Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

I commend him for the spirit of inquiry that has actuated him on the present occafion. He is doing only what he has a right to do; and fo far am I from entertaining the most dif tant thoughts of the honourable gentleman's clogging the wheels of Government, that I am perfuaded he no more clogs them than the fly in the fable, who, fettling on the chariot wheel, thought she raifed the duft with which fhe was furrounded; whereas, poor innocent thing, fhe fixed where fhe had a right to fix, and did not in the leaft incommode either the action of the wheels, or the quiet of the person who rode within fide. Lord North, Dec. 2, 1778.

nour.

With regard to the noble Lord's apt fimile, it does him hoHis Lordship in this line of debate is known to be an original. Whenever the noble Lord finds himself closely preffed in argument, or fact, it is his known practice to get rid of the question by a joke! His manner is no lefs curious than his matter; when he was half a sleep, or seemingly quite asleep, he collected a store of wit and humour, from Efop and Phadrus, and Joe Miller, or fome other book equally diftinguished for fuch species of drollery, and, instead of reasoning, is sure to treat the House with a laugh. As to his fimile of the fly on the chariot wheel, if the noble Lord and his affociates lived in another country, and had their deferts, they would long fince have been put upon a proper wheel, fuch a wheel as the system and principles of the noble Lord's government, among other bleffings infeperable from defpotifm, tended to introduce into Great Britain; I would therefore rather be the fly in the fable, than an object of ignominy and deteftation upon the wheel of public vengeance.

Honourable Temple Luttrell, Dec. 2, 1778.

The noble Lord (Lord Mulgrave) has sneered at me from a book, called Anticipation, which no one admires more than I do. I poffibly may not be fo polished as a person who has failed

round

round the world, and touched where bears were the principal inhabitants, and whofe manners the circumnavigator (Lord Mulgrave) feems to have copied with great fuccefs.

Honourable Temple Luttrell, Dec. 2, 1778.

1

The honourable gentleman (Mr. Courtenay) is accustomed to turn every thing into ridicule, and has introduced a ftile of reasoning every way unfuitable to the gravity and importance of the subjects that come under difcuffion. If we cannot act with dignity, let us at least debate with decency. I will not attempt to answer the honourable gentleman's arguments, for it is impoffible ferioufly to reply to what, in evert part, has an infufion of ridicule in it. Two of the honourable gentleman's fimilies, however, I must take notice of: the one is, his infinuation that Oppofition is envious of those who bask in Court funfhine, and that they defire merely to get into their places. I beg leave to remind the honourable gentleman, that though the fun affords a genial warmth, it alfo occafions an intemperate heat that taints and infects every thing it reflects on; that this exceffive heat tends to corrupt as well as to cherish, to putrify as well as to animate, to dry and foke up the juices of the body politic, and turn the whole into one mass of corruption. If those therefore who fit near me do not enjoy so genial a warmth as the honourable gentleman, and those who like him keep close to the noble Lord in the blue ribband, (Lord North), I am certain they breathe a purer air, an air less infected, and lefs corrupt. Another of the honourable gentleman's allufions is not quite a new one: he has talked a great deal of the machine of State, and of the drag-chain of Oppofition. I would only obferve upon this, that a drag-chain was never applied but when a machine is going down hill, and then it is applied wifely. As to any thing else the honourable gentleman has faid, I fhall not offer a reply, but fhall fit down

with affuring the honourable gentleman, that the moft ferious part of his argument appears to me to be the moft ludicrous. Mr. Sheridan, Feb. 26, 1781.

It is a fixed principle in optics, that all objects strike the eye of the beholder differently according to the medium or light through which they are viewed. This maxim is fully verified by an experiment made in April laft, by only moving the right honourable Secretary (Mr. Fox) from the fide of the House on which I now ftand to the other. Placed where he now is, he views the bill in his hand as calculated to "remedy all thofe alarming disorders which have long prevailed, and still continue in the management of the territorial poffeffions, revenues, and commerce of these kingdoms in the East Indies," &c.

