raifed his country to the highest pitch of glory, to the operation of this influence. I cannot regret there is fuch a back portal of admiffion for abilities, though unaccompanied with wealth.

So much for the principles of the bill. Now, Sir, how does the fpecific plan before you, remedy the defects that are stated to have arifen in the conftitution? The extending the right of fuffrage from the boroughs to the baronies, will indeed take the influence from the prefent poffeffors, but it is only to transfer it (without advantage to the public) into other hands, perhaps fome, who are therefore advocates for a reform. But, Sir, the greatest objection to this is the grievous oppreffion that will be thrown upon three-fourths of as loyal fubjects as his Majesty can boast of, I mean the Roman Catholics of Ireland; an enlightened parlia ment had done away the illiberal prejudices of former ages, and fhall we, Sir, in the very act of renovation, re-rivet thofe chains, from which that parliament freed them? Mark how it would operate against the Roman Catholic tenant. No fooner does his leafe expire, than he, his wife and helplefs children, are fet a-drift to make way for the Proteftant freeholders to augment the influence of the petty bafhaw of the barony. Sir, by this extenfion of the right of fuffrage, but excluding the Roman Catholic, you add infult to the injury; you bring the cup of liberty to his parched lips, but like Tantalus preclude him from the taste.

Let me then, Sir, conjure you, by all the ties which influence mankind, as you refpect the afhes of your departed ancestry, as you regard the happiness of your rifing progeny, guard well your happy conftitution; as you received from the former, tranfmit it inviolate and unfullied to the latter; let them not, when groaning under the tyranny produced by its deftruction, curfe the day that gave their fathers birth; let not the ruthless unhallowed hands of vifionary projectors tear down this venerable pile, this facred temple of liberty, reared by the fober wifdom of your anceftors; let not its destruction, like that of Ephefus, give fame to its merciless destroyers; guard well your charge, for should it once be loft, you never will look upon its like again.

Mr. Boyd faid, he did not rife to oppofe the principle of the bill; abufes certainly had crept into the conftitution, and he was not an enemy to a reform that would eradicate them without introducing greater mifchiefs. He was free to. confefs he had not feen a plan adequate to this purpofe, and he was not for rafhly tampering with a conftitution, the boaft of this and the envy of every other country. The prefent bill is totally inadequate to its profeffed object; it is in moft parts a bill of innovation, though it profeffes to be a bill of renovation-Is not a power given by this bill to termers for years to vote, innovation, and an invafion of the rights of freeholders; at no period of our hiftory had termers for years fuch a right, befides, this claufe of the bill will not affect VOL. III.

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the purpose attributed to it; it will not give weight to the democratical scale; on the contrary, it will ftrengthen the ariftocracy-it will create an epifcopal oligarchy. Bifhops can give to their tenants qualifications of 10l. a year, without putting a guinea out of their own pockets, for they have power to take a fine equivalent to this 10. The claufe refpecting triennial elections, he faid, will tend to ruin the morals of the people; frequency of elections will promote corruption, venality, perjury, drunkennefs, &c. &c. For the truth of this obfervation, he appealed to the gentlemen who had attended elections and select committees. The expence of election is one cause of the poverty of our manufacturers; the gentlemen who have incurred the expence of contefted elections cannot afford to bring their families to town; the affortments prepared for the winter confumption lie in the warehoufe of the merchant, or are fold by auction at an undervalue.

