presented a Petition from several merchants, traders, and manufacturers of the towns and port of Port Glasgow and Newark; setting forth,

"That the petitioners, understanding that sundry applications have been made to the House for a repeal of his Majesty's Orders in Council, of the 26th of April, 1809, on the pretext of these Orders having injured the trade and manufactures of the nation, the petitioners, under a conviction of little or no injury having been felt, except in the trade with America, but, sensible of the necessity as well as pro- priety of their having been issued, and that they ought to be continued, as a necessary and wise measure of hostility and retaliation against the enemy, do most humbly pray the House against taking any steps towards the repeal or relinquishments of a measure, the principle of which tends very essentially to the support of the interest of these realms during and in the prosecution of the war, from which they cannot with safety recede until the enemy is reduced to reason."

presented a Petition from the merchants, manufacturers, and other inhabitants of the town of Shrewsbury; setting forth,

"That the petitioners are much interested in the export trade to America, particularly in the articles of woollen and linen cloth, flannels and hose; and that they find the American ports closed against them, owing, as they conceive, to the operation of the Orders in Council, whereby a considerable branch of their trade is annihilated, and many goods, peculiarly adapted for that market, remain on hand, without any prospect of sale; and that the petitioners have every reason to fear that, however great their present calamities may be, they are only the prelude to others which they shudder to contemplate; and that, looking upon the Orders in Council as the cause of the present stagnation and distress of their trade, the petitioners humbly and earnestly implore the House to adopt such measures, as to them may seem expedient, for their speedy and complete revocation."

A Petition of the inhabitants of Kendal, manufacturers of a certain quality of coarse woollens, commonly called Kendal cottons, was also presented and read; setting forth,

"That the consumption of Kendal cottons is almost entirely confined to the States of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, in the United States of America; and that the petitioners have, by the continuance of the Orders in Council, been put to very serious inconveniences, from the want of a market for this particular species of woollens; and that they have embarked a very large capital in their different works and machinery, and have continued their work-people nearly in full employment, on account of the generally distressed state of the country, and the difficulty of procuring other work, as well as from the delusive prospects which have occasionally been promulgated, for more than a year, that the restrictions would cease, and which the petitioners are given to understand would have been the case had the Orders in Council been removed; and praying, that such measures may be adopted as to the wisdom of parliament may seem best calculated to open a free channel of commercial intercourse with our American brethren."

Ordered to lie upon the table.

presented a Petition from the manufacturers, tradesmen, and other inhabitants of the town of Shrewsbury, setting forth, "That the petitioners are directly engaged, or very much interested in, the manufacture and sale of coarse woollen cloths, flannels, hose and other fabrics, many of which are now exported to the East Indies and to the country north of India; and the petitioners verily believe the export may be much increased were a free trade opened between this country and the East; and they humbly implore the House to adopt such measures, as to them may seem fit, to prevent the renewal of the East India Company's Charter, and to open a free trade to India and to China for all the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, subject only to such restrictions as may be judged necessary to be imposed by his Majesty's government for the preservation of the political interests of India, and for the equitable collection of his Majesty's revenue."

Ordered to lie upon the table.

stated, that if the committee for the examination of witnesses on the Orders in Council would sit after the business of this day was disposed of, till one or two o'clock in the morning, he thought he could get through all the witnesses whose calls were most pressing to return to their business and homes; and if the House would agree to dedicate the whole of Wednesday next, he had no doubt but he should be able to conclude the examination so far as related to that part of the case which he had to bring forward for the consideration of the House. He supposed, that between next Thursday and next Tuesday fortnight, the 2nd of June, the witnesses on the other side would be done with; and if that should be the case, it was his intention to bring forward his motion on the subject, which he was rather inclined to think would be an Address to the Prince Regent than in the form of resolutions.

had no objection to the mode of proceeding pointed out by the hon. and learned gentleman.

, in rising to move for an Address to his royal highness the Prince Regent, for a monument to the memory of Mr. Perceval, did not think it necessary to apoligize to the House for intruding himself upon them, supported as he was by the universal abhorrence of the act which had deprived the House and the country of his right hon. and much lamented friend. Encouraged by this consideration, he would venture to state the motives by which he was influenced. He had tried to frame his motion in such a way, as to repel any supposition that it involved a political pledge. It would go merely to state, that the right hon. Spencer Perceval having, in the conscientious discharge of his duty, drawn upon himself the unrelenting animosity of an individual, by refusing to remunerate a private loss by a public grant, had been assassinated within the walls of the House of Commons. He asked for no opinion on the political merits of Mr. Perceval. It would be highly unbecoming in him had he done so. All he asked was a commemoration of his virtues, and a record of the sense which the House entertained of the atrocity of the act by which he had fallen. He only asked the hon. gentlemen opposite to do that which, had a similar accident happened under similar circumstances, to any one of them, he would most cordially and sincerely have done. Of Mr. Perceval it might be truly said that he had injured no man, and that he did good to all whom it was in his power to assist. It might perhaps be permitted him to say, that as long as a single virtuous feeling glowed within his breast, he should think of the crime which had been perpetrated with the utmost abhorrence, and of the object of that crime with the utmost respect and veneration.

