the highest censure; and no Minister who shall dare to stake the public credit, for money that has not been voted, ought to be justified by a less authority than an act of indemnity. The millions which remain in consequence unexplained and unaccounted for; the shameful facility of admitting almost every claim; the improvident bargains made for the public service; the criminal neglect and even contempt of the few checks established in the Board of Treasury, besides great part of the money being shared in its passage among a tribe of collectors, clerks, agents, jobbers, or contractors, or paid away by official extortion, or stopped in its course to breed interest for some engrossing individuals, are grievances which the present motion has in view to remedy. 2ndly, But, great and important as the motion is in this view of it, it is still more important in another, as it tends to narrow the wide-spreading influence of the Crown, that has found its way into every corner of the Kingdom. It is sufficient to allude to this grievance, without any farther enlargement: but this argument, though perhaps the strongest in favour of the motion, has been turned into an objection to it, as if it meant to abridge the rights of Monarchy, and make the Crown dependent upon the Parliament. If the objection means to insinuate, that corruption is necessary to government, we shall leave that principle to confute itself by its own apparent iniquity. That this motion is intended to diminish the constitutional power of the Crown, we deny. The constitutional power of the Crown we are no less solicitous to preserve, than we are to annihilate its unconstitutional influence. The prerogative rightly understood, not touched, or intended to be touched by this motion, will support the Crown in all the splendour which the King's personal dignity requires, and with all the authority and vigour necessary to give due effect to the executive powers of Government. It has been argued, that this is not a proper time for reformation, when all the attention of the Kingdom should be employed upon the war, as the great and only object in the present time of distress; to which we beg leave to insist, that the present is, for that very reason, the properest time, because nothing is so essential to the conduct and prosecution of the war as the frugal management of that supply by which only it can be carried on with any prospect of success. Nor ought the plan of economy to be any longer delayed at the risk of a general bankruptcy, and from the history of this, as well as other countries, times of necessity have been always times of reform. 3rdly, Because we conceive that the mode of a Committee, which might be to act with a Committee of the other House, and might, if necessary, be rendered durable, and vested with due powers by an Act of the whole Legislature, might bring back the public expenditure to its constitutional principle, might devise proper regulations for opening contracts to the proposals of every fair bidder, for reforming the abuses of office, and the enormity of fees, with a variety of other abuses, particularly that of large sums of money lying in the hands of individuals to the loss of the State. An objection has been strongly urged on the ground of an apprehension expressed by some Lords, as if they seriously entertained it, of its producing a quarrel between the two Houses of Parliament, in consequence of which the public business might be obstructed, by a claim on the part of the House of Commons, to an exclusive right of considering and providing for the subjects of this motion. Such a claim certainly cannot be supported as a consequence of the claim of that House to originate money bills. Not a single Lord appeared to entertain an idea that such a claim would be well founded. In truth, the objection supposes it to be ill founded, and that therefore this House will resist it; and yet it assumes that the House of Commons will advance and persist in this ill-founded claim. We cannot discover any colour for such a supposition, unless we were to adopt the insinuations of those who represent the corrupt influence (which it is our wish to suppress) as already pervading that House. Those who entertain that opinion of one House of Parliament will hardly think less disrespectfully of the other. To them it will seem a matter of indifference whether the motion is defeated by the exertion of that influence to excite a groundless claim in the one House, or by a groundless apprehension of such a claim in the other. But we, who would be understood to think with more respect of both, cannot entertain an apprehension so injurious to the House of Commons as that they would, at this time especially, and on this occasion, have advanced such a claim. The motion has likewise been objected to on account of its dis qualifying persons possessing employments or pensions to be of the proposed Committee. We are far from supposing that the possession of place or pension necessarily corrupts the integrity of the possessor. We have seen, and the public have seen, many illustrious instances to the contrary; yet we cannot but suppose that the public expectations of advantage from this measure would have been less sanguine, if they had seen persons possessing offices selected to distinguish how far their offices were useful, or their salaries adequate; they perhaps would not think the possessor of a pension or office the fittest judge how far that pension or office had been merited or was necessary. We cannot therefore think the motion justly exceptionable on this ground; it rather appears to us to have been drawn with a proper attention to noble Lords in that predicament, exempting them from a situation which they must necessarily wish to decline. We conceive ourselves warranted in the mode proposed by precedent as well as reason, and it was stated to the House to have been recommended by the most approved constitutional authors who have written since the Revolution, but having offered to meet any other proposition which might carry with it substantial remedy, and no such being offered, notwithstanding the time this proposition has lain before the House, we cannot help considering the present negative as going to the substantial as well as formal part of the motion, and hold ourselves obliged to avail ourselves of our right of entering our protest against the rejection of the above proposition. 