rose to address the House upon a subject which he felt to be of essential importance to the community. He had deferred it until he had been enabled to come forward with materials so strong that—

interrupted the right hon. gent. There was an order of that House, which could not be enforced at any time with more propriety than the present. The motion of the right hon. member had, he understood, for its objects some considerations connected with persons present, though not in the lower part of that House. He probably intended to compliment them; but as it was not the custom to drink the chairman's health until he had withdrawn, he would recommend that a similar movement should take place among those gentlemen.

was surprized at the total opposition of the right hon. member's conduct, to even his own ideas of order. Nothing could be more disorderly than to enter into an argument, to prove the value of the standing order, at the moment when he professed that no argument was necessary.

was of opinion that there should be no interruption of the right hon. gent. who commenced the debate, unless there was a fair proof of disorder, on a motion to be made.

Sir, I have a motion to make.

Sir, I have also a motion to make, and the right hon. gent.'s motion will probably come with more advantage after mine has been disposed of. I am in possession of the Chair; I have interrupted no order of the House; it is the interruption that is disorderly.

I apprehend that no interruption can be allowed, except on occasion of a breach of order, or to move one of the standing orders of the House. On that to which the allusion has been made there can be no debate.

then moved that strangers should be excluded, and the gallery was cleared.

We have however been favoured, with the following sketch of the debate which ensued.

said, of all the people in that House he least expected the enforcement of the standing order, for the exclusion of the public, from the right hon. gent. who had come forward on this occasion. He expected he would have eagerly seized this opportunity to recant the false doctrines which he had formerly so unguardedly uttered, and become a convert to the true faith of the freedom of the press. He expected this candid and conciliatory proceeding, particularly as the right hon. gent. had been so very zealous in the correction of his speeches, so very anxious as to the stress of his emphasis, and the modulation of his voice, and so studiously inquisitive as to the happiest attitudes for giving his sentiments a pantomimic effect. He was led, indeed, still more strongly into this expectation, which had been so fatally disappointed, from the information that he had made amicable advances to Mr. Cobbett, and entered into a fair treaty of conciliation. These hints he merely threw out for the consideration of the right hon. gent. Mr. Sheridan then professed his intention of not troubling the House at any length, which indeed could hardly be necessary, after the observations he had made respecting the subject of his present motion on a former night. He could assure his right hon. friend, (Mr. Windham,) that he should not indulge himself, in any declamatory invectives against the honourable benchers of Lincoln's Inn, or any glowing panegyrics on the gentlemen who had just left the gallery. The case that he wished to bring before the House was one which seemed to him well to deserve the interposition of parliament; yet he should have been better pleased to have obtained his object, as he expected to have done, by the voluntary act of the honourable benchers, of whose bye-law he complained. He understood that the law was made unadvisedly, on a sudden application to them after dinner, when but a few benchers were present, and he believed that even those who made it were well disposed to repeal it, on further consideration of the subject. He knew that out of term they could not, in the regular course of their proceedings, meet for the purpose, but the matter in his opinion was weighty and urgent enough to call for an extraordinary meeting. At all events, he could not reconcile himself to any further delay in submitting it to the consideration of the House. The bye-law, which had been placarded by the order of the benchers in the common hall of the society, where the court of chancery sits, proscribed a whole class of men, and fixed a stigma upon, them, by declaring them to be unworthy of being admitted into an honourable profession. It was declared, that no man who had ever written in a newspaper for hire, should be allowed to perform his preparatory exercises, in order to his admission to the bar. If such a rule had formerly prevailed, it would have excluded from the bar many men who had been ornaments to their profession, and distinguished members of that House. He had a long list of such characters in his hand, but would not read it, lest it should seem indelicate or invidious; since the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, it seems, thought the cause disreputable, though in his own eyes it was the reverse. He might, however, without any danger of exciting any contemptuous feelings in the mind of his right hon. friend, (Mr. Windham) mention a man whom he rather more than idolized, Dr. Johnson, as one who had written for periodical publications for hire, and had even written parliamentary debates, though without coming into the gallery to hear them. Here Mr. Sheridan related a well-known anecdote of Dr. Johnson, which had occurred at the literary club. Two speeches of the late lord Chatham, or, to avoid the turn of a certain waggery that had been used, he would say, the great lord Chatham, had been compared to the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes; but the question was, which of them resembled the Greek, and which the Roman orator; and this was referred to Dr. Johnson. The answer was, I do not know; but this I well remember, that I wrote them both. He might also, without offence, mention another departed character, lately high in the esteem of the House, and of his right hon. friend in particular, the late Dr. Laurence, who also would have fallen within the present proscription, if it had formerly existed. He did not know whether the authors of this bye law confined their dislike to daily, newspapers. Did it extend to weekly ones also? If so, why not to monthly, magazines and quarterly reviews? If it reached so far as Annual Registers, their principle would stigmatize even Mr. Burke, who had written for a periodical publication of that kind, and been remunerated, for his trouble. Of about 23 gentlemen who were now employed in reporting parliamentary debates for the newspapers, no less than 18 were men regularly educated at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin, most of them graduates at those universities, and several of them had gained prizes and other distinctions there, by their literary attainments. He again repeated, that he could mention a long list of public and professional characters of great respectability, to whom this illiberal proscription would strictly apply, but that he abstained from it for the reasons already assigned. After several other forcible remarks, Mr. Sheridan concluded by moving, That the Petition of Mr. Farquharson should be referred to the standing committee of courts of judicature.

