from any gentlemen on either side of the House.

The Speaker expressed his wishes to admit the members of the university, and said he would take every means to accommodate them; but that it should be left to his own discretion.

SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS.

March 5. 1792.

ON N this day the House went into a committee on the subject of the distilleries, and the regulations for encouraging the breweries, Mr. Townsend in the chair. Mr. John Beresford maintained, that the plan adopted of late had been attended with the desired success, and that the breweries had greatly increased. He concluded by moving the following resolutions:

"Resolved, That it appears to this committee, that the quantity of home-brewed and imported malt liquor, consumed within the three quarters, ending Christmas, 1791, exceeded the consumption of the three quarters, ending Christmas, 1790, by 57,534 barrels.

"That the quantity of spirits consumed in the three quarters, ending Christmas, 1790, exceeded the consumption of the three quarters, ending Christmas, 1791, by 322,503 gallons.

"That the consumption of malt liquor having so much increased in those periods, and that of spirituous liquors so much diminished, the regulations have been effectual."

On the first resolution being put,

Mr. GRATTAN said: the last resolution is fallacious; it says that the consumption of spirit has diminished, and that of malt liquor increased, and that for so much the purposes of the regulations have had the desired effect. Now the decrease of the consumption of spirit has been almost entirely confined to the foreign spirit, and that decrease has proceeded from high price, not from regulation; and high price being temporary the decrease will be temporary, and not, as your resolution would suggest, the steady effect of law. That part of the resolution which relates to malt is also fallacious, for the increase of the consumption of malt liquor has been principally the increase of imported beer, and this was not the object of your regulation, but the contrary, for one of the professed objects was the home brewery, and not its rival, the brewery of England. The resolution is a non sequitur; it attempts to attribute to regulations what notoriously proceeds from other causes; it is, therefore, a fallacious resolution, calculated for the purpose of deceiving the public, who have been taxed about 100,000l. a-year by these regulations, and who have

gotten nothing by then, except an increase of home-brewed beer, somewhat less than a ninth, and a decrease of whiskey, somewhat less than a three and twentieth part. A right honourable gentleman has endeavoured to persuade you that the brewery has received decisive advantages, and that it ought to flourish, though it does not. He says, in the last twenty years, the brewery has received an abatement of duty to the amount of seven-pence a barrel, and the distillery an increase of duty to the amount of ten-pence. This fact is unquestionable: it is his conclusions which are erroneous. He concludes, that, therefore, the brewery cannot be prejudiced by the nature of the taxes; if he had said by the quantity, he might have had some colour, but it does not follow, that, though the quantity of tax should be light, the nature of them should not be heavy. Suppose the smallest tax on a manufacture, but that the manufacture, for the purpose of collection of tax, was subject to be visited by excise officers; that in the process of making that manufacture Parliament had interfered, under the direction of the excise officers or the commissioners, and had prescribed the quantity of each material without any reference to their quality, and annexed a certain price without any reference to the fines, and had adopted various other regulations as to the kind and quality of the manufacture. Here a manufacture might be, and probably would be destroyed, not by the weight of tax, but by the presumption, ignorance, and folly of regulation; therefore, instead of concluding, as he has done, that the decline of the brewery cannot proceed from the nature of taxes, he should have concluded, that as it did not appear to have declined from the quantity of tax, it probably had declined from the nature of the regulation. His next position is, that the decline has not proceeded from the advantages of the English brewer, because the English brewer, he states, to have seven shillings the barrel against him. The importation of English beer is annually increasing, and that even since your last regulation; what follows from the two points made by the right honourable gentleman, that the decline of the brewery has not proceeded from a want of protection? He says, it has a protection of seven shillings per barrel, that it has not proceeded from a distaste to malt, for it is imported copiously, and that it does not proceed from the tax overwhelming it with a weight of duties. Whence then can this decline proceed but from himself; from those very regulations which attempted to enact a receipt for making beer, wherein the officers of the revenue write a receipt for the brewers, and then get Parliament to inscribe this nostrum into a law, and afterwards make the brewer swear to it.

The right honourable gentleman who rose to support his right honourable friend with the answer to a bill in equity, is a new evidence against the right honourable gentleman's regulations; for he tells you, that the brewer may make forty-five per cent. on his capital. Here is then a proof that it is not the discouraging nature of the trade that has caused its decline. One gentleman tells us the brewer may make forty-five per cent. on his capital. The right honourable member himself tells you, that it is not the weight of duty; and the same gentleman tells you, that is not the want of protection; and they all tell, and the accounts tell you, that the brewery has, in the course of thirty years, declined above one-third, though almost every other manufacture in this country has greatly increased; to what then can this decline be attributed, but to the interference of Parliament; to that meddling mischief, which, instead of leaving trade free, makes receipts for the carrying it on. The right honourable member has said, that the trade had declined before he undertook its care, and, therefore, he infers that the continuation and growth of its decline are not due to his medicines. The brewery had declined certainly; when he interfered he found a manufacture in a sickly state: what had been the natural cure? It was loaded with two excises, hereditary and additional; it were natural to take off those excises, and try whether leaving it free, would not re-establish its health. But what was his remedy? He loads it with further restrictions, and regulations, and divisions, and oaths, and then he wonders that a trade, so loaded with excises and restrictions, and regulations added to those excises, has not revived.

The right honourable gentleman has given an account of the effect of those restrictions: hear what it is. The great evil was, says he, that the Irish brewer made weak liquor; his remedy was to ascertain the price, below which no ale or beer should be sold, and also to ascertain the quantity of malt and hops, which at all times, and without reference to the quality of either, should be used in the brewery. He now states to you the effect of his regulation. The brewers in order to evade his law, used, says he, bad malt and hops, quantitymalt and pig-hops; thus by his own acknowledgement and his own evidence, the effect of his regulation was mischievous; it was to corrupt the malt liquor of the country, and make the beer and ale not strong, but abominable. He states also, the effect of his regulation, regarding the price; he had increased the price five-shillings a barrel, which he calculates at 100,000l. a-year additional charge on the consumer, which, in the course of many years, he says amounts to above a million, near two