commutation tax ! This was a proceeding the hardship of which they already felt; and there were some others now in agitation, which were not likely to turn out much more favourable. These only were the reasons the people could have for a reliance in the present parliament. He did not, however, mean to say any thing which could be construed into invective against them; he had before been accused of insulting them; he did not know that he had done so, but if heat should have led him at any time to say any thing which could have that appearance, he was exceedingly sorry for it. There was nothing in any of these circumstances which could impress them on his memory; but he had observed, that nothing he ever said in his warmest moments, had ever drawn forth so much passion and ill temper on the other side of the House as when he attempted to praise them.

The right honourable gentleman had in this instance, receded from those opinions which on two former occasions he seemed to maintain, and the alteration which he had now made, for the purpose of a specific plan, was infinitely for the worse. It was in vain that he endeavoured to qualify the objections, which the idea of innovation raised in the minds of some, by diminishing the extent and influence of reformation. From the earliest periods of our government, the principle of innovation, but which should more properly be called amendment, was neither more nor less than the practice of the constitution. In every species of government (putting absolute monarchy out of the question, as one which ought never to exist in any country) democracy and aristocracy were always in a state of gradual improvement, when experience came to the aid of theory and speculation. In all these, the voice of the people, when deliberately and generally collected, was invariably sure to succeed. There were moments of periodical impulse and delusion, in which they should not be gratified, but when the views of a people had been formed and determined on the attainment of any object, they must ultimately succeed. On this subject the people of this country had petitioned from time to time, and their applications were made to their parliament. For every reason, therefore, they should be gratified, lest they might be inclined to sue for redress in another quarter, where their application would have every probability of success, from the experience of last year. Failing in their representatives, they might have recourse to prerogative.

It had been urged, that now, while this business was in agitation, the people of Birmingham and Manchester had not petitioned to be represented. This was an argument which at this time, of all others, could have but little weight; for

On

while they were alarmed for their trade, and their subsistence, it was no time for them to set about making improvements in that constitution, in which they were not certain how long they might have any share. On the eve of emigration, they were to look for this in another country, to which their property and business were soon to be transferred. The different parts of this plan would certainly, in a committee, be submitted to modification and amendment; but as it now stood, admitting only the first principle, every other part, and the means taken to attain the principle, were highly objectionable. He should not hesitate to declare, that he would never agree to admit the purchasing from a majority of electors the property of the whole. In this he saw so much injustice, and so much repugnance to the true spirit of our constitution, that he could not entertain the idea for one moment. the other hand, when the property of a borough was in one man, there was no chance of his disposing of it, on the terms this day mentioned. For when a particular sum was laid down for a particular purchaser, and interest suffered to accumulate on that sum, the man must be a fool, who could be in haste to get possession of it. There was something injurious in holding out pecuniary temptations to an Englishman to relinquish his franchise on the one hand, and a political principle which equally forbad it on another. He was uniformly of an opinion, which, though not a popular one, he was ready to aver, that the right of governing was not property, but a trust; and that whatever was given for constitutional purposes, should be resumed, when those purposes should no longer be carried into effect.

There were instances of gentlemen offering to sacrifice the interest they might have in boroughs, to the public good. He expressed, however, his surprise, that the present proposition was not attended by any liberal offers from those whom government had loaded with honours, and whose connection with the present administration should naturally excite an expectation of something more liberal than a procedure by mere bargain and sale. He was averse to the idea of confining parliamentary situations to men of large fortunes, or those who had distinguished themselves in public professions. Should this be the case, there was scarcely any man so little acquainted with the history of parliament, as not to know, that the House would lose half its force. It was not from men of large and easy fortunes, that attention, vigilance, energy, and enterprize, were to be expected. Human nature was too fond of gratification not to be somewhat attentive to it when the means were at hand; and the b st and most meritorious public services had always been performed by persons in cir

cumstances removed from opulence. The right honourable gentleman need not be ashamed to take some of those regulations formed in the time of the protector, Oliver Cromwell. For though he was a character too odious ever to be the object of praise or imitation, his statutes, confirmed afterwards by his successor, Charles II., bear strong marks of genius and ability; for his political disposition was as good as that of his successor, and his genius infinitely more powerful. He concluded with earnestly entreating all sides of the House to concur in the question. He was sorry the honourable gentleman who spoke before him did not in all the warmth he professed on the occasion, take the most conciliatory mode of acquiring strength to it. Instead of reproaching the noble lord (North) for confining himself to old arguments and observations, he should rather tremble for the success with which those old observations had been applied by his noble friend, and the contrary fate which had before attended the novel and more variable stile of the minister.

The question being put on Mr. Pitt's motion, the House divided:

Eden

{Mr. R. Smith} 174--NOES {Mr. Roeth} 248.

So it passed in the negative.

