To return to the point more immediately before the House: he complained of an evil and an abuse which he maintained it was practicable to remove, and, as he had before hinted, if the proceedings of another place should be such as not to give satisfaction, that they would be removed, and that the first resolution for abolition in 1796 should pass this session, then that House should substitute such other remedies as might meet their ideas upon the regulation of the trade between this time and the period of final abolition. Until these points should have been fairly canvassed by argument, he trusted that the House would not pursue a step so derogatory to its own honour and dignity, so unsatisfactory to the public in general, as to relinquish their former opinion, or, in other words, to tell the world at large, that there was no sincerity in their declaration on a former day, that they had completely given up even the gradual abolition of the slave trade, and that they never would resolve upon that measure at this or any other period.

The House divided on Mr. Wilberforce's motion.

Tellers.

Mr. John Smyth

YEAS Mr. M. Montagu {Mr.

Tellers.

}53.-NOES {Lord Sheffield

Mr. Tarleton

}

61.

So it passed in the negative. Sir William Young's motion, for not going into a committee until that day six months, was then agreed to.

MR. SHERIDAN'S MOTION RELATIVE TO THE EXISTENCE OF SEDITIOUS PRACTICES IN THIS COUNTRY.

March 4.

On the 4th of March Mr. Sheridan brought forward his promised

motion: the object of which was, "That this House will, upon this day s'en-night, resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider of the seditious practices and insurrections referred to in his majesty's speech at the opening of the present session of parliament.' After the motion had been seconded by Mr. Lambton, and opposed by Mr. Windham, and the Lord Mayor, Sir James Saunderson,

Mr. Fox said, that from the speech of his honourable friend behind him (Mr. Windham), at least till towards the conclusion of it, he had hoped for a speedy termination of the

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debate. He would not say, that he was not much interested in the fate of the present motion, but his anxiety was greatly lessened, from the reflection, that great part of its object had been already obtained; for to have drawn from his honourable friend, now so strenuous a supporter of, and so much in the confidence of the minister, a total disavowal of all those supposed plots and insurrections by which the late alarm had been excited, was undoubtedly a great point gained. His honourable friend had now expressly acknowledged, that no insurrections or plots, in the sense meant by the mover of the present question, had ever existed. But did this agree with what had been held out by ministers? No: plots and insurrections of different kinds, and in different places, had been held forth; a conspiracy had even been talked of for taking possession of the Tower, and the time specified when it was to have taken place. All this, however, was now given up. His honourable friend seemed fond of dealing altogether in generals, and in his support of the present administration, he had adopted the prudent plan of giving up both fact and argument; for he could otherwise give them no consistent support. He complained of being misrepresented when he was stated to have said that he gave ministers his support, because he entertained a bad opinion of them: but he did unquestionably say, that his obligation to strengthen the executive government might become, on that account, the more binding. There seemed, therefore, little ground to complain of misrepresentation. Was it however, said Mr. Fox, or could it be deemed unreasonable, that the denial now given by his honourable friend should be given formally by the House, that they might give a vote of quiet to the minds of the people? This, the fortifications at the Tower, and other circumstances calculated to impress the minds of the people with serious alarm, rendered the more indispensably requisite.

Mr. Fox next adverted to what had been said of the clubs at Cromer, in Norfolk; and urged, that if his honourable friend had been so much misinformed, as he had undoubtedly been, with respect to what happened in a village within two miles of his own house, he should have hoped it might have led him to be more jealous of the information he received as to other clubs and associations. Mr. Fox said, that he and his friends were not obstinate infidels; they desired only to be convinced, and would readily alter their opinion if they saw any reasonable evidence to induce them so to do. As to what had been said by his honourable friend, that no pretext had been held forth by ministers to justify the proclamations for calling out the militia, and for the meeting of parliament, but that they had fairly and distinctly stated the fact; he must

beg leave to observe, that a true fact might frequently be used as a false pretext; and here, by his honourable friend's own account of the matter, the insurrections satisfied at most but the letter of the law; while a cause totally different, and unconnected either with these insurrections or with the purview of the act of parliament, was recurred to in order to satisfy the spirit of the act.

The worthy chief magistrate for the city had observed, that the number of disaffected had decreased in November, but that they now increased. And was not a war the very means of procuring such increase? Mr. Fox now adverted to the proceedings of Mr. Reeves's association in receiving and considering anonymous informations, and transmitting them to government; which he reprobated in the strongest and most emphatical terms, as destructive both of the peace and character of individuals in all probability innocent, and totally subversive of every principle of liberty.

