and happiness will be felt. There is not a tongue, a nation, or religion in India, which will not bless the prefiding care and manly beneficence of this house, and of him who proposes to you this great work. Your names will never be separated before the throne of the Divine Goodness, in whatever language, of with whatever rites, pardon is asked for fin, and reward for those who imitate the Godhead in his univerfal bounty to his creatures. These honours you deferve, and they will furely be paid, when all the jargon of influence, and party, and patronage, are swept into oblivion. I have spoken what I think, and what I feel, of the mover of this bill. An honourable friend of mine, fpeaking of his merits, was charged with having made a studied panegyrick. I don't know what his was. Mine, I am fure, is a ftudied panegyrick; the fruit of much meditation; the refult of the obfervation of near twenty years. For my own part, I am happy that I have lived to fee this day; I feel myself overpaid for the labours of eighteen years, when, at this late period, I am able to take my share, by one humble vote, in destroying a tyranny that exists to the disgrace of this nation, and the destruction of fo large a part of the human species. K 2 THE PREFACE. HE reprefentation now given to the publick relates to fome of the moft effential privileges of the house of commons. It would appear of little importance, if it were to be judged by its reception in the place where it was propofed. There it was rejected without debate. The fubject matter may, perhaps, hereafter appear to merit a more ferious confideration. Thinking men will fcarcely regard the penal diffolution of a parliament as a very trifling concern. Such a diffolution muft operate forcibly as an example; and it much imports the people of this kingdom to confider what leffon that example is to teach. The late house of commons was not accused of an interested compliance to the will of a court. The charge against them was of a different nature. They were charged with being actuated by an extravagant fpirit of independency. This fpecies of offence is fo clofely connected with merit; this vice bears fo near a refemblance to virtue; that the flight of a houfe of commons above the exact temperate medium of independence, ought to |