opposed the motion, not on the merits of the case, from the consideration of which he professedly abstained, but because there was a legal remedy by application to the twelve judges; to prove which he read a case from Douglas's Reports, and, therefore, the interposition of parliament would, in his judgment, be premature and improper.

rose to use the short monosyllable "No!" to every assertion made about him, except as to the correction of his speeches. Above all, he never had descended to any advance, or the slightest conciliation with Mr. Cobbett. He would now leave the subject to those who came for the purpose of discussing it.—[The right hon. gent. shortly after left the House.]

said, that his connexion with the society of Lincoln's Inn, of which he had had the honour of being a member for 35 years, might alone have led him to take a part in the debate; but a particular consideration, known to many gentlemen around him, and of which he should probably put the House in possession before he sat down, called on him more strongly to express his sentiments on this occasion. He hoped nothing that might fall from him would be construed into any disrespect towards the benchers of Lincoln's Inn; he felt for them collectively, and as far as their characters were known to him, individually too, the most unfeigned respect. Among them he could reckon some of his earliest and most intimate professional friends; and he believed that men of more liberality of sentiment could not easily be found. But he must nevertheless freely avow his concurrence in the views of the right hon. gent. who made this motion, and declare, that he thought the regulation in question highly illiberal and unjust. He doubted not it must have proceeded from some hasty feelings, and would on due consideration be revoked. To fix a stigma upon a whole class of men, by shutting against them indiscriminately the door of a liberal and honourable profession, open to all the rest of their fellow subjects, was, in his judgment, quite unjustifiable, unless there were something in the common description which belonged to them, that implied of necessity an universal unfitness for that profession; or unless their exclusion by any other and fairer criterion could not be attained. Now it could not be alledged, in the case of admission to the bar by the law societies, that there was no power of ascertaining the qualifications of students applying to be called, and inquiring, if it were thought fit, into their past character and conduct. Already the standing regulations required that every gentleman, before he could perform his exercises, or, if he remembered right, before he even entered into commons, must produce a certificate from a practising barrister of the society, that he was qualified in point of character for the profession of the bar; and prior to his being actually called, he must have a like testimonial from one of the benchers themselves. If these precausions were not sufficient, further and stricter ones might be framed, so as to scrutinize effectually into the moral and intellectual character of every individual candidate for admission, without branding the class of fellow subjects to which he had belonged. There was not in this case, therefore, such an apology, as necessity or strong reasons of public convenience might afford, for a general rule of exclusion. Was it then the principle of this regulation that persons who had any time written for a periodical press and not written gratuitously, were, as such, universally unworthy of admission into an honourable profession? a reproach in which Johnson and Hawkesworth, Steele and Addison, would have been included, was surely more likely to reflect disgrace on its authors than its objects: He was at a loss for the distinct views on which such a prejudice against persons writing for newspapers could be founded. Was it supposed that persons of that description were always destitute of education and liberal sentiments, or were, in point of origin and connections in life, if those were material circumstances, unfit for the society of gentlemen? Without admitting that writing for the periodical press, though a man's original occupation, and however long persevered in, would constitute any disparagement, cases might be put, in which, from accidental circumstances, a gentleman, originally destined to the profession of the law, might have been driven to engage in such an employment as a resource for his immediate subsistence, and continued in it, perhaps, but for a brief period, without much interruption of his professional studies, and yet by this harsh rule, his return to his professional path would be for ever cut off. I will, for instance (said Mr. Stephen) suppose a young man by family and education a gentleman, and from his earliest years designed for the legal profession, to be a member of Lincoln's Inn, regularly prosecuting his studies as a lawyer, and to have arrived at within a year and a half of the proper standing to entitle him to be called to the bar, when, by the death of his parents, and previous family misfortunes, he finds himself totally deprived of all present means of support. The resource which he might have found in the aid of near relations, is pre-occupied by fellow orphans, who from their sex and tender years, are more helpless, than himself, or perhaps he finds his heart too delicate or too proud for dependency. He has confidence enough in himself to think that when the time comes that he can put on the gown, he shall find in it an ample resource. But what expedient can he possibly explore in the mean time for his subsistence? In this emergency, a literary friend, a man of character and honour, connected with one of the periodical prints, proposes to our young law student that he should undertake, as a temporary expedient, to