which are expressed in the circle of his own acquaintance, and from his personal enquiries on the subject. But I will undertake to say, that at the present moment, amidst all the difficulties and embarrassments, unavoidably occasioned by the vigorous prosecution of hostilities, the system pursued by parliament in support of the measures of government is the system of the people; and parliament at no period possessed in a more ample degree the confidence of the country than it does now. [Here Mr. Fox showed some signs of dissent.] The honourable gentleman may be disposed to controvert this opinion, but I am sure he cannot maintain the contrary with more sincerity or with more perfect conviction than I advance what I now assert. The right honourable gentleman, the House will recollect, was accustomed to assert last session of parliament, with equal boldness and vehemence as now, that the sense of the country was against the system of ministers. Good God! where can the honourable gentleman have lived? In what remote corner of the country can he have passed his time? What great public question can be state, upon which the public have not evinced a great degree of interest, as great as that shown upon any former occasion? On the contrary, if ever there was a period which we should select, as the one in which the attention of the public was the most turned to public affairs, it was precisely that period in which the learned gentleman has described the public to have lost all interest in the deliberations of parliament.

I know it is maintained that parliament does not represent the great body of the nation, and that the result of general elections gives no striking character or impressive feature of the sentiments of the people: but I desire it may also be recollected, whether there are not many leading instances and particular circumstances attendant on general elections, that go strongly to express the opinion entertained by the constituent body; and, taking up the consideration in that point of view, I do insist, and am convinced the position cannot be objected to, that the approbation given by those who had been members of the last parliament, to the commencement and prosecution of the war,

were strong and powerful recommendations in their favour at the late general elections. I will for a moment, pursuing this, argument, request the House to take the parliamentary representation as it has been stated and recommended by the honourable gentleman. I will desire the honourable gentleman himself to look for an instant to his own statement of the proposed additional representation of the counties, and then candidly decide, whether he can argue that the sense of the people was not in a great degree to be collected at general elections? It is submitted in that statement, to extend the number of county members from ninety-two to one hundred and thirteen; the augmentation, therefore, did not consist of many and does the honourable gentleman intend to except the ninety-two former members by a general proscription? or will he pretend to say, that the system of counties, as it stands at present in point of representation, goes for nothing? Certainly he cannot undertake to advance such an argument, and so evidently inconsistent with his own. plan of reform. If, therefore, the one hundred and thirteen members proposed by the honourable gentleman to represent the counties, would express the true sense of the people, it cannot be denied on the same grounds, that the ninety-two who were elected by their constituents, were in a very considerable proportion the organs of the public opinion. The arguments therefore adduced by the honourable gentleman go against his own declaration, that the sense of the people was not the sense of parliament; and that sense had been fully manifested in favour of the war at the general elections. Since, therefore, I recollect the former declaration of the honourable gentleman at the end of the last session of parliament, that parliament did not possess the confidence of the people, am I to be discouraged now, after the general election, from saying that they actually did enjoy that confidence? But that is not the only statement which I can make in justification of this assertion. I will appeal to the proceedings in great and populous cities, as well as in the

* Mr. Grey.

city of London, in which the opinions of gentlemen on the other side of the House, with respect to parliament not possessing the confidence of the people, were as strongly refuted, on a fair poll, by a vast majority of the electors, as by the elections for the counties to which he has referred. It consequently appears that the honourable gentleman has not specific ground to proceed on; and that he has totally failed in the foundation of his assertion, that parliament does not enjoy the public confidence. The learned gentleman has, in the fanciful flights of his eloquence, pushed his objects farther than his honourable friend; for he has not only said, that parliament has lost the confidence of the people, but that the proceedings of parliament have no effect whatever on the public mind.

