substantial bona fide duties, that the public may not be told that there is nobody responsible, and, in truth, as the matter stands at present, there are but few comparatively who are responsible. I have no wish to deny that there are many offensive cases of non-residence; though the majority of cases, I am persuaded, are such as a man of even strict religious principles, tempered with a little human feeling (possibly not much the worse for that temperature), would find to contain circumstances of more extenuation than he had supposed. But even in the offensive cases, it is difficult to say who is responsible beyond the individuals themselves: certainly not the governors of the church, in hardly any case; for I must, in justice, let out to the House a secret, a little dangerous perhaps to be communicated at large, that in truth there is hardly one act of discipline which a bishop can execute upon his clergy (if it is at all resisted), but at the expense, and the vexation, and hazard of a law-suit. can hardly be deemed to exist to any practicable effect. Give the governors of the church, not new and unknown powers, but prompt and commodious means of applying those they have, an awful responsibility will immediately arise; they will feel that the expectation of the public is upon them; that the public requires that the powers so given shall be used, and used for the purposes for which given. If they are not used, or not so used, it may give rise to a suspicion (which God avert) that the episcopal government of the church, high and sacred as its origin may be, is, in the present state of manners, less favourably adapted to the care of its interests and duties than the civil constitution of the country had hitherto supposed. In the third place, that this enforcement of duties should be framed with as little vexation to its objects as it is consistent with its efficacy, without any unnecessary harshness or restraint, still less with disrespect and degradations; with all Take this matter of residence. A decent attention to the situation of the bishop admonishes his clerk to reside, and order in the state, and to the personal the clerk turns a deaf ear; what is to be convenience of individuals. Their profesdone? The bishop has only this election, sion is in all countries of most important whether he shall employ the compulsion use to society; and its general utility deof the ecclesiastical process, or the com- pends upon its general estimation. In mon law compulsion of this statute; for a this country it is an eminent order of the suit of one kind or other he must have. state; it has always stood by the state For a bishop to be dragging his clergy, with firmness, and in no times more meriin the character of common informer, into toriously than in the present. The indievery assize town of his diocese, subject to viduals are, in a large proportion of them, all the public freedom of discussion (ne- men of learned, and many of them of elecessary, I admit, in that mode of inquiry), gant education. Literature, both useful and to all the levity of remark (allowable, and ornamental, has been in no country so I likewise admit, in the advocate who has largely indebted to its clergy. Many of to carry his present point with his jury), them are taken from among the best and is no very seemly sight; I cannot help most respected families of our country; thinking, that more harm is done to the and it is on all accounts, religious, moral, modest dignity of religion by such exhi- and political, anxiously to be wished that bitions, than balances the advantage of the families of our gentry should continue the success of the particular prosecution. to supply a large proportion of our clergy. On the other hand, if the bishop repairs Such men are not the subjects of an exto the ecclesiastical court, I certainly treme and overstrained legislation. Somecannot venture to describe a penal suit thing must be trusted to their own sense travelling through the consistory, the of duty, something allowed to their persoarches, and finally the delegates, as any nal convenience. They are to be governed, luxury to the man who has to pursue it; it is true, lenibus imperiis, by an authority certainly very far from it, looking at the efficacious in its results, but mild in its expense and the vexation that may travel forms, and just in its indulgences. May along with it. No man can expect a I add, that whilst we have seen, in other bishop to venture upon the use of such re- countries, christianity suffering in the permedies, but in very enormous cases indeed. sons of the oppressed clergy, it imposes a The constitution in theory supposes the peculiar obligation upon us to treat our governors of the church to have all neces-own with kindness and respect, and to sary powers; but they are powers which beware of degrading religion by an appa rent degradation of its ministers. If there has been an undue laxity in this matter, let the legislature signify firmly that they should generally repair to their benefices; but not as men stigmatised and relegated, carrying their resentments to their solitudes, and from whom, after unkind treatment, a cheerful and ardent performance of duty, can hardly be expected. Surely, Sir, it is upon such subjects more than any others, that one ounce of sweet spontaneous duty is worth whole pounds of compelled performance. Whether these principles, on which I have endeavoured to construct this bill, are just, or the provisions well adapted to carry them into effect, is for the House to judge. I shall state briefly its general provisions, both on the part of the public and on the part of the clergy, referring, for farther and more minute detail, to the bill itself, which I shall move for leave to have printed, for the use of the members during the recess.