conduct, for a liberal remuneration, one of the departments of his newspaper in which there happens to be a vacancy. He proposes, for instance, that of reporting the debates of this House; can it be doubted, Sir that if the rule now in question had not existed, such an offer would be joyfully accepted? Let us suppose it, then, to be so. During one session, our young student reports the debates of this House, and performs what he finds an arduous duty, with satisfaction to his own heart, recording honestly and impartially the deliberations of parliament, for the information of his country. At the end of a single year, he finds himself enabled by the death of a relation, and its consequences, to resign this employment, and resume his professional path, and he is grateful to Heaven for an intermediate occupation, which had not only rescued him from dependence and want, but improved his qualifications for future success at the bar. But when he petitions the bench of this society to be called, how sad would be his disappointment, how cruel would be his humiliation and distress, to find that this inexorable rule of the society has given a death blow to his new-born hopes! How would his mind be stung when told that the expedient which he had regarded with self complacency as his honest refuge from dependency and distress, had covered him with indelible disgrace, and for ever barred against him the door of an honourable profession? Sir, (said Mr. Stephen) I can conceive better than I can express what would be the anguish, and what the indignant feelings of such a man as I have described, on such an occasion. But I may be thought, perhaps, to have stated an imaginary and highly improbable case. No, Sir, it is not so. The case that I have described, is not imaginary; it really did exist; all but the rejection, which did not take place, because no such rule as that in question had then been made. In other respects the case is real. Thirty years ago, it was the case of the individual who has now the honour to address you. (Repeated cries of hear, hear.) When the cheers of the House had subsided, Mr. Stephen proceeded to say, I feel, Sir, not at all abashed at this avowal. It is an incident of my life, which I am much more disposed to be proud of, or let me rather say, to be grateful for, to a kind disposing providence, than to blush for. I should indeed blush to be supposed to be ashamed of it. I do not believe, that any gentleman in this House, or in my profession, will think meanly of me on this account; but should there be such a man, I hope I shall never hear of it, for I should be tempted to hold him in more contempt, than it is allowable for us frail beings to feel for any of our fellow mortals. Mr. Stephen went on to state, that his own case was by no means too favourable a specimen of the class of persons who were his contemporaries in the same employment. He could recollect about eight or nine of them, and of these he did not know one, whose subsequent conduct in life reflected any discredit on his former occupation. He believed only one of them still continued connected with any periodical press, and that was a gentleman to whose character his testimony was not wanted, as he was well known and esteemed by many members of that House; and reckoned among his friends one of the first characters of the country. He meant the editor and proprietor of The Morning Chronicle. Of the rest, five or six had been called to the bar; and he never heard that any of them had been supposed at all to discredit his profession. One had been since very eminent in the courts of our sister island; another had made a fortune in the colonies, and had since held a situation of honour and confidence under the crown; a third had retired from the English bar on the acquisition of a private, fortune, before his very eminent talents, natural and acquired, had time, to be known in his profession. He was now alas! no more; but this he would say of him, that no man he ever knew in his very varied walks in life possessed a nicer sense of honour and integrity. The last he should notice of them, and whom he might without impropriety mention, was long a member of that House, and the very intimate friend of the right, hon. gent. who made this motion; he meant the late Mr. Richardson. He must add, with gratitude, that to his kindness, under providence, he was indebted for that seasonable resource in misfortune, to which he had lately adverted. Mr. Stephen added, that, with a single exception or two at the most, he did not know who the gentlemen were that now conducted the department of the newspapers, in which he and the friends he had alluded to were once employed. He could not speak, therefore, from any private partiality to them, and was confident that such members as took the trouble to observe how his speeches had in general been reported, would not think he was much in their favour; but it was the profession or employment itself, not the individuals who now or at any other time filled it, that he thought it his duty to defend against an unjust proscription; and it could be hardly thought that there was any thing essentially degrading in the employment itself after the facts which he had mentioned, in addition to those which had been alluded to by the right hon. mover of this question. For his part, indeed, he could not see what there was more disparaging to a gentleman, or a man in a liberal profession, in reporting the proceedings and debates of the legislature, than in reporting the judgments of a court of law. Mr. Stephen then proceeded to argue against the regulation in question on grounds of public and constitutional policy. To fix a stigma on any class of men, and degrade them below their fellow subjects, by exclusion from a common privilege, was the surest way to make them disaffected to the