day the Answer was read in this House, there were no responsi→ ble Ministers prefent; but as they are here now, the House is entitled to know, in the most explicit and unequivocal terms, previous to the difcuffion of any question of India, whether they are to understand, that they are met again freely, independently, and with ultimate effect to deliberate on the affairs of India, and the other great confiderations that preffes upon them; or whether they are only tenants at the will of the new Minister, to be fent back to their conftituents as delinquents, unless they fhall recede from every principle of conftitutional policy, to which they are folemnly and publicly pledged, and fhall agree to regifter any edict upon the subject which the new Treasury Bench may dictate to them, however repugnant to their former opinions? For if that should be their fyftem, I, for one, would not give up a moment of my time to deliberation which must be fruitless, and which could end in the final execution of no permanent fyftem of Government in Afia or Europe; if Minifters meet us only by way of experiment, to try our opinions with the rod of diffolution hung over our heads as the fcourge of difobedience, determined, instead of retiring on a disappointment, ftill to diftract and disturb a Government which they cannot guide, and to gain, over a future Parliament, by the arts of cabal and corruption, which the virtue of the present has refifted, it will become us to know, not from the Minifters, but from the Throne itself, whether this country is to be governed by men whom the House of Commons can confide in, or whether we, the people of England's Reprefentatives, are to be the fport and foot-ball of any junto that may hope to rule over us by an unfeen and unexplorable principle of Government, utterly unknown to the Conftitution? This is the great question to which every public-fpirited Citizen of this country should direct his view. A queftion that goes very wide of the policy to be adopted concerning India, about which very wife and very ho neft men, not only might, but have and did materially differ, The total removal of all the executive fervants of the Crow 1 while they are in the full enjoyment of the confidence of that House, and indeed without any other visible or avowed cause of removal, than because they do enjoy that confidence, and the appointment of others in their room, without any other apparent ground of selection than because they enjoyed it not, is, in my mind, a most alarming and portentous attack on the public freedom; because, though no outward form of the Government is relaxed or violated by it, so as inftantly to supply the conftitutional remedy of oppofition, the whole spirit and energy of the Government is annihilated by it. That the prerogative of chufing Ministers belongs to, and ought to belong to his Majesty, and let no man hope to hear from me a single expreffion that ftrikes at the just independence of the Crown; but as all its prerogatives, like our own privileges, are but trufts for the people, and as none of them can be abused but by the agency of others, I perfuade myself that they will look to those, who, in an evil hour, have given the Crown the most responsible advice on the subject alluded to, by accepting of all the posts of executive power, merely as it should seem, because the voice of the people's Representatives in this House has been recently, repeatedly, and loudly lifted up against them. I ventured to express my astonishment on a former day, when the First Lord of the Treasury was not in his place, that when the affairs of India were the first and most important objects of the King's Government, he could venture to take upon him the conduct of that Government in a House of Commons, adverse to all his ideas and principles on the subject, and the majority of which he had on the same fubject loaded with the most opprobrious epithets; an expreffion he thought himself at liberty to use, because after a great and respectable majority had affented to the Bill upon the fecond reading, and in the Committee, the Right Hon. Gentleman did ftill, on the third reading, confider the friends of it collectively as fupporting a defperate faction, in an attempt to maintain themselves in power at the expence of the moft facred chartered rights of individuals, and the most valu able able interests of the public, with many other galling expreffions. My objection to this language, as I explained it when I first ftated it, is not fo much because it was unparliamentary or unprecedented, though I thought it sufficiently fo; it was not an arraignment of the Right Hon, Gentleman for ufing it, fince on most contested public measures the fame fort of language was but too frequent from both fides of the Houfe; but I did, as we may all remember, exprefs my utter aftonishment, which I again express, (for it grows on me every inftant) that the Right Hon. Gentleman fhould hope to continue one day the Minister in a Houfe of Commons, while that majority, whose principles of government he has thus fo recently reprobated, continues to fubfift; that was, and continues to be my obfervation; and I am not afraid to truft the justice and propriety of it to the good fenfe, the dignity, and the memory of the House. If the Right Hon, Gentleman retains his own opinions, and if the House likewife retains its own, is it not evident, that he came into office without the moft diftant profpect of serving the public? Is it not evident, that he has brought on a struggle between executive and legiflative authority, at a time when they are pointing with equal vigour, unity, and effect, to the common interests of the nation? Is it not palpable, that instead of giving ftability, dignity, and authority to the Government of his country, at a time when its affairs are falling into ruin in every part of the world from the want of them, he has crippled and enervated all its operations, ftirred dangerous questions be tween the Prerogatives of the Crown and the Privileges of the People, and wafted the important hours of deliberation in this House, in bringing things back to the very condition they were in originally, when he stepped forth to disturb them. Can the Right Hon. Gentleman, or any body for him, explain to the House why the Crown, by its Answer to our Address, should promife not to disturb our proceedings, yet fhould at the fame moment change the whole executive authority of Government, and place it in the hands of perfons adverse to every principle they had pledged themselves to adopt, on the very measure they were defired to proceed upon? Is it not plain to the meanest understanding, that it ftruck a palfy into every member of executive power, which could not, and ought not to have any energy or strength, when deprived of that vital spirit of popular government, which could only circulate life and heat through the medium of the people's Representatives in this House? I trust, that whenever the Crown of England removes its Minifters, enjoying the full confidence of the Commons, and chuse so strange and inaufpicious an hour for that removal, as when upheld by that confidence they were planning great and neceffary systems of Government, and when it not only chofe that season for removing them, but put into their room perfons whofe principles on the fame objects the people's Reprefentatives had recently rejected and condemned, I hope, whatever may be our differences on other subjects, that we shall be unanimous in confidering that moment as a great and alarming crifis, in which the freedom of the Government is to be decided on for ever and that though we should proceed like prudent and virtuous men, with forefight and moderation, taking care not to touch any of the forms of the Government, yet that we should convince the Crown by our conduct, that the wisest and ablest individual, who fhall ever venture to stand upon fecret influence against the confidence of this House, will find, that his abilities, whatever they may be, or whatever they may be fancied, instead of being a fupport and protection to him, will only be like the convulfions of a ftrong man in the agonies of disease, which exhaust the vital spirit fafter than the fainter struggles of weakness, and bring on death the sooner. Such, in a few hours, I trust will be the fate of the Right Hon. Gentleman at the head of the prefent Government: indeed he never compared, in his own mind, his first appearances in this Houfe, when under the banners of a Right Hon. Gentleman, he supported the genuine cause of liberty, with his prefent melancholy ridiculous fituation in it, than he was drawn ཨཱ into an involuntary parody of the fcene of Hamlet and his mo- Look here upon this picture, and on this: Look you now what follows: Dark, fecret influence, like a mildew'd ear, The Right Hon. Gentleman may profit the less from thefe obfervations, from believing that I feek them, and that I have a pleasure in making them: if he thinks fo, I can assure him upon my honour, that he is mistaken; so very much mistaken, that the inconveniencies which the country fuffer at this moment, from the want of a fettled Government, are greatly heightened to my feelings from the reflection, that they are increased by his unguided ambition. Our fathers were friends, and I was taught from my infancy to reverence the name of Pitt; an original partiality, which instead of being diminished, was strongly confirmed by an acquaintance with the Right Hon. Gentleman himself, which I was cultivating with pleasure, when he was taken from his profeffion into a different scene. Let him not think that I am the less his friend, or the mean envier of his talents, because they have been too much the topic of panegyric here already, and both I and the public are now reap ing |