With respect to the present circumstances of the country, Mr. Fox said it was undoubtedly true, that many of those friends whom he highly respected, and with whom he had long been accustomed to think and act, entertained a much greater degree of alarm than he did, and, of course, differed with him in some degree as to the extent of the support which should be given at this time to the executive government. They acted, he knew, on the most honourable principles; and he had the satisfaction also to know, that that temporary disagreement in opinion, on the present occasion, made no difference whatever in the great line of their political principles; in their disapprobation both of the general system of the present administration, and of the way by which they came into office. He said, that the direct lie had now been given to the contents of many pamphlets equally dangerous with any of Paine's books, particularly one, called the Dream of an Englishman, and others; which had been industriously circulated to spread alarm and distress over the face of the country. Was it to be held a justifiable expedient of government to tell the public, that treasons and conspiracies existed, and neither to prosecute nor endeavour to discover the conspirators and traitors? He and his friends might be supposed to speak as if they felt galled upon the subject. He owned he did speak with some such feeling, because he knew it had been confidently said that letters had been written by him and his friends, to persons in France, of a dangerous tendency, and that it was only owing to the lenity of ministers that they were not produced. If ministers were in possession of any such letters, he challenged them to the proof. But he should be told, it was an aukward thing to produce letters opened at the post-office.

To that he should answer, the aukwardness was in opening them at the post-office. It did, however, so happen, that for, he believed, more than two years, he had not had occasion to write a single letter to France, except one to an English friend (Lord Lauderdale) when at Paris. Again he should be told, that he had seen Frenchmen in this country; that he had seen the French minister. He had seen Frenchmen here, and had seen the French minister; but he had yet to learn that it was any crime for him or any gentleman to see the minister sent to our court from any country. He knew of no law by which members of parliament, like senators of Venice, were prohibited from even conversing with the ministers of foreign states. Was it not a situation of the country horrible to relate, that men's correspondence and conversation were to be pried into with such inquisitorial jealousy, as to make it dangerous for them to commit their thoughts to paper, or to converse with a stranger but in the presence of a third person? Let the House do away all these suspicions and rumours by an honest inquiry, and restore the public to that freedom and confidence, both of writing and speech, which it was the pride of our constitution to bestow, and which became the frank and open character of a free people.

His honourable friend had said, that these plotters against the constitution were only quiet like a gang of housebreakers who had disturbed the family, watching for an opportunity to repeat the attempt: but what would be the conduct of his honourable friend if he were really alarmed by house-breakers? Would he make no inquiry to discover the gang, and thereby prevent them from repeating the attempt? Or would he adopt the spirit of a bill once proposed in that House, in consequence of numerous burglaries, of which Jews were suspectedto be the perpetrators? The tenor of this bill was, that any Jew or suspected person seen looking down an area, should be guilty of death. If the House refused to inquire into the grounds of the suspicions to which they had given the sanction of their belief, they put every person upon whom suspicion fell into almost as bad a situation as the suspected persons under such a bill. A circumstance respecting the secession of some gentlemen from the Whig club had been alluded to, which he could have wished had not been mentioned in that place. The honourable gentleman said he had canvassed for no persons to join him in that secession: but was not the very mode in which he had done it a canvass? He was sure that the honourable gentleman was his friend, because he told him so: he knew that he was the friend of the honourable gentleman; but had he no other proofs but the circumstance just mentioned, and

the publication connected with it, he should not be so presumptuous as to hope that any friendship existed between them. His honourable friend, whom he never suspected of intending to support administration in any other mode than that which he professed, was, perhaps, raising a sort of independent corps, and some might be induced to join it, preferring that mode of quitting their old friends to a more open desertion. But his honourable friend would recollect, that these independent companies, when once raised, were always incorporated with the regular battalions. The operation of fear was not easily calculated, when they saw already that it had made a chancellor. To his honourable friend it had produced only reputation. He was now extolled as one of the very first men in the country, not for those virtues and abilities that well entitled him to the rank, but for his quick sense of alarm, and his perseverance in dismay. When fear could thus confer both profit and reputation, there was no saying to what men might aspire by this glorious kind of nanimous timidity. Mr. Fox concluded with declaring, that he was still incredulous, and should vote for inquiry; which was never more necessary than when the situation of the country was apprehended to be dangerous.

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The motion was afterwards opposed by Mr. Burke, and negatived without a division.

THE

BUDGET FOR THE YEAR 1793.

March 11.

HE House having resolved itself into a committee of ways and means, Mr. Pitt entered into a detail of the expences of the current year, and of the means and aid by which they were to be supplied. After Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Drake had spoken,

Mr. Fox said, that he came down to the House not without anxiety, but it had afforded him the most sincere pleasure to learn from the right honourable the chancellor of the exchequer, at the beginning of his speech, that he meant to go on a large scale, in providing for the vigorous prosecution of the war in which this country was actually engaged; and he also approved of reducing the unfunded debt; but it was surely rather singular, that while the right honourable gentleman was proposing to pay off 1,500,000l. of exchequer bills, he was at the same time to issue exchequer bills to that amount on a vote of credit. He most sincerely wished that the right