I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish opinion, as that our constitution is maintained by its different component parts, mutually checking and controling each other: they seem to think with Hobbes, that a state of nature is a state of warfare, and that, like Mahomet's coffin, the constitution is suspended between the attraction of different powers. My friends seem to think that the crown should be restrained from doing wrong by a physical necessity, forgetting that if you take away from a man all power to do wrong, you at the same time take away from him all merit of doing right, and by making it impossible for men to run into slavery, you enslave them most effectually. But if instead of the three different parts of our constitution drawing forcibly in right lines, at opposite directions, they were to unite their power, and draw all one way, in one right line, how great would be the effect of their force, how happy the direction of this union. The present system is not only contrary to mathematical rectitude, but to public harmony; but if instead of privilege setting up his back to oppose prerogative, he was to saddle his back and invite prerogative to ride, how comfortably might they both jog along; and therefore it delights me to hear the advocates for the royal bounty flowing freely, and spontaneously, and abundantly, as Holywell in Wales. If the crown grants double the amount of the revenue in pensions, they approve of their royal master, for he is the breath of their nostrils.

But we will find that this complaisance, this gentleness between the crown and its true servants, is not confined at home, it extends its in

fluence to foreign powers. Our merchants have been insulted in Portugal, our commerce inter dicted d; what did the British lion do? Did he whet his tusks? Did he bristle up and shake his mane? Did he roar! No; no such thing-the gentle creature wagged his tail for six years at the court of Lisbon, and now we hear from the Delphic oracle on the treasury bench, that he is wagging his tail in London to chevalier Pinto, who he hopes soon to be able to tell us will allow his lady to entertain him as a lap-dog; and when she does, no doubt the British factory will furnish some of their softest woollens to make a cushion for him to lie upon. But though the gentle beast has continued so long fawning and crouching, I believe his vengeance will be great as it is slow, and that posterity, whose ancestors are yet unborn, will be surprised at the vengeance he wil take.

This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curio sities, the pension list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons it inculcates form its greatest perfection :-it teacheth, that sloth and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may starve for after they had earned it. It teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that support which they are too proud to stoop and earn. It directs the minds of men to an entire reliance on the ruling power of the state, who feeds the ravens of the royal aviary, that cry continually for food.

It teaches them to imitate those saints on the pension list that are like the lilies of the field—they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory. In fine, it teaches a lesson which indeed they might have learned from Epictetus-that it is sometimes good not to be over virtuous: it shows, that in proportion as our distresses increase, the munificence of the crown increases also-in proportion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended over us.

But, notwithstanding the pension list, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to the members of this house-give me leave to say, that the crown, in extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying a foundation for the independence of parliament; for hereafter, instead of orators or patriots accounting for their conduct to such mean and unworthy persons as freeholders, they will learn to despise them, and look to the first man in the state, and they will by so doing have this security for their independence, that while any man in the kingdom has a shilling they will

not want one.

Suppose at any future period of time the boroughs of Ireland should decline from their present flourishing and prosperous state-suppose they should fall into the hands of men who would wish to drive a profitable commerce, by having members of parliament to hire or let; in such a case a secretary would find great difficulty, if the proprietors of members should enter into a combination to form a monopoly; to prevent which in time, the wisest way is to purchase up the raw

material, young members of parliament, just rough from the grass, and when they are a little bitted, and he has got a pretty stud, perhaps of seventy, he may laugh at the slave merchant: some of them he may teach to sound through the nose, like a barrel organ; some, in the course of a few months, might be taught to cry hear! hear! some, chair! chair! upon occasion, though, those latter might create a little confusion, if they were to forget whether they were calling inside or outside of these doors. Again, he might have some so trained that he need only pull a string, and up gets a repeating member; and if they were so dull that they could neither speak nor make orations, (for they are different things) he might have them taught to dance, pedibus ire in sententia-This improvement might be extended; he might have them dressed in coats and shirts all of one colour, and of a Sunday he might march them to church two and two, to the great edification of the people and the honour of the christian religion; afterwards, like the ancient Spartans, or the fraternity at Kilmainham, they might dine all together in a large hall. Good heaven! what a sight to see them feeding in public upon public viands, and talking of public subjects for the benefit of the public. It is a pity they are not immortal; but I hope they will flourish as a corporation, and that pensioners will beget pensioners to the end of the chapter.

SPEECH OF MR. WILBERFORCE, ON THE SLAVE

TRADE. 1789.

He began with observing, that he did not mean to appeal to the passions of the house, but to their cool and impartial reason. He did not mean to accuse any one, but to take shame to himself, in common indeed with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered so odious a trade to be carried on under their authority. He deprecated every kind of reflection against the va rious descriptions of persons who were most immediately involved in this wretched transaction. It was necessary for him to state in the outset, that he did not conceive the witnesses who were ex. amined, and particularly interested witnesses, to be judges of the argument. In the matters of fact that were related by them, he admitted their competency; but confident assertions, not of facts, but of supposed consequences of facts, went for nothing in his estimation. Mr. Wilberforce divided his subject into three parts; the nature of the trade as it affected Africa itself, the appearance it assumed in the transportation of the slaves, and the considerations that were suggested by their actual state in the West Indies. With respect to the first, it was found by experience to be just such as every man who used his reason would infallibly have concluded it to be. What must be the natural consequence of a slave trade with Africa, with a country vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Was it not plain, that she must suffer from it; that her savage manners must be ren