Page images
PDF
EPUB

Mr. BURKE said, that the principle of the bill was simple, and required but little time for deliberation. It consisted but of two parts, the first was, to curtail a variety of useless and burthensome offices in the king's civil list, and other departments of government, in order to apply the savings to the constitutional services of the state; and the second, to provide against the revenues voted for the maintenance of the king, the provision of his family, and the ease, dignity, and independence of his life, being diverted to the uses of a minister, and applied to the corrupting of parliament. These were the simple principles, easy to be understood; but whether the regulations proposed for the attainment of these ends were the properest for that purpose, were considerations for the committee. He had other matters which he might propose to their consideration. Perhaps a better method might be suggested of furnishing the king's table, &c. by contract; but all these could not prevent the noble lord from deciding in his own mind whether or not the principle of the bill ought to be opposed.

The bill was ordered to be read a second time on the 2d of March.

March 8.

On the order of the day being read for going into a committee on Mr. Burke's bill, Mr. Rigby rose and started an unexpected question, upon the incompetency of the House to enter into any discussion whatever relative to the king's civil list revenue or establishment. The right honourable gentleman, who had hitherto spoken rather ambiguously with regard to Mr. Burke's plan of reform, after expressing now his highest approbation of some parts of it, condemned, in terms equally explicit, those which reached in any degree to the civil list; as well as the interference of parliament at all in that expenditure. He said, that for his own part, he had ever considered, and ever should, that the civil-list revenue was as much and as fully his majesty's as any determinable estate, enjoyed by any person

present, was his immediate property. That revenue had been settled on his majesty, at his accession, for life; which was an interest no power on earth could deprive him of without manifest injustice; consequently, that part of the bill, which went to the controul of the civil list, and to an appropriation of the supposed savings to arise from the reform, was an attempt no less contrary to precedent than to justice. It would not only, in its consequences, degrade the sovereign, but it would reduce him to the state of a precarious pensioner; whose uncertain stipend, lessened at will, would be at all times liable to still further reduction. And to what purpose was this violence and injustice to be offered? - to lessen the supposed influence of the crown. He had heard a great deal of the influence of the crown; but he believed that influence was never less known or felt than during the present reign; and this he could speak from experience. He declared, that he had neither consulted the noble minister, nor any other person within or without the House upon the subject. It was his own opinion, and he was determined to avow it, without any expectation or wish of support, further than what it might be entitled to on its own intrinsic merit. He was apprehensive that he was rather disorderly, as the order of the day for going into a committee stood in the way; but it was a subject on which he wished to take the sense of the House.

Mr. BURKE begged that the question might be determined upon, before the House went into a committee upon the bill. The present doctrine, should it be adopted, went equally to the defeating every part of the bill, as well as those provisions which the noble lord in the blue ribbon had avowed his public disapprobation of. If that were allif only the fate of the bill were determined, by agreeing to the right honourable gentleman's proposition, it would give him but very little uneasiness; but it was a principle, which, in his opinion, went to overthrow the constitution, and annihilate the essential rights and privileges of parliament. The resolving, however, that that House was incompetent to enquire or controul the expenditure of the civil-list revenue, would not, though it might be intended to effect it, destroy the liberties of Britain.

Debate, it was true, would be at an end, because it could answer no useful purpose. The duties of those who had struggled for a long series of years against every disadvantage, that it was possible to conceive, against large majorities, public obloquy, repeated defeat, and daily mortifications, would cease; their unavailing opposition would be terminated. The people must do what parliament had refused, or rather what they were resolved not to do, or had declared themselves incompetent to effect; but he trusted, that health would follow. A fever purged off and purified the blood, gave it a more happy circulation, and renovated or corrected a weak or disordered constitution. A fracture properly healed, acquired strength, superior to any other part of the bone. The crown held no public right, or public property, but as a trust for, and under the people. It could gain or lose nothing in truth; because it enjoyed all it possessed, as a favour, and for the attainment of certain defined or implied purposes, which purposes were understood to be good government and the well-being of the state. The prerogatives of the crown, the highest and most transcendent part of its power, were created and ought of course to be exercised for the benefit of the people who created and conferred them. It was therefore to the last degree absurd to draw a line, or separate the private rights of an individual, or any description of man, as held for any other end but for the good of the whole community; every right his majesty enjoyed, as sovereign, was a delegated right, and consequently subject to examination, correction, and controul. It was particularly of the very essence of that House, to enquire, to regulate, and controul; and whenever it waived, concealed, or suspended that right, when an occasion offered, then most clearly every object of their meeting and deliberating was at an end; from the representatives of the people, they were no longer the servants of the public, who had sent them there; but the corrupt or servile tools of those, who paid and rewarded them, for their treachery or neglect of duty.

