in the negative by a majority of nine. No address was presented to the queen till after the rejection of the bill. Mr. Fox said, that the House having had the goodness to hear him so frequently, and sometimes at considerable length, upon the subject of the commercial treaty, he would not, they might rest assured, abuse their indulgence, but would in a very brief manner offer a few observations to their notice on the immediate matter before them. With regard to the address, of all the practices of administration, it was the most alarming, the most dangerous, and the most unconstitutional. He would not, indeed, go so far as an honourable and learned friend of his had gone, and agree, that if a single precedent could be found upon the journals for such a proceeding, he would relinquish the point, and vote for the address. There might be, and there undoubtedly were, bad precedents upon the journals in a great many instances. There might possibly, therefore, be a precedent for the present proceeeding, but if there should be a precedent to be found, he would venture to say, that it must be a precedent to be reprobated, and not a precedent fit to be made an example. Mr. Fox reminded the House that the address went to deprive the House of its legislative capacity, to preclude debate, and to render null and void all those forms which the wisdom of their ancestors had provided, as the parliamentary cautions and guards against surprize, and for the purpose of preventing any measure of a legislative nature from being hurried through the House, without ample deliberation and ample discussion. Had the business been brought on in the usual way, they would have enjoyed full time to know the opinion of the manufacturers, and to discuss the subject again and again, before they came to a decisive vote upon it. In all cases of trade, the forms of the House obliged the matter to be first submitted to a committee of the whole House, where resolutions were necessary to be moved, and consequently where the matter was in the first instance open to debate. The resolutions, when agreed to, were reported to the House, and on the House agreeing to the report, a bill was ordered in. Had that been the mode of proceeding adopted in the present case, instead of a premature address, the House would have had six stages to have discussed the subject in, before they came to their ultimate vote. The bill must be read a first time, it must be read a second time, committed, reported, engrossed and read a third time, and passed. At every one of these several stages, the House would have found ample opportunity of debating deliberately; whereas what was the case then? They were called on to vote an address which tied up their hands, 7 which pledged the House to support whatever bill might be brought in, and precluded all future debate and all future dis cussion. Mr. Fox said, that this was an ill omen of our future intercourse with France; it was a bad beginning; it was adopting and copying the French constitution at the same time that we were about to take the French commerce. It was commencing our intercourse with France in a most inauspicious manner, and it was not more ungraceful than unnecessary, because the coming to a vote upon the address would not accelerate the conclusion of the proceedings on the commercial treaty; it would not forward them one hour. Would it not then, on every account, have been more wise, more grave, and more becoming that House, to have proceeded in the usual way by bill, and after they had gone through all the six stages, through which a bill must necessarily pass, would it not have been better, in every sense of the word, to have then voted an address, and gone up to the throne with it, informing his majesty, that his faithful commons had complied with his royal requisition in his speech to parliament, and agreed to support the commercial treaty with France? Mr. Fox put this in a most striking point of view, and said, that should the address unfortunately pass, which he flattered himself it would not, he must in that case heartily wish that the House had been in a committee, if it were only to save the Speaker from the shame and disgrace of going up to his majesty and presenting an address. What sort of a speech could the right honourable gentleman possibly make, should he have the disagreeable task of attending at St. James's with the address? With what an aukward feeling must the right honourable gentleman say, that his majesty's faithful commons had destroyed their own forms, and grossly violated the constitution. He reasoned upon this for some time, and after stating it powerfully in various ways, he urged to the House the great unreasonableness of the right honourable gentleman opposite to him, if he pressed the motion on the address at that time, since it was evident that he would not forward the business by so doing. It was not delay, he said, that he was contending for, because the delaying the address could not operate as any procrastination of the measures to be taken for the conclusion of the treaty. He took notice of the contempt with which an honourable and learned gentleman had talked of the manufacturers who signed the petition on their table. They were not, he said, a few solitary" manufacturers as they had been described to be, but men of undoubted character and undoubted worth and honour. Men, who, when they came before that House, either as the delegates and represen tatives of others, or in their own individual character, were well entitled to be received and listened to with attention. They had a right to be heard in every stage of the business; but how would the House be able to hear them after the address was presented, when they would be precluded from acting upon any information, however important, that Mr. Walker or Mr. Holmes, or any other of the subscribers, might lay before the House? Having put these questions strongly, and paid an handsome compliment to his honourable friend Mr. Grey, Mr. Fox at last concluded a most animated speech, with expressing his hope, that it would be the determination of the House to reject the address for the present, by agreeing to the motion for the previous question, since, if they did not, they would not only make a bad precedent for that House, but as absolutely preclude the House of Lords from free debate, as if they had followed the example of Oliver Cromwell, and silenced that necessary and constitutional branch of the legislature. In answer to these objections, Mr. Pitt insisted upon the address on