state. Such, at least, must be the case, when the ground of exclusion was an impeachment of their moral or honorary character. But if such oppression was to be introduced in this land of freedom and equality, at least we should take care not to select, as the victims of it, a set of men who had so much political power in their hand as the conduction of the periodical press. The military profession was every where held honourable, and to degrade it would be felt by every body to be in the last degree imprudent and dangerous; but he would be bold to say, that the military had not more the fate of the country in their hands under despotic governments, than the conductors of newspapers had in this kingdom. Against their united and systematic hostilities, the constitution could not long stand. To sanction an innovation therefore, that would tend to raise an esprit du corps among them universally against our public establishments, would be to aggravate greatly the dangers of the country. As a friend to the liberty of the press, he deprecated such a precedent; for the press would soon become dangerous and obnoxious, if it was to fall into the hands of degraded and disaffected characters. It was in this view chiefly, that he thought the interference of parliament justifiable, if the perseverance of the benchers should make it necessary, notwithstanding the arguments of the Attorney-general. It was not a private or particular case, to be redressed by appeal to the judges, but a case of general end public mischief, fit for the presiding wisdom of parliament, as the guardian of the public weal, to notice and correct. He regarded such stigmas on a particular class or cast of men, in any society, as cruel and mischievous in another view. If they did not find men worthy of contempt, they would soon make them so. Degrade any portion of society, and you will infallibly reduce it moral character, till it seems deserving of the ignominy to which it has been unjustly subjected. He had lived long in a part of the world which furnished a striking proof of this remark; and there was nothing more odious in a contemptuous oppression, than its corrupting effect on the minds of its unfortunate victims. If this were so when the badge of degradation was the colour of the skin, or some other subject of public contempt which the individuals derived from nature or some other unavoidable source, how much, more when entering into the degraded cast, was matter, not of necessity, but choice. Men would not choose an employment proscribed as dishonourable, unless their moral character were already corrupted. Were we prepared then, at once to maintain the liberty of the press, and to say that its conductors should hereafter be men so low in moral and honorary sentiments, as to choose an ignominious employment. Mr. Stephen further said, that to select the popular, open profession of the bar, as the only subject of this degrading disfranchisement of a portion of the commons of England, was peculiarly improper and strange. That profession was in a pre-eminent manner the patrimony of the people at large; and to it indeed they owed, more than to their parliaments, that general equality of rights, and exemption from all aristocratical oppression, which it was their distinguishing happiness to possess. The courts of law, by their liberality, had abolished that distinction of casts, which, in the times of villanage, degraded a great majority of our ancestors, and excluded them from liberal professions. It was a blessing which the people of England owed to their lawyers, and it was singular that a departure from the principle of constitutional equality, should in these days begin in the same profession. He could not help suspecting, in this regulation, a latent principle of aristocratical pride and contempt for poverty as such; for why otherwise should the restriction apply only to those who wrote for emolument? If the act of writing for the newspapers was immoral or dishonourable, he did not see how the doing it gratuitously could redeem the act from reproach. Certainly it was presumable that those who exercised such an employment for gain, were not in affluent circumstances; but if poverty or humility of origin were to become reproachful in the inns of court, many a proud scutcheon which now ornamented their walls, must be taken down. In other professions, as the church, or army, hereditary claims or fortune might facilitate preferment; but at the bar, a profession which was a much more frequent road to rank and fortune, no such extrinsic advantages were of any avail. On the contrary, it was proverbial, that a necessity arising from poverty in the early part of life was almost the only source of splendid success at the bar. It was the most amiable and valuable fruit of our happy constitution, that every path of honourable ambition was open to talents and industry, without distinction of ranks; but in the law, especially, the strongest examples of the happy effects of this equality were to be found. On the whole, therefore, if we were to begin to form proscribed and degraded casts in this country, he thought we should at least, not begin the innovation in the profession of the law, and against those who were in possession of the great organs of public information, the conductors of the periodical press. Mr. Stephen concluded by saying, that he should vote for the practical course proposed by the right honourable mover, merely because it had been proposed by him, and was the only remedy at present suggested. Had Mr. Sheridan moved for leave to bring in a bill declaring such disfranchisements of any class of British subjects, by the inns of court, unconstitutional and void, he would also have supported that measure, or any other that might be more proper to be taken for the same just and necessary end.