[ocr errors]

Mr. Fox, Mr. Townsend, General Conway, Mr. Dunning, and other distinguished members of opposition, supported nearly the same ground. The question now before the House was, whether, according to the order of the day, it should be resolved into a committee on Mr. Burke's bill, or whether they should first enter into a discussion of, and decide upon, Mr. Rigby's proposition? The question being put about nine o'clock, the resolution for the order of the day was carried, by a majority of six only, the numbers being 205, to 199.

Clause for abolishing the office of Third Secretary of State.

The House then resolved itself into a committee on the bill. When the chairman came to the words in the first clause, 'for abolishing" the office commonly called, or known by the name of third secretary of state, or secretary of state for the colonies," Governor Pownall suggested an amendment; observing, that the words were not sufficiently descriptive, for the description should be simply that of third secretary of state. Mr. Burke said he had no objection to omit the words pointed out by the honourable gentleman. He had adopted both descriptions, lest one or the other singly might appear untechnical, or not descriptive of the office proposed to be abolished. Lord George Germain observed, that the clause as first worded, was not descriptive of the office which he had the honour to fill, for it was neither that of third secretary of state, nor secretary of state for the colonies; but " one of his majesty's principal secretaries of state." He wished most sincerely, if the committee should determine to abolish any one of the three offices, that it might be the one he had the honour to fill. The clause being amended agreeably to this idea, a warm debate ensued. The clause was opposed by Lord Beauchamp, Mr. Jenkinson, Mr. Dundas, and Lord George Germain; and supported by Mr. Thomas Townshend, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Fox,

Mr. BURKE, in answer to what had been said concerning the injustice of punishing the abuse of the expenditure of the civil list without proof, took a distinction between the judicial and legislative capacity of parliament. In the former, they were without doubt to proceed in all cases upon legal evidence. In the latter, they had a right, and it was their duty, to make whatever regulations they judged

necessary for the preservation of the constitution.

He re

probated, in the strongest terms, the doctrine, that there was no difference between the king's property in the civil list and private property. The king was only a trustee for the public. Property and subjects existed before kings were elected, and endowed with a portion of the former for the protection of the latter. And shall the servant, (said Mr. Burke,) the creature of the people, be represented by treasonable subjects, by false and pretended friends, as claiming an inherent, self-created, original, and divine right in the voluntary grants of that people for whose good he received it, and for whose good it may be resumed? This is the very quintessence of jacobitism. It is not toryism, but jacobitism. Tories lean, indeed, towards monarchy; but still they profess that the monarchy to which they lean is a monarchy limited within certain bounds by the law, and controulable by the constitution. Jacobitism elevates kings into the rank of gods, and contends, that the people were made for them, not they for the people. But it is doing jacobitism injustice; that jacobitism, at lease, the remains of which we have seen in this country; to compare it with the doctrines which we have heard this day; for there is something generous in a steady attachment to the persons of a royal family in distress, and the compassion of the heart makes amends for the errors of the judgment. But in the present times, in this enlightened age, in this country, and on this occasion, to avow such theories of despotism is something worse than jacobitism. It is jacobitism sublimated and refined into a detested system of the most humiliating slavery.

Mr. Burke said, he did not agree with a noble lord, that work is always performed with greater expedition by many servants than by few; for one trusts to another; he devolves the labour on the shoulders of his fellow-servants, and finds means of eluding censure for not doing his duty. A groom becomes the favourite of his sporting master: he gets an assistant for his conveniency; the assistant becomes the groom, and he himself is straightway advanced

« PreviousContinue »