world, was first kept by a man, till having ruined him, she gave her company to a second of greater fortune; which having wasted, she passed on to a third; and so on till she had ruined the whole set, each of her keepers consoling himself with the idea that his successor in possession of her charms, would unavoidably be reduced to beggary by her extravagance as well as himself. Mr. Burke here gave way to the liberal impulse of his mind; and as a lover of the arts, which give true grandeur to a country, said he would not agree with an honourable friend, that the building of the Royal Academy was a matter to be complained of. For a great kingdom to adorn its metropolis with magnificent buildings was, he thought, at all times wise and justifiable; but that was not the only defence to be made for the erection of the Royal Academy. The congregating and bringing together a great variety of offices, had, from various motives of convenience and dispatch, been a matter much desired. The ruinous state of Somerset House, and the large site of ground it stood on, added to the eligible situation of the spot, all combined to prove that the space occupied by a falling and deserted palace, would be very usefully filled with an assemblage of public offices. On that idea, the old palace was purchased for the public, and on the ground on which it had stood, an immense pile of buildings had been raised. No man, who looked at the present state of the works going on there, would think that the money had been wasted, or lavishly employed; the structure already erected answering for every pound that had been voted, so satisfactorily, that a doubt could not remain in any spectator's mind as to the honesty and care of the application of the sums that parliament had granted for the service. The buildings were upon an immense scale, and when completed, would be of infinite utility. He saw, therefore, no reason to complain that a splendid front had been erected, and that, as you entered the portal of public office, you passed the seat of elegance and taste on the one hand, and the seat of learning and philosophy on the other. Such a building did honour to the present

age, and would render the metropolis of Great Britain famous throughout Europe. These were not among the deeds of the board of works that he should disapprove of: when he saw value for the public money; when there was so much national grandeur and magnificence for so many guineas, he would never complain. It was their invisible works to which he objected; works which were never discovered, nor discoverable, except in the estimates of expence which they laid upon that table.

MR. HARTLEY'S MOTION FOR A BILL TO RESTORE PEACE WITH AMERICA.

May 30.

THIS THIS day Mr. Hartley moved, "That leave be given to bring in a bill to invest the crown with sufficient powers to treat, consult, and finally to agree, upon the means of restoring peace with the provinces of North America." The motion was supported by Sir Philip Jennings Clerke, Sir George, Savile, Mr. Thomas Townshend, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Burke; and opposed by Lord North, Lord George Germain, Sir Henry Hoghton, and Mr. Welbore Ellis.

Mr. BURKE said, there were but two orders of speakers that day, the country gentlemen and the ministers; no less than the two principal of the latter had figured in that debate, and though we were now in the seventh year of the war, had presumed to stand up and tell that House, that the majority of the Americans were loyally inclined towards this country. If they were so, why was the fact to rest on the thread-bare assertion of the noble secretary for the American department? An assertion which had been repeated again and again for seven years together, and yet the noble lord had said, that the minority awed

and governed the majority, who were without arms; if this were true, and the fact which the House had so often heard, namely, that Washington's army were never, taking it at the largest allowance, above a few thousands; how came it when we had not the minority, but the majority armed, that we had not long since put an end to the war? According to the story of ministers we had not only the majority unarmed, but also the majority armed; and yet the small, wretched, starving, and spiritless minority, armed, and unarmed, had effectually withstood all our efforts, and were likely to withstand them.

He insisted, that the noble lord's argument relative to his majesty's commissioners having it in their power to declare those who returned to their allegiance, in the king's peace, was neither more nor less than a renewal of the argument made use of at the commencement of the war, when the noble lord had insisted on unconditional submission. In order to prove this, Mr. Burke appealed to the understanding of every gentleman present, whether being in the king's peace did not mean a throwing down of arms, and a party putting itself wholly at the mercy of his majesty? And if that was admitted, surely the king's peace was' synonymous with unconditional submission. For what were they to do before they could be entitled to the benefits of such a proclamation? They must throw down their arms, abandon all the principles of resistance, return to their allegiance, and all this they must do without any condition on the part of government; for until they had done all this, the crown had not the power, in consequence of this clause in the prohibitory-act, to declare them to be in the king's peace. Thus, by the candid openness of the noble lord, the House had at last heard it declared what was the purpose of this war; that it was unconditional submission, and had been so all along. If they had at any time deviated in appearance from the pursuit of this object, it was only to pay court to the feelings of man, or like losing gamesters, who would play for any thing rather than give over; but however they might rove for a time, they

always returned to this point, as the object of their ambition, and the mistress of their hope. He begged, then, that the country gentlemen would be no longer deceived. He begged them to attend to the declaration of a minister, and learn what it was they were fighting for. It was not for the supremacy of parliament; it was not for national honour; it, was not for a re-union upon liberal principles; it was not for revenue; it was for unconditional submission.

With great severity he animadverted on Lord George Germain's expression, that the ministers had as much to sacrifice as other gentlemen, they had their stake in the hedge. It was true, they had so; their places, their honours, their emoluments were their stakes. In fact, they wanted to demolish the hedge and the stakes of others; they surrounded their own stakes with the stakes of their neighbours; they exposed the latter to danger, and were only anxious to save their own. In other words, they wanted to make up their own fortunes out of the ruin of their country; a ruin which they had brought on. The American war, and the continuation of the ministers in office, went hand in hand: if the former was at an end, the latter must infallibly lose those places which they presumed to consider as their stakes. His majesty's ministers and the American war were like the porter's breech and the nose of Taliacotius. There was a sympathy between them, which rendered them constantly dependent on each other:

"When life of parent bum is out,

Off drops the sympathetic snout."

So, with the American war, must their places and their pensions very sympathetically expire. He pushed this simile somewhat farther, and introduced the refugees who formed a part in the body of the war, and the very foulest part too, for they were to ministers what the porter was to Taliacotius, the breech out of which the nose was taken. Mr. Burke concluded with seriously reproaching ministers

for the shameful system which they had pursued with respect to America, and loudly called upon the House to accede to the motion, by which ministers would be forced to do their duty.

The House divided on Mr. Hartley's motion: Yeas 72: Noes 106. So it passed in the negative.

MR. FOX'S BILL FOR THE REPEAL OF THE
MARRIAGE ACT.

June 15.

THIS day, on the motion that Mr. Fox's bill for the Repeal of the Marriage act be read a second time, a debate of some length took place. The motion was opposed by Mr. Ambler, Mr. Yorke, Mr. Jolliffe, and Mr. Burke; and supported by Sir George Yonge, General Burgoyne, Mr. Courtenay, Earl Nugent, and Mr. Fox. The following brief report of what Mr. Burke said upon this occasion was found amongst his MSS, after his decease:

Mr. BURKE said:

This act [the marriage act] stands upon two principles; one, that the power of marrying without consent of parents should not take place till twenty-one years of age; the other, that all marriages should be public.

The proposition of the honourable mover goes to the first; and undoubtedly his motives are fair and honourable; and even in that measure, by which he would take away paternal power, he is influenced to it by filial piety, and he is led into it by a natural, and to him inevitable, but real, mistake, that the ordinary race of mankind advance as fast towards maturity of judgment and understanding as he does.