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when experience comes to the aid of theory and fpeculation. In all thefe, the voice of the People, when deliberately and generally collected, is invariably fure to fucceed. There are moments of periodical impulse and delufion, in which they should not be gratified; but when the views of a people have been formed and determined on the attainment of any object, they muft ultimately fucceed. On this fubject the People of this country have petitioned from time to time, and their applications have been made to their Parliament. For every reason therefore they should be gratified, left they may be inclined to fue for redress in another quarter, where their application will have every probability of fuccefs, from the experience of laft year. Failing in their representatives, they may have recourse to the prerogative. It has been urged, that now, while this bufinefs is in agitation, the people of Birmingham and Manchefter have not petitioned to be reprefented. This is an argument which at this time, of all others, can have but little weight; for while they are alarmed for their trade and their fubfiftence, it is no time for them to fet about making improvements in that Constitution, in which they are not certain how long they may have any fhare. On the eve of emigration, they are to look for this in another country, to which their property and business are 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 ftands, admitting only the first principle, every other part, and the means taken to attain the principle, are highly objectionable. I fhall not hesitate to declare, that I will never agree to admit the purchafing from a majority of the electors the property of the whole. In this I fee fo much injuftice, and fo much repugnance to the true spirit of our Conftitution, that I cannot entertain the idea one moment. On the other hand, when the property of a borough is in one man, there is no chance of his difpofing of it on the terms this day mentioned; for when a particular fum is laid down for a certain purchase, and interest

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fuffered to accumulate on that fun, the man must be a fool who could be in hafte to get the poffeffion of it. There is fomething injurious in holding out pecuniary temptations to an Englishman to relinquish his franchise on the one hand, and a political principle which equally forbids it on another. I am uniformly of an opinion, which, though not a popular one, I am ready to aver, that the right of governing is not property, but a truft; and that whatever is given for conftitutional purposes, should be refumed when thofe purposes fhall no longer be carried into effect. There are inftances of gentlemen offering to facrifice the intereft they may have in boroughs, to the public good. It is ftrange that none of them now come forward, when the occafion has prefented itself. I am averse to the idea of confining parliamentary fituations to men of large fortunes, or those who have diftinguifhed themselves in public profeffions. Should this be the cafe, there is scarcely any man fo little acquainted with the hiftory of Parliament, as not to know that the House would lose half its force. It is not from men of large and easy fortunes that attention, vigilance, energy, and enterprize, are to be expected. Human nature is too fond of gratification not to be somewhat attentive to it, when the means are at hand; and the best and most meritorious public fervices have always been performed by perfons in circumftances removed from opulence. The right honourable gentleman need not be ashamed to take fome of those regulations formed in the time of the Protector Oliver Cromnwell; for though a character too odious ever to be the object of praise or imitation, his inftitutions, confirmed afterwards by his fucceffor Charles II,, bear ftrong marks of genius and ability; for his political difpofition was as good as that of his fucceffor, and his genius infinitely more powerful. I shall conclude with earnestly entreating all fides of the Houfe to concur in the queftion now before them. I am forry the honou rable gentleman who spoke laft (Mr. Powys) did not, in all the warmth he profeffed on the occafion, take the most conciliatory

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mode of acquiring ftrength to it. Inftead of reproaching the noble Lord (North) for confining himself to old arguments and obfervations, he should rather tremble for the fuccefs with which these old obfervations has been applied by his noble friend, and the contrary fate which has before attended the novel and more variable ftile of the Minifter.

Mr. Fox, April 18, 1785.