-On the part of the public, I propose to guard against what the House appeared to consider as the abuses of clergymen's farming, and to enforce the duty of residence in a double manner more effectually, by enabling the bishops to exert the authority which the constitution has given them, and by giving the common prosecutor, where he is permitted to act, an increased reward for bis diligence. On the part of the clergy there is offered, 1st, An entire amnesty for past neglect, where no prosecution had been commenced; and, 2dly, Where there had been an exemption from farther prosecution, on payment of costs already incurred. 3dly, On the matter of farming, a liberty given in the cases where they were injuriously prohibited by the ancient statute. 4thly, On the matter of residence, to give a fair and reasonable allowance of time to the clergyman for the occasions of private life, free from the doggings of any informer, though still subject to the superintendance of his proper superior to allow an ipso facto exemption from all penalties, for clergymen bearing certain offices during the times required for the duties of those offices; to restore the power to bishops to grant licences for absence, in certain enumerated and expressed cases, which licences shall protect from the common prosecutor; and, in other cases, which cannot be specifically foreseen, or provided for, to allow the concurrence and consent of the metropolitan to have that effect. Sir, these are the outlines of the proposed bill. I have only to add, that having felt the difficulties of the subject in undertaking this matter, I have not felt my sense of its difficulties diminished by having contended with them. The subject has deep foundations in legal and ecclesiastical antiquity; it has wide and diffusive bearings in the present system of life and manners, and certainly a very serious influence upon the good order of society, as well as the comfort of individuals. I could have wished that it had fallen into other hands, particularly those to which is confided the care of the great establishments of the empire; for unquestionably, in a country which, with a most fortunate wisdom, makes its religion an essential part of its civil polity, the establishments of religion are amongst the greatest. Far be from me the vanity of supposing that any bill which I can construct, on a subject so loaded with practical difficulties, can find a ready acceptance amongst the various opinions which prevail upon it. For I must honestly confess, that since it has been devolved upon me, I have rarely conversed with any gentleman who did not. favour me with an opinion, that was not directly the reverse of the last opinion I had been favoured with upon the subject. All I have to say is, that if, with the improvements the bill shall receive from the wisdom of the House, it should finally succeed, I shall be glad to have been the instrument of introducing it to its notice. If it should fail, I shall write satisfeci upon my own mind and conscience, under the conviction that I have, with fair intentions, pursued a most desirable object, and only failed under difficulties, to which humble talents are very unequal. Sir, I move, that leave be given to bring in a Bill," to amend and render more effectual the Act of Henry 8th." Mr. Dickinson seconded the motion, and was sure, from the high authority of the mover, that the measure proposed would be found beneficial to the country, Mr. Simeon wished that an interval should be allowed between the first and second reading of the bill. Sir W. Scott said, that he wished to have the blanks filled up, and then to allow the bill to stand over the holidays. The motion was then agreed to. Debate on Sir Francis Burdett's Motion for an Inquiry into the Conduct of the late Administration.] April 12. Sir Francis which was, the French ambassador himself-and that an embargo was laid on all ships in our ports freighted with grain for France, at that time certainly under severe pressure from scarcity, and threatened with the horrors of famine. Every one of which acts was contrary to the law of nations at peace, and in direct violation of a specific treaty between this country and France. These acts of hostility, together with our other warlike preparations (such as embodying the militia, calling together parliament in an unusual manner, augmenting our forces by sea and land, and, though last not least, the publication of lord Auckland's Memorial to the States General, a composition which, for folly, vulgar unmeaning abuse, and insolence, has scarcely a parallel), could not fail to excite something more than doubt in the government of France, as to the sincerity of the professions of neutrality made by the ministers of this country, and of their determination to abstain from interfering in the interior concerns of that; and these apprehensions, on the part of the government of France, could not but be greatly increased, by the recent recollection of similar professions made by the emperor of Germany, then in strict alliance with us, at the very time when he had planned an invasion of the French territory, and even up to the very moment of his entrance upon it, in pursuance of the treaty of Pilnitz; of which infamous transaction our court could not be ignorant, and, in all probability, was a party concerned. Burdett rose, to bring forward his pro- | an alien bill was passed, the first object of mised motion for an Inquiry into the Conduct of the late Administration, and spoke as follows: Sir; the time is at length arrived, when laying aside conjecture and uncertainty, we are enabled to form a just estimate of the professions, principles, and conduct, of those men who have, for these nine years past, and still do (for it is the same junto), exercise the powers of government in this country. Now we may be permitted to make up our accounts of blood and treasure, and to show those who have a right to inspect them, what has been received in return for the dreadful expenditure of both. Now, we may be allowed to take a retrospect of the conduct of ministers and of the objects avowed; first, for engaging us in, and afterwards for continuing, the contest. I