the Irish propositions, but two years before, as a precedent in point, in favour of the mode of proceeding he had adopted. Mr. Sheridan rose with great warmth, and many gentlemen calling out spoke! spoke! he said he meant to move a new question, the question of adjournment; in order that he might have an opportunity of proposing a resolution upon the subject of the extraordinary doctrines which had been laid down; doctrines as new and as unconstitutional as ever were heard in those walls! The question of adjournment being put, Mr. Fox said, that as his honourable friend had omitted to state what resolution he meant to move, he would declare, that his object was to move a resolution, "that it was the opinion of that House, that it was impossible for them to bind or preclude themselves by an address to the throne, from either debating or voting upon any subsequent legislative question whatever." Mr. Fox reiterated his former arguments, to shew the propriety of proceeding by way of bill, and instanced the case of the Irish propositions, declaring that no man present dreamt of moving an address, stating in express words to the throne, that the House would pass any specific number of bills for the purpose of enforcing the propositions. Had such an address been moved, it would have been reprobated. In the case of the peace of Utrecht, let the House recollect that a bill had been brought in to enact the eighth and ninth articles of the treaty of commerce. The question for leave to bring in the bill had, on a division, been carried by an uncommonly large majority, the numbers having been above 100 to 12 or 13. It was read a second time upon a division of a large majority also, and it went through the committee, and two or three days afterwards, was in the very last stage thrown out by a majority of 194 voices against 185 *. This proved the importance of a regular compliance with the forms of the House, and a due exercise of their deliberative powers. A large majority had thus been, by mere dint of debate and discussion, converted into a minority, and one of the worst, and most hostile treaties to the British constitution that ever was heard of, was put an end to and annihilated. What was the reason that the right honourable gentleman did not proceed in the same way now? The reason was obvious. Aware of the event of 1713, he was determined to proceed in another manner; and in order to ensure the success of his treaty, instead of risquing the chance of deliberation, he had profited by the fate of the treaty of Utrecht, and had caused an address to be moved to tie up the hands of the House, and preclude all debate and all danger of future opposition. Had Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Harley, in the year 1713, been aware of the fate of their treaty, they no doubt would have aimed at doing the same thing; but in those days when one of the most powerful factions governed this country that had ever been in possession of power, they never dreamt of venturing such a length as the right honourable gentleman, who had profited by the short-sightedness of the ministry of 1713, and had whetted his sagacity upon their dulness. The motion for an adjournment was then negatived. After which the House divided on the previous question: Mr. M. A. Taylor }236.-Noes Tellers. {Lord Down } 116. So it was resolved in the affirmative, and the main question being put, the address was agreed to, and ordered to be communicated, at a conference, to the lords. MR. Fox's MOTION RESPECTING THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF PARLIAMENTARY ADDRESSES TO THE KING. March 7. N consequence of the preceding debate, and in pursuance of a notice which he had given, IN See New Parliamentary History of England, võl. vi. pp. 1210. 1220. Mr. Fox rose for the purpose of making a motion concerning the nature and extent of parliamentary addresses to the crown. He said, that he felt it his duty to call the attention of the House to a few remarks which he must beg leave to make on a recent occurrence, in which, at least in his conception, were most essentially involved the established rights of parliament, and the best interests of the nation. The matter to which he alluded was the address which that House had thought proper to vote on the commercial treaty. The time at which this address was moved and passed tended, in his mind, to subvert the forms of parliament, and thereby to destroy the legislative authority, the spirit of the constitution, and, consequently, the dearest privileges of the nation. On the preservation of the forms of parliament the security of the laws depended. No part of the constitution had been more tenaciously preserved than the forms by which all laws were enacted. If the forms were dispensed with, the constitution of the legislature must be annihilated; and he thought that the forms were destroyed by the address being passed on a subject before that subject was determined. For this address, having been passed after certain resolutions had passed, and previous to a bill being brought in founded upon those resolutions, the House were precluded from exercising their right of decision on the subject; and the words of the address containing not only an approbation, but a pledge, of using the earliest means of carrying the treaty into effect, he thought the intention was to preclude parliament from the exercise of their opinions, with which they were invested by the constitution. With respect to the system of this parliamentary form, as to its efficient political principle, he should observe, that the mode of passing bills, both in this and the other House, was certainly very deliberate. It might indeed, in the opinion of some, be considered tedious; but those gentlemen who enter tained such sentiments betrayed their rashness and inexperience. He did not mean to say what were the forms of the other House; he had never studied them, and was therefore not so well acquainted with them as with those of the House of Commons. In the latter, in the form of passing a bill of such importance as the present, there were several stages. A bill relating to commerce or finance, was, rst, moved for in a committee; 2d, that committee reported; 3d, leave was given to bring in a bill; 4th, the bill was read a first time; 5th, a second time; 6th, committed; 7th, reported; 8th, read a third time; and 9th, passed; besides two other stages of lesser consideration, the engrossment, and the motion for leaving the chair. The reason of these different stages was in order to give |