But greater mifchiefs ftill arife-party animofity, which has been obferved fatally to influence our grand and nifi prius juries, in queftions of the liberty and property of the fubject.-As to the part of the bill requiring refidence, it is too abfurd to deferve obfervation; it counteracts the first principles of reprefentation, and tends to transfer the right from the land to the person of the elector, for the principle is that the land is to be reprefented. He had the honour to concur in fending from a great county two reprefentatives, who are an honour to that county and to this Houfe; and can it be fuppofed that he will give a vote for a measure that will deprive him of the like privilege in future, merely because his profeflion confines him to the capital? As to opening the boroughs, this will transfer the influence only from one great man to another; for he who has a property in the land will ever continue to have influence on the inhabitant of it, until this House fhall devife a plan to compel the fubject to value his liberty more than he does his property. But has this House a right, a power to do it? It has not: He who afferts the contrary, controverts the prerogative of the crown to create the franchife, if this House could not legally or conftitutionally reftrain the crown from granting the franchise. This Houfe cannot legally or conftitutionally take away or diminish the exercise of the franchife; the grantee of this franchife has as good a legal indefeasible title to this franchife as any gentleman of this Houfe has to his land, for the burgefs holds his franchife by charter, and you hold your eftates by charter; but there is a trade of reform in this part of the conftitution, legal and conftitutional, though perhaps not unexceptionable, and that is to authorife by act of parliament, the burgeffes to maintain a charter right, which they have loft by non ufer.Moft charters empower the burgefles to elect a commonalty, and authorise them to this now. An act of parliament revifing chartered rights is legal and constitutional, but an act of parliament com

manding an unlawful thing to be done is void. One advantage, at leaft, this plan has, you allow the burgeffes to choose whom they pleafe to participate of their privilege; but by the other, you intrude on them, a fet of itinerants, of beggars. If you do this, you should establish poor rates for their maintenance.

He objected to the present bill as multifarious; the matter of it is the proper fubject of feveral bills, and cannot be compreffed into one without obfcurity and confufion, which a wife parliament ought ever to avoid.

Mr. O'Hara ftated, in brief, the history of the Irish conftitution, as derived from that of England. 'There were many and infurmountable difficulties, he faid, which at the first fettlement of the English in this country, prevented them from extending too far the franchise of election. Pent up within the bounds of a narrow pale, furrounded with enemies, and forced for mutual protection to live in fmall communities, the borough fyftem of little corporations was then perfectly well calculated for the reprefentation of an English colony in Ireland; but now when the whole nation formed but one great and united people, that fyftem was becoming too narrow, and ought to be extended. There were now no furrounding enemies to fear; the great evil now arose from the small number of electors; this evil had been perceived even in the 'reign of Elizabeth. It was not a new complaint, for he was able to quote a remonftrance from parliament to that Queen, complaining of finall and infignificant villages being erected into boroughs; places in which a competent number of free electors could not be fuppofed to inhabit. Upon the whole, he declared his approbation of the principle of the bill, and thought if there were defects in the clauses, they might be remedied in a committee.

Sir Henry Cavendish.-A mighty noise has been made, petitions have been delivered, and a bill has been brought in about a reform in parliament: But I fhould wish to hear some reason for all this; where is the grievance in living under a conftitution that imparts every bletling to the fubject? It is laid the House of Commons is corrupt; now, for argument fake, I will fuppofe for one moment that it is; the remedy by this bill is totally inadequate; it would introduce much greater corruption than that which has been charged.

So much has been faid upon the fubject before us that I will not now enter into it; I only rife to fay a word to an anticonftitutional doctrine; of which our modern reformers are extremely fond; and from which they flatter themselves they would derive great power, if this bill was carried into a law; the principle which I call anti-conftitutional, and against the freedom of parliament, is that of reprefentatives being bound to obey the initructions of their conftituents; I think it is right for the repre

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fentative to confult and to commune with his conftituents; I think he fhould argue with them and endeavour to convince them; but after all if his opinion should be different from theirs, if he obeys them he is not a free man.

When defigning men want to overturn the conftitution, they immediately fet up the cry of corruption, and by that means often lift the beft and moft worthy characters under their banner; and if, Sir, in this House there can be found men of virtue and ability, who, though in all other points independent enough, are willing to obey the leaders of democracy, is it very furprizing that the leaders of democracy would wish to command, and wish to make them inftruments in their defigns? The confequence is, that when the leaders of democracy push thofe gentlemen too far, by repeated inftructions, they, at laft, come to feel themselves not fo independent as they first imagined; and perhaps for hefitating to obey fome monftrous abfurd inftructions, they are difcarded by the democracy, and their places filled with more convenient and pliant tools.