say, of the objects avowed; because, in the variance between the avowed and the real objects, consists principally their guilt. But, above all, I wish to call the attention of the House, and of the public at large, to the many material and mischievous alterations of the laws, and manifold acts of aggression, against the constitution of the country. In taking this retrospect which I propose, the origin of the war, so repeatedly discussed within these walls and agitated without, naturally presents itself first to our view; and though it has been decided by ministers, and their notoriously-corrupt adherents, that this war was just and unavoidable in its commencement, and necessary in its prosecution; yet I may now be allowed to appeal, from decisions obtained by corruption, falsehood, and delusion, to the sober judgment of this House and of the public at large, who have by this time, it is to be hoped, recovered a sufficient portion of common understanding to enable them to distinguish between truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, necessity and free choice. To prove that this war had not its origin in any such unavoidable necessity, but that it was sought for and provoked by his majesty's ministers, it will be sufficient to recall to the recollection of the House, the conduct of the ministers of this country towards France, previous to the commencement of actual hostility; we shall then find, that after the revolution of the 10th of August, 1792, our ambassador was recalled from Paris; that the French ambassador resident in this country was refused to be acknowledged-that What, then, was the conduct of the French government during this period? Notwithstanding the recall of lord Gower from Paris, they did not recall their own ambassador; they expressed, with the utmost moderation, their uneasiness at these acts of hostility on the part of England; they deprecated a rupture with England; they offered explanation of any part of their conduct which might give rise to it; I might almost say, they entreated ministers to submit to discussion and negotiation whatever might be the cause of difference between this country and that. What answer did ministers make to language so temperate? That of men predetermined upon hostility! They added insulting language to their former acts of aggression; they refused to give or take any explanation, or to enter upon the work of negotiation at all. Hitherto ne gotiation used to precede; cannon, the emblem of war, the ultima ratio regum, was wont to follow. Our ministers have reversed that march; the artillery of their vengeance, with which they undertake to punish guilty nations, leads the van. Negotiation brings up the rear, whilst war, dreadful war, that time of harvest to kings and ministers, of famine, pestilence, and misery to the people, fills up the space between. At length the French government declared-not war against England-but, after stating the conduct of the ministers of this country, and enumerating these acts of hostility, that the French republic was at war with the king of England. I have been the more particular with respect to the origin of the war, because, stopping short of a first principle, generally tends to confusion; and because, on the possibility or impossibility of avoiding so dreadful an evil as war, depends much of the guilt of those transactions to which it gives rise. This, then, having been the mode of originating the war, let us next consider who were our allies? Austria and Prussia, those crowned plunderers, who came with their hands dyed in blood, and reeking from the massacres of Warsaw, after having dethroned the king of Poland and partitioned that territory, marched, in pursuance of the treaty of Pilnitz, to invade and partition the territory of France. These were the tyrants with whom ministers advised his majesty to form a triumvirate. Such being the origin, and with such allies, let us next consider what were the avowed objects of the war. Sufficient time has not yet elapsed, or I should scarcely expect to be credited, to have effaced from the memory of those who hear me that the first wretched pretext for openly joining the coalition against France, was on behalf of our allies, the Dutch, to prevent the opening of the navigation of the Scheldt, a pretext indeed treated at the time by a man who is gone wild into his grave, with the contempt it unquestionably deserved. Mr. Burke did at the outset rend with a boisterous hand the veil of ministerial artifice and hypocrisy, and I can show no reason, unless that the people had no eyes, why they did not at that time discover the cheat. Once engaged in the war the grand difficulty was got over, and it was easy to find pretexts for its continuance, and the minions of arbitrary power and corruption in this country were so dazzled with the first successes of the leagued despots against the liberty of France, that this war for the Scheldt was soon by them swelled into a war for religion, social order and civil society; by which they mean despotism, unconditional submission on the part of every people to every government, and in the height of their delirium nothing would satisfy them, but marching to Paris, according to the duke of Brunswick's infamous and contemptible manifesto, the re-establishment of the Bourbon family and the Bastile, and the blood of those who had asserted, as we did in the case of the Stuarts, the right of the people to choose their own government. This was that French principle which it behoved all regular governments, per fas et nefas, to crush; hence all that zeal for the Bourbon family, which otherwise would have been as much neglected as our deserted ally, the family of Orange: hence all those pretended terrors for the dethronement of a king, which otherwise would no more have alarmed them than the dethronement of the king of Poland; hence all those horrors for the murder, as they termed it, of a prince, which otherwise would no more have affected them than the