The clerk having, in consequence of his lordship's request, read the Resolutions of the House of Tuesday last,

moved, "That an humble Address be presented to his royal high- ness the Prince Regent, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions, that a Monument be erected in the collegiate church of Saint Peter Westminster, to the memory of the late right hon. Spencer Perceval, First Commissioner of his Majesty's Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was assassinated within the walls of parliament; as a mark of the deep sense which this House entertains of his public and private virtues, and of its abhorrence of the act by which he fell; and to assure his Royal Highness that this House will make good the expence attending the same."

seconded the motion. It appeared to him to be universally admitted that some durable public testimony was requisite to record the abhorrence of parliament of the late atrocious occurrence. What parliament had done already would not go beyond their own lives. He trusted that the decision of the House on the noble lord's motion would be unanimous; otherwise justice would not be done to the public virtues of Mr. Perceval, acknowledged as they had been from all quarters, the sincerity of which acknowledgment he had no reason to doubt.

, feeling as he did the most sincere regret for the late calamity, could easily conceive the pain experienced by those who were intimately connected with the eminent statesman, of whom the House and the country had been deprived. He had concurred in the former votes not only for the sake of unanimity, but because Mr. Perceval had died unenriched by his important office, and he defied the tongue of malice to impute those votes to any improper motive. It was with great pain, he observed, that he had now a different duty to discharge. To vote a public monument to an individual, was so clear a recognition of his public services, and of the public gratitude due to him, that, having opposed most of Mr. Perceval's political measures, he could not, in the conscientious discharge of his duty, agree to the proposition. Had he even been a supporter of Mr. Perceval's administration, he should not have inclined to bring forward such a proposition. He did not see any thing in the circumstances of Mr. Perceval's death which entitled him to such an honour, in preference to many to whom it had not been granted; among whom were lord Godolphin, sir Robert Walpole, Mr. Pelham, and, in our own times, Mr. Burke, Mr. Windham, and Mr. Fox.

observed, that if the persons just mentioned by the hon. gentleman had been actually destroyed when in the execution of their duty, and that at a moment when they were engaged in the public service, he could not believe that any House of Commons that ever existed, would have refused to erect a monument to them. Was a monument ever refused to the captain of a ship, or the leader of an army, who fell in the discharge of his duty to his country? Mr. Perceval, what ever might be his political principles, was, at the moment of his death, in the discharge of a great public duty, in which both sides of the House were concerned. He spoke this, as it struck him as a man. He had supported Mr. Perceval's political measures, when living, because he thought they were right, and not because he had any particular intimacy with that gentleman. What was the object to a great nation? All that was asked, was a monument, done by Nollekens, who was the best sculptor, and who would produce a very elegant thing for 4,000 guineas. When good men were suddenly taken from them in such a way, there ought to be some public testimony of their worth. If the hon. gentleman opposite, or the hon. gentleman next to him were suddenly taken away, although he was of very different principles, he would be the first man to propose a monument on the occasion. His was unlettered oratory, which Blair said, sometimes came more forcibly than any feed oratory. He should feel gratified if the motion were acceded to, and he was sure the country would feel gratified too.

declared, that if the motion included any political opinion, he should think it a most injudicious proposition. He should be very sorry it were to go to the vote, if it were supposed that he and his political friends were to derive any triumph from its adoption. He should deprecate the motion in that case as turning the House and the country aside from the consideration of all the moral circumstances attendant on the transaction. It was, however, precisely the same proposition as that contained in the original address. It merely testified the abhorrence which the House felt for the crime, and the respect which they entertained (a respect in which his political adversaries had been most forward to join) for the virtues of his lamented friend. He should vote for the monument, only as a memorial of the horrid act, and of the public and private virtues of the individual who was the object of it, without the slightest reference to any political consideration. The circumstances of the transaction demanded a permanent record. Those circumstances were, that a public servant of the crown perished in the service of the state, and as in the service of the state, not less in the service of parliament, at the very entrance into that assembly. He thought they would be most negligent of their duty, if they failed to leave as durable a record as the art of man could produce, to impress itself upon the eyes of the commiserating generation by which they were to be followed. The hon. gentlemen opposite would not abandon a tittle of their political principles, by acceding to the motion. If he thought they would, whatever might be his private feelings on the subject, his respect for them would induce him not to support it.

