compulsion, was received with transport by the crouching slave, who was industrious to find out sinister motives to which to ascribe the actions of common men, however friendly and generous! He therefore advised him by all means, if he wished for honour and fame, to adopt the plan, and accomplish the reductions proposed. He would establish permanent popularity, and would annihilate the opposition. It had been formerly advanced in favour of the influence, which it was the object of his bill to diminish; that such a principle was necessary for the support of government; that it was the aim of our constitution to give in influence what was lost in prerogative. He was very willing so far to admit this doctrine, as to allow that no minister would be uniformly supported without some kind of influence; for such was the diversity of human opinion, that no abilities could always convince and guide without some bias in favour of the speaker. But there were different kinds of influence; one influence, for instance, was that derived from superior. wisdom and virtue, which never failed to inspire reverence and respect, and by the exercise of which any minister might command support; another kind was derived from the power of distributing honours and emoluments, and this might be employed with equal success in any hands, good or bad. The former of these influences he readily admitted to be necessary to the support of government, but the latter he must ever deny to be either necessary or justifiable; for the influence of wisdom and virtue would always lead to wise and virtuous measures, but that of corruption to corrupt ones. The last was the influence of bribery, and deserved to be called by no other name. The power of distributing places, pensions, and honours, having been always in the hands of government, by many was confounded with the idea of government itself; and it was thought the one could not subsist without the other, consequently that the power of the state was weakened by a diminution of such instruments. They mistook the emoluments of government for government itself, and consi dered it as a mere cabinet, containing a chest of drawers filled with sweet things. To be influenced by an admiration of wisdom and virtue, was to possess these qualities; but the influence of bribery he considered as pernicious to freedom as open force. It was said, that all free countries were corrupted by bribery. When virtue, which was the spirit of commonwealths and of all free states, was gone, liberty could not long survive. A few were brought to impose slavery on their fellow-subjects, and the price paid for their services was the only difference between a state possessing the forms of freedom, and one openly despotic. An undue influence, he said, preyed on the very vitals of a constitution, and eat up the entrails, while the outward walls remained. It was as different from real government as the most opposite extremes in nature. His ideas of government were most essentially different. He considered government as the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind, with the mother virtues of prudence and providence at their head. To govern, was to be always prepared for peace or war. To govern, was to unite an empire in one bond of obligation and affection; to have but one direction and one purpose; to have but one interest and one desire; the direction and purpose, the interest and desire of common prosperity. To govern, was to possess the confidence of the governed, that when the envy or the ambition of an enemy aimed an attack, every heart might agree in delivering the sword into those hands that had held the olive to their advantage. To govern, was to act in a state of hostility, for the interest of the empire, and not of the rulers; it was to arouse the people, by sharing in their exertions - by proposing and beginning retrenchment, and shewing the use of economy, by the advantages and success of it. This was government in his definition of the thing, and it was the only idea of government that he could possibly entertain; and thus government was as different from places, as services were different from salaries. It was the nature of influence to produce a supine negligence in government. Influence threw government asleep, and it sometimes awoke by starts and fits, after it had relaxed the steady reins of virtue, into acts of the greatest cruelty and ferocity. It led, to anarchy and confusion. By influence and anarchy together, a mortification was always produced, which was at last cut away by the incisions of the sharp knife of despotic power. It would be easy to shew, he said, by a detail of particulars, that the spirit of the British government was relaxed that it was paralytic, undoing to-day what it did yesterday, and totally unable to support its own weight. Mr. Burke said, he would not trouble the House with any more reasons for bringing forward the same plan again, which had engaged so much of the time and attention of the last parliament for so little purpose. He had made no alteration in it, and he begged leave to give it to the House in the humble hope and confidence, that if they meant to give it countenance and attention, they would do so with fairness and candour, and not with insidious respect in its outset, tempt it to a death of slow and lingering torture. He called upon the noble lord in the blue ribbon, who was to be the arbiter of its fate, and begged, if he meant ultimately to give it a death stroke, that he would save himself and the House much fatigue, and the nation much anxiety and disappointment, by strangling it in its birth. Let them try the matter on that day, if it was to be tried. He called upon him to do this, and be, at least for one day, a decisive minister. He concluded with moving "That leave be given to bring in a bill for the better regulation of his majesty's civil establishments, and of certain public offices; for the limitation of pensions, and the suppression of sundry useless, expensive, and inconvenient places; and for applying the monies saved thereby to the public service." The motion was seconded by Mr. Duncombe, who paid high compliments to the mover, not only on account of the bill, but of the very great ability with which he had formerly stated his comprehensive plan to the House, and the firmness and per severance with which he now had combated every obstacle to the principle of the measure. Lord North, in answer to the call made upon him, said he would very candidly declare, that his opinion on the subject had not at all varied from that which he had entertained on it in the preceding year, and that though he did not disapprove of the plan in toto, yet the parts which appeared to him proper to be adopted bore so small a proportion to the whole of that very comprehensive scheme, that he should be obliged to oppose it in some future stage of the bill; he did not think it would be decent or candid for him upon his own private opinion, to set his face against the bill in its first stage, by opposing its introduction; especially as there were many new members in the House, who, though they might have a general knowledge of the subject, could not be so fully inform ed upon it as was necessary to their coming to an absolute decision; he would therefore reserve himself until the bill was printed, and the members were in possession of the necesary information, when he should think it his duty to state such observations and objections as might occur to him, to the House. Leave was then given to bring in the bill. February 19. THIS day Mr. Burke brought in his bill. It was read a first time, and ordered to be printed. He then moved, that it be read a second time on Thursday, the 22d instant. Earl Nugent said the day was too early. There were many young members who could not be conceived to be in possession of the plan, large and comprehensive as it was, and who could not make themselves masters of it in so short a time. Gentlemen would consider that there was not one day before Thursday on which they could read it with the attention which it deserved, since it could not be printed before Wednesday morning, and Wednesday was the fast day. He was one of those who thought that there was a great deal in the bill which parliament ought not to adopt, and something which, perhaps, upon consideration *This bill was exactly the same as the one brought in last year, a copy of which will be found at p. 91. of the present volume. super and wise; it comprehended various pened in our constitution, and which nature deliberation. He concluded with ent, by inserting the words "Monday the → Thursday the 22d." - .AKE ridiculed the idea of the House being und with the principle or the tenor of his bill. ere was not a member, new or old, who did not know its aure and tendency at this moment, as well as they could possibly do if the reading of it again was put off for months. The principle was known; and as to the other objection of the noble lord, that some of its provisions were fit, and some the contrary, he would not be so disorderly as to follow the noble lord into that consideration; that would come in proper time, when the bill was in the committee. The noble lord's reasons for putting it off then in this respect would be just as applicable at any other time, and for any farther and continued delay, as they were now. One reason which the noble lord had assigned was peculiar, and adapted to the occasion. Wednesday was a fast day so much the better-it would bring along with it leisure and relaxation to the noble lord and others, now indefatigable in their attendance, and there could not be an object more proper for their employment, on a day of fasting and humiliation, than the bill upon the table. It would bring into their view the measures and the misfortunes for which the day of fasting and prayer had been appointed, as well as their remedy; it would shew them the pride and the influence that had reduced us to our dangerous and necessitous condition the insolence that had concluded in supplication -the tyranny that had brought us to concession: it would recal to their memories the oppressions and the weaknesses, the cruelties and the crimes of the state; and their contrition would be strengthened by the proofs of its necessities: here they would see prodigality producing poverty; corruption, slavery; ambition, ruinous war; tyranny and oppression, resistance and revolt; and as the day was a |