But, Sir, thofe abufes could not for one moment exist, if gentlemen would advert to the firft principle of parliament, or confult the dictates of their own reafon, fupported by the best authorities-Every man returned to ferve in parliament, whether for county, city, or borough, is from the very moment of his return, not the reprefentative of his own mere electors, but of all the commons of the land; every elector in the kingdom has an intereft, and an equal intereft in him; and therefore it is abfurd to fuppofe him bound to obey the inftructions of any little community, whofe interefts or opinions may be diametrically oppofite to the interefts and opinions of the majority of the realm.

Mr. Ogle-Sir, I did not intend to enter into this business farther than just to give my reasons and to vote; but fomething has fallen from the Hon. Baronet, which makes it neceffary for me to trespass one moment on the indulgence of the Houfe: I am not furprized that the Hon. Baronet, circumftanced as he is, should think fo lightly of constituents-but for me, who have the honour to reprefent a great and powerful county which has heaped favours upon me, for me in whom that county has placed an implicit confidence, to difobey their inftructions would be black ingratitude. I hall ever faithfully endeavour to discharge the truft they have repofed in me. They complain of the unequal representation in parliament as a grievance; this bill is now offered as a remedy for that grievance; I will not fay it is perfect, but I fay it ought to be committed, because in the committee it may be rendered as perfect as poffible; and I declare that I will vote against any bill that does not contain a clause to make reftiution to those private perfons that may be injured by a reform

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of parliament; the nation is to receive the benefit, and it is but reafonable the nation fhould pay the expence.

Counsellor Smith infifted on the neceflity of a reformation, not only for a reftoration of conftitution, but for the contentment of the people.

Mr. Bube.-The voice of the people has been fo much infifted upon, and the petitions have been laid on the table with such an air of triumph, that I will speak first to that part of the fubject. The bill before us, Sir, is as well calculated to gain active partizans, as it is calculated to reform the conftitution. A bill which is to take away a borough influence, computed to be worth almost a million of money, and to veft it in the landlords of the neighbouring parishes or baronies, offers too rich a plunder to be neglected, and enfures powerful and clamorous advocates, even by the faults which it contains. To them I add thofe innocent and fubordinate minds, who are ready to fubfcribe any thing that has a popular name, and who are the eafy dupes of every example; am I not warranted to fay that many of thofe who figned thefe petitions did not know the bill before us, when it is notorious that at the meetings where it was fubfcribed, it was neither debated nor examined; when an Hon. Member who spoke this night, and fo ably, appears totally ignorant of its contents; for he tells us, that a bill which disfranchifes non-resident freeholders and freemen of many defcriptions, nay whole boroughs at once, does not disfranchife one elector within the land. Befides, it is not true that all the petitions before you are in favour of this bill, though they speak in favour of the general idea of a reform; with me, one man defiring to retain those franchises which this Houfe is entrusted to preserve, has more weight than twenty defiring us to take away the rights, and to transfer them to themselves. And the great body of the people, who have fent no petitions at all, feem to me to be in favour of the conftitution of their ancestors. Contentment is a filent quality. Men are not bound to petition in order to attain what the conftitution gives them.-No; their filence not only gives no caufe, but refufes us a juftification to take it away.

After dwelling for fome time on various topics, particularly on the Roman Catholics, whom he thought it both unjust and dangerous to exclude if we were to alter the conftitution, he proceeded to examine the bill. He faid, that the Hon. Mover had made a very fingular omillion; he had totally fuppreffed the main fubftance of the bill of reform. He had indeed been very fpecific in the parts of his bill which was to take away the rights of fome of the most independent electors of Ireland; but for those who are to fupply their place he refers us to a fchedule, and that schedule he has not thought proper to produce. His claufe enacts, that the boroughs are to be fupplied with