, as a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, greatly regretted that the regulation in question had ever been adopted, and professed his entire concurrence in all the sentiments which the last speaker had so eloquently expressed. The character of the honourable and learned gentleman was as convincing an argument as any that he had used. No man who considered what the profession and the House would have lost, if that gentleman had been excluded from the bar, by a rule of this kind, could hesitate to pronounce it both unjust and unwise, and one that ought not to be suffered to exist. In fact, the regulation had been suddenly adopted by a very small board of benchers, after dinner, on a suggestion from some barristers in the hall. Though it might surprize the House, the barrister whose name was at the head of those who signed the proposition was no other than Mr. Clifford; and the bencher in the chair, about four only being present, was the late lord Chancellor Erskine. Sir J. Anstruther added, that knowing the opinions of several of his fellow benchers on the subject, he had no doubt that when the return of term gave a proper opportunity for the purpose, the regulation would be withdrawn, and he hoped therefore the right hon. gent. would not press his proposition, which he deemed an improper and unnecessary interference with the benchers in the government of the society; especially as an appeal might bring the particular case to the revision of the twelve judges.

thought himself bound in candour to confess, that he was one of the few benchers who on the suggestion of eight barristers, had hastily adopted this regulation, which he would not undertake to defend. He paid very high compliments to Mr. Stephen, both on the score of his talents and personal character; and said, that like Longinus he had illustrated, by his own example, his own tenets on this subject. His own character was the best proof that such a rule ought not at least to be indiscriminate. He strongly maintained, in opposition to Mr. Sheridan, that the twelve judges had a jurisdiction, not merely to redress the individuals aggrieved by the rule in question, but to reverse the rule itself; and, therefore, the interference of parliament would, at least, be premature. The petitioner came per saltum to the House before he had pursued the regular course to obtain legal redress. The Solicitor General, however professed his confident expectation, that the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, now, that the merits of the question had been discussed, and were better understood, would see cause at least to revise and alter the regulation, if not wholly to revoke it.