4thly, We are farther impelled to press this motion, because the object of it has been seconded and called for by a considerable majority of the people, who are associating for this purpose, and seemed determined to pursue it by every legal and constitutional method that can be devised for its success; and however some may affect to be alarmed, as if such associations tended to disturb the peace, or encroach upon the delegated power of the other House, we are persuaded it has no other view but to collect the sense of the people, and to inform the whole body of the representatives what are the sentiments of the whole body of their constituents, in which respect their proceedings have been orderly, peaceable, and constitutional. And if it be asked what farther is to be done if these petitions are rejected, the best answer is that the case cannot be supposed; for although upon a few separate petitions it may be fairly said that the other House ought not to be decided by a part only of their constituents, yet it cannot be presumed that they will act in defiance of the united wishes of the whole people, or indeed of any great and notorious majority. It is admitted that they have a power to vote as they think fit, but it is not possible to conceive that so wise an assembly will ever be rash enough to reject such petitions, and by that means cause this dangerous question to be broached and agitated, whether they have not broke their trust? The voice of the people will certainly be complied with. Ministers may, as they seem to have done in a recent instance, deprive any man of what he holds at their pleasure, for presuming to exercise his undoubted right of thinking for himself on these or other public subjects; but it will not be wise in them to treat these associations with contempt, or call them by the invidious name of faction, a name by which the minority in both Houses of Parliament have been so frequently and so falsely calumniated, because the name so applied will recoil back upon themselves, when acting against the general sense of the nation, nor will they be able to represent these numbers so respectable in rank and property (as they did but too successfully the discontented Americans) as a mob of indigent and seditious incendiaries, because the people to whom this is addressed are the very people that are abused, and every man bears within himself the testimony of its falsehood. The Ministers, on this particular occasion, cannot deceive the people. Matthew Fortescue, Lord Fortescue. Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham. George Simon Harcourt, Earl Harcourt. Edward Smith Stanley, Earl of Derby. Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. Thomas Howard, Earl of Effingham. Edward Hussey Montague, Lord Beaulieu. Augustus Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton. William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Earl Fitzwilliam. William Courtenay, Viscount Courtenay. Robert Shirley, Earl Ferrers. Charles Manners, Duke of Rutland. Charles Bennet, Earl of Tankerville. George James Cholmondeley, Earl Cholmondeley. Richard Lumley Sanderson, Earl of Scarborough. Peter King, Lord King. George Grenville Temple Nugent, Earl Temple. Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond. John Hinchcliffe, Bishop of Peterborough. William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, Duke of Portland, George Montagu, Duke of Manchester. George William Coventry, Earl of Coventry. Dissentient without reasons assigned. Jacob Pleydell Bouverie, Earl of Radnor. For all the above reasons except the fourth. CCCLXXXVI. MARCH 6, 1780. The Marquis of Carmarthen (Lord Osborne) held the office of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen. Unable any longer to support the Administration, he had resigned his office. In his capacity as Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding of York, he had presided over a public meeting of freeholders in York City, convened in order to advocate economical reform, the extinction of sinecure places, the reduction of exorbitant emoluments, the general freedom of Parliament, and, in a word, the extinction of the practice of bribing the Legislature by the gift of places. The York petition was presented on the 8th of February (see Parliamentary History, vol. xx, p. 1371) by Sir Geo. Savile, and Burke made his great speech on the same subject on the 11th of February, Parliamentary History, vol. xxi, p. 1. The motion of Burke for bringing in a Bill for revising the civil list was carried with only one dissentient, Lord George Gordon. But on the 8th of February Lord Carmarthen was dismissed from his Lord Lieutenancy, and on the 15th of February, Lord Pembroke from that of Wilts, the first named nobleman having announced the fact in the Lord's debate of the 8th of February. A copy of Burke's Establishment Bill may be found in Parliamentary History, vol. xxi, p. 111. On the 6th of March, 1780, a motion was made in the Lords by Lord Shelburne, that an humble address be presented to his Majesty to desire that he would be graciously pleased to acquaint this House whether he has been advised |