stated his reasons for not being able to concur in the motion. He acquitted the noble mover, and the noble lord, of any intention to entrap into an approbation of Mr. Perceval's politics, those who had been Mr. Perceval's political enemies. Indeed, he knew that it had been the anxious wish of the noble mover, so to reduce the meed of praise which the motion involved, as to concentrate all parties in the House, but that was impossible. To concur in an unanimous vote for this monument, would be to concur in an unanimous approval of Mr. Perceval's public services. It could not be otherwise. Even the gallant admiral had scarcely commenced his speech before he talked of the public services of Mr. Perceval. The interpretation which he (Mr. W.) had given to the vote, would be put upon it after the present fleeting debate was long over. If the monument was erected in consequence of an unanimous vote of the House, it would be said by posterity that those who arraigned all Mr. Perceval's public measures had suddenly abandoned their political opinions, and had concurred in granting to his memory a marked distinction due only to the hero who fell in the cause of his country, or to the statesman who conducted his country to prosperity. He would not trouble the House much longer, for, indeed, while the grave of Mr. Perceval remained unclosed, he did not feel disposed to enter into any thing like poli- tical dispute. The House had already redcorded their abhorrence of Mr. Perceval's assassination; they had agreed in the eminence of his public and private virtues, and, notwithstanding the durability of a monument, he trusted that the Journals of that House would be still more durable. The page of history would narrate the fact of their abhorrence. It would be a consolation to posterity, that the same page would convey the information that the person by whom it had been committed, was, as far as the subject had been investigated, unconnected with any other. He hoped this would be confirmed. He should consider it his duty to take the sense of the House on the motion. He had never, from the first day, understood it to have been the intention of Mr. Perceval's nearest friends to make such a one. He presumed, therefore, that it originated entirely with the noble lord? (Lord Clive bowed assent.) It did honour, he must say, to the noble lord's feelings; and he trusted that in what he had said, he should not be supposed to have meant any thing in the slightest degree disrespectful, either to the noble lord or to Mr. Perceval's memory. His opposition to the motion was founded on public grounds alone.

, although he wished it had been possible to secure unanimity on the present occasion, yet thought it but common candour to say, that the hon. gentleman had stated his objections to the motion in a way the least grating possible to those who were friendly to it. He had recently induced an hon. gentleman not to press a motion for a public funeral to Mr. Perceval, because he thought that that motion might have been liable to the misconstruction of comprehending parliamentary approbation of Mr. Perceval's political principles. But in his opinion, the present proposition was free from that objection, for care had been taken so to frame it that it should not convey to posterity any sentiment a jot stronger than that which the vote, to which the House had unanimously agreed, expressed. The hon. gentleman seemed apprehensive that when posterity contemplated this monument, they would regard it as a proof of parliamentary approbation of Mr. Perceval's public services, and not as a national concentration of sorrow. He did not think it would ever be so regarded. He did not think so disparaging a sentiment towards the hon. gentlemen opposite would ever be entertained, as to suppose them capable, when an obstacle to their ambition was removed, of heaping tributes upon the dead which they refused to the living. He did not conceive that the result of this motion would be liable to any such misconstruction. He thought that the construction of all who might hereafter look upon the monument (unless indeed it were possible, which it was not, that all historical records should perish, and that monument alone should survive), would be that political animosities had been, as in fact they had been suspended, and that all other considerations had for a time merged in the deeper feeling of sorrow for so lamented an individual, cut off in a manner the most atrocious and almost unexampled. He confessed that he should very much regret, if parliament were to pass lightly over an occurrence which, as it had shocked the present age, ought to be recorded in such a manner, as to excite the horror of posterity. With that view alone, and strictly limiting his intention to that object, he should most certainly give his support to the noble lord's motion. If the gallant admiral had permitted his feelings to betray him into an expression stronger than the immediate circumstance allowed, that was no argument against the motion. Even the hon. gentleman himself, at the moment when he was most anxious to guard himself from any supposed concurrence in the motion, used the words "public virtues," as applicable to Mr. Perceval, and yet those were the identical words included in the vote.

agreed with an hon. gentleman who had said, that Mr. Perceval's character would be to him a monument more durable than marble. He thought the best epitaph was pronounced upon him by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Whitbread) who said, that he never carried his political resentments beyond the doors of that House. He concurred heartily in the motion of the noble lord, without conceiving that he was thereby guilty of any dereliction of those political principles which he had always professed.

