longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with bloodhounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; we, more ruthless, loose those brutal warriors against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the idelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the venerable prelates of our religion, to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin.

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have allowed me to say less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, with out giving vent to my steadfast abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

SPEECH OF SIR GEORGE SAVILLE, ON THE

AMERICAN WAR.

1782.

He had not been in town, he said, when the king's speech was delivered, nor when the address in answer to it was agreed upon, having been prevented by ill health. But when he read the royal speech in the country, it filled him with horrour; because it announced a continuance of the destructive war with the Americans. As to the answer to the speech, experience had convinced him, that the address of that house was avowed

to mean nothing; that it was an empty form, and generally nothing more than a mere echo to the words in the speech from the throne, which was also the speech of the minister. This echo had always been, and this echo would perpetually continue; and in so ridiculous a degree, that were the speech from the throne a repetition of the line,

What beauties does Flora disclose!

the echo from that house would fill up the couplet, and reply,

How sweet are her smiles проп Tweed!

In fact, the crown and the two houses danced a minuet together, to a tune of the minister's composing. The crown led off one way; the two houses in a similar step to the opposite corner; then they joined hands, and, at length, finished, just as the dance began.

Sir George then adverted to the intimation which had been given by the ministry, that a change was to be made in the mode of conducting the American war. This, he said, was in fact telling the house, that they were determined to prosecute the war with all the feeble efforts of which they were yet capable. They did not intend to prosecute it in the same manner as before! Why? Because they could not, if they would. This disability reminded him of a story which he must beg leave to relate to the house. A Lacedemonian, during the time of action, having plunged into the sea, laid hold of an Athenian galley with his right hand. It was immediately chopped off. He then catched at the vessel with

The

his left hand, and that likewise was cut off. persons who were in sight, and who perceived these circumstances, immediately exclaimed, 'You will not, sure, once more attempt to fasten on` that galley?' Like the British ministry, he answered, No: not in the same manner.' What was the consequence? He seized the vessel with his teeth, and kept his hold until the enemy struck off his head. Thus it was with the minister and his colleagues. They had lost the two hands of the British empire; and they wanted to risk its head upon the prosecution of the same frantic and ineffectual war. Every unprejudiced and sensible observer must perceive, that so extraordinary a conduct resembled, if it did not indicate, the violence of insanity. And could that house so far forget their firmness, their dignity, and their wisdom, as not effectually to resist its influence? Would they madly entrust lunatics with the management of the public purse? Would they place the sword within their hands, and bid them use it at their own discretion?

PART OF MR. FOX'S SPEECH, ON HIS BILL FOR THE BETTER GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1783. THE honourable gentleman who opened the debate (Mr. Powis) charges me with abandoning that cause, which, he says, in terms of flattery, I had once so successfully asserted. I tell him, in reply, that if he were to search the history of my life, he would find, that the period in it in which I struggled most for the real, substantial

cause of liberty, is this very moment that I am addressing you. Freedom, according to my conception of it, consists in the safe and sacred possession of a man's property, governed by laws defined and certain: with many personal privileges, natural, civil, and religious, which he cannot surrender without ruin to himself; and of which to be deprived by any other power, is despotism. This bill, instead of subverting, is destined to stabilitate these principles; instead of narrowing the basis of freedom, it tends to enlarge it; instead of suppressing, its object is to infuse and circulate the spirit of liberty.

What is the most odious species of tyranny? Precisely that which this bill is meant to annihilate. That a handful of men, free themselves, should execute the most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless labourer should sweat, not for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation; in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism, unmatched in all the histories of the world.

What is the end of all government? Certainly the happiness of the governed. Others may hold other opinions; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. What are we to think of a government, whose good fortune is to spring from the calamities of its subjects; whose aggrandizement grows out of the miseries of mankind! This is the government ex

ercised under the East India Company upon the natives of Indostan; and the subversion of that infamous government is the main object of the bill in question. But in the progress of accomplishing this end, it is objected that the charter of the company should not be violated; and upon this point, sir, I shall deliver my opinion without disguise. A charter is a trust to one or more persons for some given benefit. If this trust be abused; if the benefit be not obtained, and that its failure arises from palpable guilt, or, what, in this case, is full as bad, from palpable ignorance or mismanagement; will any man gravely say, that trust should not be resumed, and delivered to other hands; more especially in the case of the East India Company, whose manner of executing this trust, whose laxity and languor produced, and tend to produce, consequences diametrically opposite to the ends of confiding that trust, and of the institution for which it was granted! I beg of gentlemen to be aware of the lengths to which their arguments upon the intangibility of this charter may be carried. Every syllable virtually impeaches the establishment by which we sit in this house, in the enjoyment of this freedom, and of every other blessing of our government. These kind of arguments are batteries against the main pillar of the British constitution. Some men are consistent with their own private opinions, aud discover the inheritance of family maxims, when they question the principles of the Revolution; but I have no scruple in subscribing to the articles of that creed which produced it. Sovereigns are sacred, and reverence is due to every king; yet,