in strong terms condemned the regulation as illiberal, impolitic, and unjust, and thought that the credit of the honourable society demanded its repeal. He also professed the highest respect for the character of Mr. Stephen, and the manly manner in which he had conducted himself on this occasion. To say more would only be to repeat the arguments of that gentleman, in all of which he heartily concurred. But he trusted that the right hon. gent., on seeing that his object was likely to be attained in a more satisfactory way, would withdraw his motion. Should the event be different from what such respectable benchers of the society as had expressed their opinions, expected, he pledged himself to support a future application to parliament to the best of his power.

in a brief and neat reply, declared he could not hesitate under such expectations as were held out to him, to withdraw his motion. His object was, always to attain his end when he could, without disputing needlessly on the means. He could not however regret having brought forward the question, as he doubted whether otherwise the matter would have been brought sufficiently to the attention of the benchers to induce them to revoke their rule; and especially since his motion had been the means of gratifying the House with the very manly and eloquent speech of the hon. and learned gent. whose case furnished so decisive, an argument in his suppprt.—The motion was accordingly withdrawn.

moved the order of the day, for the further consideration of the report of the Supply, which being read, he moved, That the same be re-committed.

objected to the Speaker leaving the chair, as he could not conceive that any suggestions in a committee could ever assimilate the enormous Staff to the army of this country. He also objected to voting more money, till they saw how the vote of the last year was expended. He then commented on the state of the Staff and Army: and said he would not allow that there had been any economy, but only an abatement of the existing profusion.

said, the difference of saving would be 13,171l. this year, arising from the discontinuance of five lieut. generals, and one major general. As this reduction, however, would not take place till 25th March, the saving would not be more than he had stated, till next year, when it would amount to 17,000l. He concluded by moving. That the sum of 457,724l. 14s. 4d. should be granted for the Staff of Great Britain.

was of opinion that a very salutary reduction might be made in our cavalry, which were not efficient from the want of horses, and which yet required an establishment of 171 officers.

expressed his utter disappointment at finding the reduction proposed so trifling. He did not however, so much condemn ministers; who, he believed, would have done more, had it been in their power.

explained. The difference between the estimates was what he had stated; namely, the difference between 470,896l. 9s. 9d. and 457,724l. 14s. 4d; and the savings next year would consequently be 17,000l.

was grieved that the late, ministers had not taken the opportunity of doing honour to themselves, and justice to the country, by doing away these enormous expences. When the country saw so little done by one party, or proposed by the other, they would get out of conceit with the House.

spoke against the diminution of the cavalry, which required more officers than at present commanded it.