But had fuch a bill been brought in by Administration when the right honourable gentleman fat on the other fide of the Houfe, it would have appeared to him in very different colours indeed. I doubt not but the right honourable gentleman would have viewed it again and again through two glaffes which he constantly carries about with him. I mean his magnifying glass, and his multiplying glass.

In the former, his magnifying glafs, it would have appeared big with the most alarming danger of increafing Crown influence, and of extending minifterial power; which things are always confidered as the buggyboos and rawhead and bloodybones, with which the right honourable Secretary used to terrify his prefent caro sposa (Lord North) before those two perfons were joined together in holy matrimony.

But I mean not here to speak against the coalition, or to fay any thing perfonal, as I hope His Majesty's present Minifters will propofe fuch measures as I fhall be able to coalefce with.

In the latter, his multiplying glafs, all the evils which the bill now tended to prevent, with 20,000 more of rapine, injuf

tice, cruelty, violation of rights and charters, weakening of parliamentary faith, &c. would all have danced before his eyes

at once.

What is the cause of this difference, fince the man viewing, and the object viewed,, are identically the fame? It is plainly owing to fome ftrong rays of a fide light that darts from the Eaft, and perhaps a little horizontally from the North, upon the pupil of the right honourable Secretary's eye; so that, without having recourfe to the folutions of a Newton,, a Priestley, or a Franklin, we may affirm, that it is certainly that fame North-eaft light which had fuch a powerful effect upon the feeing, or to speak more philofophically, on the visive faculties of the right honourable Secretary. But the right honourable framer of the bill is never without either of the glaffes I have mentioned; though, as I obferved, things appear very different to him, according to the medium through which he looks, and whether the particles of matter of which he is compofed are placed on that fide of the House or the other.

Seated on that illuftrious bench, on which the fun always fhines, when he views the bill through his magnifying glafs, in the first place, it much aggrandizes himself, and all his ìnfluence as a Minifter of State, infomuch that he looks as if he really could carry the India Houfe on his back, as a print juft published humorously reprefents him to be doing.

Secondly, it aggrandizes the feven Commiffioners, or holy Emperors, and their eight affiftant Directors.

Thirdly, it aggrandizes needy adherents, and raises them from Lilliputians to Brobdignagians and Patagonians.

As to the right honourable gentleman's multiplying glass, as he at present holds it up to look at the bill, in the first place, it greatly multiplies friends and jobbers, who will stick to him at every pinch-Over fhoes, over boots. Secondly, it multiplies all his various interefts, all his connections, all his powers, not only at home in this country, but by fea and land, and all

over the globe. But when I fay that it multiplies all his powers, I must except his intellectual powers and the powers of his eloquence, as I really think these cannot be magnified or multiplied.

Thirdly, which is by far the best of all its multiplying powers, it multiplies the rupees and the guineas, if not to the nation, yet to the happy favourites who are to taste the sweets of the bill for five whole years to coine.

And now leaving optics, I would make an easy tranfition (at least I would make a transition, whether an easy one or not,) from allegory to the bill itself, the particular parts and claufes of which I fhall leave to be difcuffed by those who are much more equal to fo great a work than I am.

I fhall therefore only obferve, with regard to the principle and spirit of the bill in general, that they appear to me so exceedingly oppofite to the whole genius of the Constitution, and to those benign laws by which it is supported, that the Directors are hardly allowed the privileges which in courts of judicature are granted to felons; for in cafes of felony, feizure and confifcation never take place till after conviction; whereas, in the prefent inftance, the parties are not even accused of any specific crime.

But fhould the bill pass the House, (the House I hope will pardon the supposition,) it must afford much fatisfaction indeed to those who are nearly interested in it, especially to the body of petitioning Directors, that they have a powerful friend in the other House to plead their caufe, and to fupport their rights; I mean the noble protesting Duke at the head of the Treasury Board, who, when the East-India regulating bill was brought in, just ten years ago, (which bill did not go near fo far as the prefent,) teftified his hearty diffent from it in the following strong terms:

I. "Because it was not only an high and dangerous violation of the yet unquestioned charter of the Company, but a to

tal

« AnteriorContinuar »