Had I been in a fituation to attract the Speaker's notice in an earlier ftage of the debate, I fhould probably have in some degree expatiated on the very wide field which the right honourable gentleman has opened to the House: much of my work has now been done, and much that I should have urged has been anticipated; and much I fhall pass over, from a sense how greatly the patience of the House has already been wearied, and how particularly I am indebted to their prefent attention. Tacitus, that learned and penetrating hiftorian, could not prefume the duration of a Commonwealth, confifting of mixed ftates; he knew that the momentum of the democracy, whether acting by the body of the People, or by a representation unqualified and adapted purely to popular ideas, muft quickly bear down one or both of the other branches of government; and had it been moreover told him, that in this pure and direct representation of the numbers of the people were to originate the resources of war and peace, the primum mobile of public revenue, the doubts of Tacitus would not have been hypothetical fuch a ftate he could not have, pre-conceived to exist a moment. This is not a time of night to trace those errors back to their fource; and in a history from the Courts de More, through the progreffion of parliamentary growth, to mark the grounds of mistake; I fhall therefore join iffue with the right honourable mover, on the actual and existing state of Parliament. The errors of the right honourable gentleman were derived from a fimilar fource with the difficulties of Tacitus. The representation of the people is his favourite ex

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preffion; but if he means a representation of poll or numbers, and fo every point of his reform implies, we are not the reprefentation of the People, but of the People's interefts. The confiftency of this House is qualified by the equipoife of the landed, the commercial, and the popular intereft. This proportion of balance can be shifted, but with danger to the Conftitution of the country; adding to one of these principles may in the end be fubverfive of the very existence of this House, which, loaded with a new and false bias, may be thereby directed to fome gulph of ruin, now unforeseen. Much has been said of the cohesion of parties; much on the other fide of individual independency, and of mouldering away every connection of men in this Houfe. In the prefent ftate of public manners, it is not to be apprehended, that to buy or to retain would lapfe into difufage, or that a Minifter may not engage a confiftency of support to his measures. The right honourable gentleman may anticipate, perhaps, the application of the famous fentence in Montefquieu,-but is there no other corruption but venality? I fear a worse, and of more fatal tendency, than the holding out merely places of public trust to men of ability and adventurers in policy, were thefe county members to be added. In one light, they must be men who come into this Houfe on the great landed intereft of a county; and in a county, perhaps, there is as much undue influence as at an election for any borough. When feated here, fome future Minifter may find it neceffary to attach an authority to his fupport, become thus numerous and weighty; the Coronet is his only bribe, his only attraction to men of this description; and an attraction, as experience has proved, not often refifted. Thus, perhaps, in a fhort fucceffion of Minifters, much more of the great landed intereft would pafs into the Houfe of Lords, there ever accumulating, and rarely or never returning. The confequence is obvious; the great landed intereft the people would ever look up to in their counties, and in the national councils; to them would their confidence be directed, to them their petiVOL. II. S tions

tions addreffed; and, under all these circumstances, it is idle to fay, that the revenue and money bills would not then originate there; whilft this House, fallen into difrepute, and even to de. rifion, may fit idly disputing about unimportant matters, or matters they have fcarcely weight to interfere in, and idly attended by forty members, instead of the very numerous affembly that dignifies the prefent queftion. On the call of additional county members, other, and dangerous circumstances, may arife, from caufes widely different, and of different tendency. I allude to the adventurous candidates, who oppose the ariftocracy of a county, and who, to fecure an election, may feed the prejudices of the commonalty, may fign tefts, and pledging themselves to every felf-injurious prepoffeffion, may find their way into this House under engagements, and with abilities too, backed by the popular clamour, to urge new claims, new reforms, fresh innovations. The right honourable gentleman has adduced, as favourable to his reform, that its principle is completed in his plan, and is thus final. The right honourable gentleman may answer for himself; but who can fay, that a new man will not propofe a new mode; and having cut down the prefcriptive barrier of the conftitution of this House, will he not leave a breach open for every forlorn hope, qui crumenam perdidit, to enter and ride at pleasure? and the more is this to be feared, as prejudices of the people may join too under the precedent, to aid thofe who by fuch ruineus means would feek to push him from his ftool; for it cannot be faid that the prefent plan comes up to the prefent declarations of the reformers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has faid, that leaving the Conftitution in its prefent ftate, is tending to weaken the love of the people to their country; a more proper application may be made of those words; to innovate, is tending to weaken the love of the people to their country; it is tending to weaken that confidence in this House; in a word, that attachment to the old British Constitution, which arose from a prescriptive veneration, and which cannot

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