said, it was not his intention, when he entered the House, to have said one word on the subjects under, discussion, nor at all to have interfered in the detail of the estimates before the Committee; but some things had passed in the course of the evening which made it absolutely necessary for him to exonerate his mind from the impression which they had left, by stating it to the Committee.— An hon. baronet (Sir T. Turton) had brought forward two very serious and grave allegations before the House, against his Majesty's ministers, to which they had not condescended to offer one single word in answer; appearing like servants who had been warned of their dismission from place totally regardless of what became of the House and property of which they were in trust.—The hon. baronet had alleged, and founded his allegations on the documents and confessions before the House, that the army, which was stated in the printed returns, before the House, existed only on paper; that there was no such army as the reports stated; and that the country was called on for supplies, enormous as they were, to pay for an army which did not, exist. These, said the hon. member, were grave and serious charges, which, in other times, would, have created universal alarm; at which the representatives of the people would have manifested their indignation; but to which in these times, ministers did not deign to offer a single syllable in answer; leaving charges wholly uncontradicted, (as he must conclude from their, silence,) because they were founded in truth and fact. If so, he feared whatever he could say on the subject would meet with no better attention—An hon. member near him (Mr. Wardle) had taken great pains to enter into the detail of the estimates, before the House, and thereby rendered it unnecessary for other members to do so likewise; but, from want of proper and foil documents, even his industry appeared only to justify what he, (Mr. Moore,) had uniformly observed on all similar discussions that the result would not even indemnify the public for the value of the paper, which was consumed in them.—He nevertheless gave the hon. member full credit for his exertions; and the more so, as he himself gave up the pursuit as hopeless and unavailing. But, there was one point of the hon. member's speech, which, Mr. Moore said, he must specially advert to. The hon. member had said, speaking of these loose, undigested, and extravagant estimates, that he did not attribute the practice exclusive to the present administration, as the estimates had regularly gone on in the same train under all administrations. Now, he meant to arrest the attention of the Committee and of the hon. member, to a point wherein this doctrine could not apply to the late administration. He said, it was no part of his duty to, defend the late administration: but it was a point of great national importance, and he must beg leave to crave the attention of the House and of the country to it. The late administration, he said, had often been reproached in that House for suddenly raising the Tax on Property from 6¼ to 10 per cent. and a temporary triumph had as often been obtained at their expence, with a view to render them unpopular.—But with the fact of raising the tax, let the House have also the principle on which that tax was so raised, and the pledges and condition which accompany it to the public mind, not merely in speeches in that House, but by an act of the Legislature, which passed both Houses, and had the royal assent—it was even then found necessary to the safe condition of the State, that the blood and treasure of the country, should be nursed and husbanded, in order to bring the pecuniary expenditure to an equality with the income, for the purpose, of sustaining a protracted war, if unavoidable, without imposing further burthens on the people. The principle indeed was laid down by the administration preceding, I mean (most highly indeed to his honour) the administration of lord Sidmouth, who in April 1804 assured this House, that he could not consider the immense military, expenditure necessary in the present year, by the extensive preparations for our defence, amounting to £4,500,000, as likely to continue to an equal amount: but that even supposing these extraordinary expenses, to be succeeded by others to an equal amount, the addition of one million annually to the War Taxes, according to the plan of the present, year, would in the course of about three years, if the war should continue so long, raise the amount of the public income to such an extent, as to leave a sum to be provided for by loan not greater than would be furnished by the Sinking Fund, from which period it was evident that the nation might persevere in the prosecution of the war, with administration, instead of an increasing debt. When the late administration came into office, they also saw the necessity of rigidly supporting the principles here laid down; and with that view, on the most accurate calculation, and with the most liberal and faithful meaning towards the people and the country, resolved to follow them up by a rigid system of economy, and especially in the discontinuance of foreign military expeditions; with the neglect of which, they were subsequently and repeatedly charged in terms of criminality, for supineness and inactivity. When they raised the income tax, they pledged themselves to the House, and to the country, that with this sum, and the loans so to be raised, they would bring the annual expenditure within the annual income; and that as they were confident of their success, within the given period of three years, they would not call for any additional burthen from the people, and bound the House and the legislature by an act, against all further possible contribution for three years.