The learned gentleman, however, wished to unite two classes of persons very opposite in their pursuits. He desires to reconcile those, who by the very nature of their principles are altogether irreconcileable; those whose political doctrines are known to be inimical to legal government, and those who are distinguished by the moderation of their tenets. With respect to the moderates, it could not be too minutely attended to by the House, that they propose no plan of reform whatever; that they perfer no complaints; that they set out with no petition on that subject; and is it proper or reasonable that the House should spontaneously give what had not been even demanded? With regard to the other persons alluded to by the learned gentleman, the House, by agreeing to what has been urged in their favour, would give them not merely what they claim, but what they demand as an absolute right, and what is in reality the first step to the accomplishment of their real views. That the present moment should be a time for the measure of reform appears rather inconsistent, when it is admitted by the learned gentleman himself that radical discontent is prevalent in the country, and when it is undeniable, that the men' who talk of liberty aim merely at licentiousness, and set up the name of reform as a disguise to mask their revolutionary projects, and as the first step to their acknowledged system of innovation. Concessions to such men, at such a time,

would be impolitic, would be fatal, would be absurd. The House also, by agreeing to the arguments of the learned gentleman, would grant what could not be of any use to one set of men, and what would be productive of great mischief to the other description. Such concessions, I will maintain, are not warranted by the sound maxims of philosophy, nor to be measured by the numerous examples drawn from the history of the world.

The honourable gentleman * has talked highly of the blessing s which are to result to mankind from the establishment of French liberty; and because new lights have appeared to set off the doc trine of freedom, this House is therefore to alter their principles of government, and to accommodate themselves to the new order of things. The system of French liberty is represented as a new light diffusing itself over all the world, and spreading in every region happiness and improvement. Good God! is the House to be told, after the benefits which have been derived from the revolution in this country, that other and more essential benefits are to be added by adopting the principles of the French revolution? From such lights, however, I hope we shall ever protect this constitution, as against principles inconsistent with any government. If we are to be relieved from any evils under which we may at present labour, by means of this new light, I for one beg leave to enter my solemn protest against the idea. The doctrines upon which it is founded, are, as I have already said, false, shallow, and presumptuous, more absurd than the most pestilent theories that were ever engendered by the disordered imagination of man ; more hostile to the real interests of mankind, to national prosperity, to individual happiness, to intellectual and moral improvement, than any tyranny by which the human species was ever afflicted. And, for this new luminary, shall we abandon the polar star of the British constitution, by which we have been led to happiness and glory, by which the country has supported. every danger, which it has been called upon to encounter,

* Mr. Grey.

and risen superior to every difficulty by which it has been assailed?

But, independent of these general grounds on which I have opposed this motion, I have no difficulty in stating that the particular measure appears liable to so many objections, that in no circumstances could I have given it my assent. Indeed I could as little concur in the plan of the honourable gentleman as in a proposal for universal suffrage: how near it approaches to that system I shall not now discuss. The honourable gentleman, on a former occasion, has said, that he would rather have universal suffrage than no reform. The learned gentleman, however, dis. claims universal suffrage, when asserted as a matter of right. Certainly, indeed, some people have reason to complain of the learned gentleman who, in supporting a plan of reform on grounds of practical advantage, refuses that universal suffrage to which he has no objection on practical grounds, merely because it is asked as a matter of right. He will, however, find it difficult to reconcile that practical expedience with the new light of general freedom which has so unexpectedly broken in upon the world. The proposition, however, is neither more nor less than, with the exception of one fifth, to abolish the whole system of the representation of this country, as it has been formed by charter or by parliamentary arrangement, as it has been moulded by time and experience, as it has been blended with our manners and customs, without regard to the rights or compensations, or to the general effect of modifications. All these are to be swept away, and a numerical scale of representation to be substituted in its place; the country is to be divided into districts, and every householder, paying taxes, is to vote; thus a system would be introduced little short of universal suffrage. On what experience, on what practice is this gigantic scale of numerical representation to be introduced? In former plans the variety of the modes of representation was admitted to be proof, how much better time and circumstances may mould and regulate representation than any institutions founded on reasonings a priori, and how neces