assassination of their late allies the emperors Peter and Paul; hence all that malignity which characterised this political crusade, which rendered in their eyes, a whole people worthy of extermination, which dispensed, whilst they were victorious, with the rules of civilized war, and authorized in their opinion the attempt to starve five and twenty millions of people. In vain did that most able member of this House, warn ministers and the nation of the danger from the very nature of this contest,-in vain did he caution them against the danger of establishing by this war, a great military republic in the heart of Europe,-in vain did he confute their puerile but specious arguments, founded on the supposed consequence of issuing French assignats,-in vain did he expose the wild folly and madness of attempting to conquer France, and the impossibility, unless France was conquered, of her submitting to any interference of foreign powers in her interior concerns : terror, corruption, and the din of war silenced the voice of reason and experience, and France forced into a contest, from which she had no retreat, no choice but victory, or the re-imposition of the Bourbon family, armed with new te ors from vengeance, having no alternative but to conquer or be conquered, exerted under these circumstances, a furious energy, of which under any other she must have been incapable, overcame all difficulties, bore down all obstacles, and surrounded by the leagued despots like a wild beast, with the hunters spears, and treated as such, goaded to madness and driven to despair, committed acts of desperation which were afterwards made use of by those who had really caused them, to excite the hatred of every country in Europe against her. Victorious in her turn she threatened the threatener, oppressed the oppressor, and having in the struggle wrested Belgium from the Emperor, the recovery of Belgium became the next avowed and certainly a more national and important, if it had ever been the real object of the war. Again did the able statesman before alluded to exert his unrivalled abilities to prevent a continuation of the calamities of war on the score of Belgium; not, I believe I may venture to say, that he undervalued that possession, or thought it a slight acquisition to France, but because he was convinced that, like the Scheldt, was merely a pretext, whilst the same secret objects and motives which induced the ministers to commence, also actuated them in the prosecution of the war, and which rendered every hope groundless of its ending in any less unfortunate issue. What then, Sir, was the language of the right hon. gentleman who now sits behind the ostensible minister, and who has since defended, and as most people think, negociated this peace? That to leave France in possession of so extensive a line of sea coast as Belgium would afford her, was dangerous to the maritime strength of Great Britain; that it was impossible for this country to make peace with honor or safety leaving that conquest to France. Yet now the right hon. gentleman says, that a peace is concluded both safe and honourable, leaving that conquest to France, leaving her not only in possession of such an extensive line of coast as Belgium affords her, but in possession of almost all the ports of Europe from the Elbe to the Adriatic. The same right hon. gentleman with the same consistency, after having plunged us deeper into continental politics than at any former period, after having exhausted mines of wealth and shed oceans of blood continental warfare, now tells you, that [VOL. XXXVI.] he has discovered the true policy of England is, to have nothing to do with the affairs of the continent. This, Sir, I know was the opinion held by some of our wisest statesmen of old,-their maxim was to guard the narrow seas, and not to become principals in continental wars, but it always treated, up to the present time, by the right hon. gentleman, as a short, sighted, narrow, illiberal policy, altogether unsuited to the present circumstances of Great Britain and of Europe. Continuing the war then, upon the pretence of the recovery of Belgium, after a number of triumphs and victories on the part of France, Holland, for whose protection she, however, deprecating our interference, we undertook the war, fell under the dominion of France, and the deliverance of Holland from the Jacobin power of France became a favourite theme of ministerial declamation, and afforded in her turn a still more important avowed object for the continuance of the war. To doubt of the infallibility of the success of the expedition fitted out for the deliverance of Holland, was to expose oneself to that insolence with which, since corruption has attained its present alarming height, all men have been treated who have ventured to differ in opinion with the minister; and it was said, that the slightest knowledge of human nature was sufficient to convince every man in his senses of its infallible success. Now, Sir, not to enter into a detail of expeditions, which would be endless, and which will properly come hereafter, when the House shall have agreed to the inquiry which I mean to propose, suffice it to say, that expedition, after the loss of a number of brave men, who deserved more honourable graves-after having exposed a gallant army to disgrace, and placed it in a situation of difficulty no courage could surmount, terminated not in the deliverance of Holland, but in the deliverance of our own army by a most mortifying convention.-Having failed in this infallible attempt to rescue our allies, the Dutch, who fought most gallantly against us, unsuccessful in all their intermediate projects, baffled in every quarter, destructive to every country that listened to their counsels, or admitted their interference, still shifting the ground of war to any thing and every thing for the purpose of delusion, positive of success in the gross of projects which had all failed in the detail, yet calling for confidence [2K] |