—"This, Sir, was their system, (said Mr. Moore), and had they continued in administration, I am sure, from the scrutiny which I have since made into the state of the national finances, that they would have succeeded even beyond their own calculations, and that at this time the public expenditure would have been considerably reduced within the then scale of the public income; the people would have been spared all the subsequent burthens, and the state had been perfectly secured against all probable defalcation. But, Sir, this administration were turned out under the miscreant cry of "No Popery;" and so far from being in a situation to realize this promised redemption, they had not even the expenditure of any part of the augmented tax. The whole of the supplies provided by them, unhappily for the country, fell at the disposal of the present administration; and it will be in the recollection of the House, that so wild were they for foreign Expeditions and encreased expenditure, that one of their first measures after the new parliament was assembled, was to remove and explain away the enactments of the Appropriation Act, in order to let in that system of profusion and foreign Expedition, which has proved so calamitous and fatal to the very safety of the country; which has heaped dishonour and disgrace upon the nation; and in lieu of redemption from all our then arrested financial difficulties, has left us with an annual expenditure now exceeding our annual income by no less a sum than 21 millions sterling, as decared by an hon. gent. opposite (Mr. Huskisson), from documents and vouchers taken out of their own private escrutoires.—This, Sir, is the point of contrast which I mean to draw between the system laid down by the late administration, and the conduct pursued by the present; of the relief and security we should now have possessed under the one, and the accumulation of difficulties and burthens in which the country is left involved, under the other.—Sir (continued the hon. member), I have been anxious to communicate this impression on my mind to the House and to the country; not us applicable to the details which the Committee have been discussing; it leaves them all far behind, calling for more effectual measures and rapid movements. I throw it out here, (said Mr. Moore,) that every member when he leaves this House may seriously and anxiously reflect on this situation of the country, in his hours of quiet and silent retirement; I throw it out, said he, for the serious reflections of those who love and wish to save the country." Seeing an hon. gent. on the floor, (Mr. Bankes), Mr. Moore said, he had on a former occasion conjured him to come forward with an whole system of future expenditure, founded on principles of economy, national dignity, and national safety. He had already declared that he considered the Finance Committee as a committee of national safety, and must still call it so, so long as national safety, as now undeniably admitted, depended on the reform of the finances; and he again and again conjured the hon. gent. and his colleagues, with all watchful vigilance and jealousy to digest and bring forward an whole system of retrenchment and reform, and thus to acquit themselves of their duty as faithful and honest representatives of the people, totally regardless how the ministers, who are only trustees of the public, might venture to dispose of it in the face of the country. Mr. Moore said, he should with this view, recommend it to them to revise all the establishments and scales of expenditure of the country, and consider how far they apply the principle laid down by Butler's reception of a lawyer's bill, "from which, if you cut one third from the top (says this happy humourist) and cut one third from the bottom, you will be certain of leaving as much as he is honestly entitled to charge." Mr. Moore said, the situation of the country required the instant adoption of masculine measures of this description. The country was to be saved and must be saved; and it was acknowledged on all sides, that that salvation depended on reforming the finances; he knew of nothing to intervene to prevent it. That long hackneyed bugbear, called invasion, was now declared to be "morally impossible:" the truth and fact is, said Mr. Moore, that this was always a bugbear; there never was the least foundation for any apprehension of the kind; and it only formed part of a system of delusion, of imposition, and fraud upon the public mind, from the year 1793, under which ministers had exacted from the country, and expended upwards of 1,000 millions of money.

moved an amendment, "That a sum no greater than 449,038l. 11s. 10d. be granted for the service of the military staff."

supported the amendment.

was surprised that gentlemen should think the estimate extravagant, when such a mode had been adopted by those who were formerly in power, and to whom the gentlemen had been supporters.

said, the right hon. gent. had begun his speech as he commenced his political career, by recurring to the conduct of those who preceded him; and by a trifling recrimination. He considered the system of those estimates vicious, and would therefore vote for the amendment.

After some observations the House divided on the amendment, when there appeared Ayes 61, Noes 99—Majority 38.