said, that although it was not to be expected that all men should be agreed in the estimation they put on the public services of Mr. Perceval, there were some public virtues which he eminently possessed that all must allow him. Great zeal for the public interest, great diligence in the public service, an incorruptible purity of intention and integrity, were virtues which every body must allow were possessed by Mr. Perceval. These acknowledged public virtues, added to his private ones, were, in his opinion, sufficient, under the circumstances of his death, to entitle him to the monument proposed; and he was sure that in acceding to the motion the House would only concur with the best sense of the country.

declared himself to be in favour of the motion.

observed, that there was no instance on the Journals in which a monument had been voted to the public or private "virtues" of any individual. In the cases of lord Chatham and other great statesmen who had been honoured with a monument at the public expence, this honour had been conferred as the reward of long and successful administrations. He could not, by any means, think that the services of Mr. Perceval were of such a nature as to be entitled to that honour, if it were not for the atrocious occurrence which terminated his life. Lord Rockingham and many other illustrious statesmen (whom he could not avoid considering as having superior claims to Mr. Perceval) had no public monuments erected to their memory. The case was widely different when great military and naval commanders expired in the moment of victory: in those cases there could be no doubt as to the value of their services: but if a monument were erected to commemorate the manner of Mr. Perceval's death, instead of a monument of honour to him, it would be a column of infamy for his murderer. It would perpetuate the memory of an action which if possible he wished might be covered with oblivion—

"Excidat illa dies ævo, ne postera credant Sæcula, Nos certe taceamus, et obruta longa Nocte, tegi gentis patiamur crimina nostræ."

deeply regretted, that he felt himself obliged to object to the motion of his noble friend. He could not, in his own mind, separate the vote of a public monument from the idea of public services. It had been said, that this was the most durable mode of expressing to after ages their abhorrence of the atrocious crime which had been committed within the walls of that House. In that point of view he could not think it necessary, as every virtuous mind must at all times feel the utmost abhorrence at such an odious transaction. To express this abhorrence there was no occasion for,

"Moumentum ære perennius,

"Regalique situ pyramidum altius."

He acknowledged most sincerely all the private virtues of Mr. Perceval, and allowed him all the praise of sincerity and integrity; qualities which could not be too highly valued in a statesman. The monument, however, which was proposed, was not so much to the virtues of Mr. Perceval, as to commemorate the vices of the person by whom he was destroyed. In the case of the duke of Buckingham, who had been assassinated like Mr. Perceval by an individual who fancied he had been ill used, no public monument had been erected. He could not, therefore, agree to the present vote.

spoke in favour of the monument. He thought that the present question ought not to be determined by precedent, but on its own peculiar circumstances. It submitted itself to all the honourable feelings of the human breast. If the murderer was able in a moment to extinguish all those public and private virtues and qualities which had been so universally admired in Mr. Perceval, he ought not to be allowed to put an end to the power of parliament of expressing its grateful and lasting sense of those virtues.

gave his most hearty assent to the proposition for a monument, though he was far from thinking that the glory of his right hon. friend should be looked for in a monument. The place in which it would best appear was the history of his country, in which he would go down to succeeding generations as one of its most upright ministers and brightest ornaments. With respect to the erection of a monument to his name in Westminster abbey, it were to be wished that many, whose memories obtained the same distinction, had been equally deserving of it. It could not be expected of those who differed from Mr. Perceval in opinion on public matters, that they should agree in the estimation in which others held his public services; but it would be allowed by all that his intentions were right,—that he was zealous in the discharge of the public duties that he had undertaken, and that he possessed not only many private virtues, but that those virtues were carried into the sphere of his public conduct. Now it appeared to him that nothing would be more creditable to the present age, in the Opinion of posterity, than to shew in this manner that they knew how to estimate the value of private virtues carried into public life, and exercised in a public station. He thought they would do honour to their own times, as well as to the memory of the individual, in agreeing to them proposition of the noble lord.

wished it to be distinctly understood, that if he could bring himself to give such a vote from private considerations, he should not hesitate to give it to the undoubted virtues of Mr. Perceval; but the honour was a public one, and ought to be accorded only in return for eminent public services. He must therefore be under the necessity of opposing the noble lord's motion.

The House then divided—

moved, as an amendment to the Resolution, "That the committee were of opinion, that the Prince Regent should be enabled to grant to the eldest son of Mr. Perceval the sum of 1,000l. per annum from the 11th of May, 1812, the day of his father's death, during the lifetime of his mother, and that at her decease he should have the yearly sum of 2,000l."

This Resolution was agreed to unanimously, and without any observations; it being understood that whatever objections there might be to this grant, would be reserved until the bringing up of the Report on Wednesday next.

The House then resolved itself into a committee on the Orders of Council, and proceeded with the examination of witnesses.—Adjourned till Wednesday.