REPEAL OF THE COTTON Tax.

April 20.

TH HE House having resolved itself into a committee on the peti tions against the tax imposed last year on cottons, cotton stuffs, &c. Mr. Pitt moved for leave "to bring in a bill to explain and amend an act passed in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of his present majesty, for imposing a duty by excise on certain cotton manufactures, and to repeal so much of the said bill as imposed a duty on plain cottons and fustians."

Mr. Fox rose, he said, with great satisfaction to second the motion, concurring as he did completely in the result of the right honourable gentleman's argument. He thought it highly necessary to declare, that he voted for the motion on a very different ground from that stated

by the right honourable gentleman in the commencement of his speech. He acceded to the motion, not because he thought the manufacturers of Manchester had either exaggerated facts, or failed in making out their case, but because they had so far made out their case as to satisfy his mind, that the allegations stated in their petition had been completely proved at the bar of the House; and if the right honourable gentleman would give himself the trouble to recollect the evidence he had heard, and would ground such fair and just computations upon the price of labour, and upon the amount of the money paid by the manufacturers for duty, as each warranted, he believed he would find himself a good deal mistaken in the computations that he had made, and that the revenue to be given up and abandoned, was by no means so large as he had imagined, nor, in fact, larger than the sum the manufacturers themselves had stated it to be in evidence. Mr. Fox declared the calculations of Mr. Pitt to be erroneous, and stated in what he disagreed with him. He had not a doubt that the manufacturers were strictly warranted in every thing that they had alleged in their petition, and asserted in evidence; and that the revenue to be relinquished was certainly a trifle, compared with the injury and embarrassment so capital a manufacture would have sustained, had it not been taken off. He desired not to be ranked in the number of those who held that manufactures, as manufactures, were improper objects of taxation; he never had entertained such an opinion; on the contrary, he held that articles of manufacture were in many cases a fair and just object of taxation; in some undoubtedly they were not, and especially where the imposition of a tax would so far harrass the manufacturers as to take considerably more money from them than the revenue received, and check the progress of a manufacture, and prove vexatious and oppressive to that degree, that it would affect its prosperity, and endanger its existence. This he verily believed, notwithstanding all that the right honourable gentleman had said, would have proved to be the case with the fustian manufacture, had not the duty been repealed. He agreed, therefore, perfectly with the right honourable gentleman in his idea of repealing that part of the tax of the last year; he agreed with him also in retaining the part of the tax that remained on printed cottons, &c. He was not of opinion that any sufficient reason had been made out to shew that there was real danger to be dreaded from the continuance of the tax on printed cottons, &c., he was therefore for its remaining. He must however deprecate a principle that the right honourable gentleman had laid down in the latter part of his speech as a fit ground upon which any tax might be

abandoned; and that was, on account of popular clamour, and prejudices which were founded in error. To such a principle he never would accede, nor ought that House to make it the ground of their proceedings; because if it were once known that a great degree of popular clamour and prejudice, no matter how ill founded, was a sufficient inducement for that House to give their consent to the repeal of any tax, the revenue would be in perpetual danger; and that sinking fund, of which the right honourable gentleman was so fond of introducing the mention in almost every debate, and to which they all looked forward with the most anxious expectation, would be only a matter to be talked of, and never to be brought into existence. It was by no means wise in any minister to declare, that he gave up that to prejudice and clamour, which he refused to reason and to fact; he did therefore most earnestly deprecate the principle, and deny that it was the ground on which he seconded the motion. The right honourable gentleman had thought fit to introduce allusions to what he had said in a former debate, relative to the Irish propositions, although no man was more ready than the right honourable gentleman to reprobate others for doing so disorderly a thing as to refer to what had passed in prior debates. The right honourable gentleman would recollect, that the subject of India and a certain India bill, had been repeatedly alluded to by himself and his friends in debates, where the question was infinitely more foreign, than the consequence the passing of the Irish propositions was likely to have upon the people of England, was foreign to the question of reforming the state of the representation in parliament. Besides, in that very debate, the right honourable gentleman had himself introduced the mention of the American war, and other topics equally foreign from the subject at that time under consideration. But the right honourable gentleman had laid down two different rules of conduct, the one for himself and friends to act upon, the other to be applied to those who took part against him. With regard to how far the present subject had a reference to the Irish propositions, he made no scruple to say he thought it had; because undoubtedly, if the tax on fustians had continued, and the Irish propositions passed, the manufacturers would be affected very materially, not indeed in their home consumption, but in their export trade; since the fifth proposition, that of the countervailing duties, would only make it necessary for the Irish to lay on a duty equal to what the revenue received; whereas the manufacturers paying more than the revenue received, in consequence the Irish and they would not export on equal terms. Having stated this, Mr. Fox took notice of what Mr. Pitt had said of his ex