the oath which he had sworn. However the arguments brought forward by others might convince the consciences of others, it was by his own conscience, right or wrong, that he must stand or fall. If he violated this sacred contract with his eyes open, with his judgment unconvinced, he must at once break his faith with man, and prevaricate with his God. Under these distressing circumstances, his majesty proposes to his ministers to withdraw this intimation of their intentions. Was this a concession which it was inpossible for them to make? They had declared themselves desirous of keeping off the discussion of any question, contrary to the opinions and feelings of his majesty. By the exertion of their weight and influence in that direction, it was far from impossible that they might be successful. If they failed, it was still in their power to inform his majesty that, as they could no longer in their opinion administer his government, without proposing measures contrary to his sense of his oath, they must retire from responsibility, and leave his majesty to the advice of other counsellors. Having failed in convincing the king by the strongest statements of the indispensible necessity of the measure, which they had nevertheless abandoned, having consented to become deeply criminal by withdrawing what it would have been deeply criminal not to propose, from what further arguments could conviction and success be expected? What was the invariable prospec', but a fruitless and unavailing contest, productive of nothing but distrust and irritation? Are we then prepared to censure his majesty, if, after proposing in the first instance that the intimation should be with drawn, he claimed some positive assurance that this contest between himself and his confidential servants should not last for ever? Having seen how loosely, how inaccu rately a proceeding of such importance and delicacy had been conducted having seen how easily his consent had been implied to the very measure to which he thought his dissent had been unequivocally expressed, can any man be surprized that he should require to be secured from all future apprehensions? From all future apprehensions of what nature? Not that measures would be proposed to curtail his influence, or to abridge his power, but that he should be forced, against his conscience, to consent to the extension of his prerogative. Is it not clear that when there is so little confidence between the king and his confi dential dențial servants as to make it necessary on either side, to require a pledge of any kind, the public service must suffer, if the conduct of affairs continues in the same hands ? When ministers perceive that they have inconsiderately, and for what appears unnecessarily, brought themselves into this situation, is it honourable to their sovereign, is it useful to their country, to cling to their official posts; to force their king to remove them, instead of removing themselves; and to attempt to gain that popularity by dismissal which they must be conscious they have not gained by their administration? This brings me to the second branch of the motion of my noble relation. It was not expected by me, and it would require a long, but not difficult detail to answer it. Having been prevented by the state of my health from attending my duty in this place during their continuance in power, I can only form iny judgment from a general view of their conduct. Of their entrance into office I say nothing, except that they chose to come in upon that very principle of exclusion, applied to a whole party from the highest to the lowest, a resistance to which principle, said to be applied to a single person, had been the declared reason of their refusal to join in a former administration. Of their actions I can only seize the prominent points in a hasty and imperfect review. I look for their economy, to the immense burden entailed, I fear for ever, upon the country, by the increased expence of the army, and consequently of the navy, incurred in order to try in the army upon a large scale an experiment grounded upon visionary theories, but which in practice the volunteering of the militia into the line had proved to be almost hopeless of success. I look for their just distribution of offices and rewards, to their foreign appointments; to their civil promotions; to the persons whom they have placed in pecuniary trusts; to the persons whom they have prosecuted; to the persons whom they have pensioned. I look for their energy and ability in the disposal of the military and naval force of the country, to the expeditions they have sent out, with so little delay in the dispatch, so little contradiction in the ́orders and counter-orders; to the conquests we have gained; to the victories we have achieved: to the stu pendous advancement of our military and naval glory. For their talents in the management of foreign politics, I must look to the cordial footing on which we now stand with those powers in whose welfare we are most deeply interested; to the prompt and liberal succours they have sent to that remnant of Europe, which is still struggling for existence. For the wisdom and precision of their negotiations, I must look to their negotiation with France; a perfect parallel to their negotiation with their king, where the point on which the whole turned was left for months so clearly defined, that it rested at last upon the recollection of a verbal communication, which was understood by one party in one sense, and by the other in a sense directly contrary. I see nothing upon this review, which should induce your lordships to express, as you would do by agreeing to this motion, an implied or rather a direct dis approbation of that exerci e of his majesty's undoubted prerogative, which you have upon former occasions stood forward to support. From my own personal feelings, I may regret much what has passed, I did not wish the fall of the late adininistration. It was strong; it was, or had been supposed to include sufficient ability; it contained in it some persons in whom I had been accustomed in other times to repose confidence; but I wished it either to be strengthened by the infusion of some better blood, or to be checked by an opposition sufficiently powerful to guard against undue exertions of the strength of govern ment. On one ground indeed I may be permitted to regret their fall, on a consideration of the principles of the persons who opposed them. I knew them to be incapable of harrassing or fettering any administration in the real discharge of its duties; incapable of taking advantage of necessary difficulties and burdens, to raise a clamour against them, which would aggravate those burdens and increase those difficulties. They would object to what they thought objectionable, and guard those principles which they could not desert without inconsistency, and which to them were sacred. Whether the experience of the last twenty years can give the present administration much hope of a similar opposition, it is for your lordships to consider. My temper is not sufficiently sanguine not to leave me upon this ground some regret for the past, and some apprehension for the future. With these feelings and these opinions, I cannot but have some regret at the addition made by this struggle to the dangerous pressure of the times. If the struggle was not necessary it ought not to have been made. Having been made because it was necessary, It is no child's necessary, it ought not to be abandoned. play. The change is not the result of court intrigue, or party ambition. The present ministers have been called upon to support the king in the defence of his conscience. I approve their cause; I do not distrust their ability or their zeal. They will stand firm to him and to each other. With the sanction of your lordships, with the voice of the country in their favour, what have they to fear? But, be the event what it may, with their king they mast stand or fall. Lord Selkirk was of opinion that the axiom, that the king can do no wrong, was to be understood in two ways; first, that his ministers or advisers were responsible for the acts of government, and that the private acts of the king were not amenable to law. It was never necessary for the public good, that the private acts of the king should be considered as arising from advice. He conceived it impossible that any parliamentary proceeding could be founded upon an act of which they could have no knowledge. It was certainly true, that the garbled publication of the cabinet minutes had rendered a more distinct communication to Parliament necessary, and on that circumstance the permission of his majesty for such communication had been founded. But it was for their lordships to consider what was the object of the present motion. Though he agreed in an unqualified manner in the truth of the proposition contained in the resolution proposed to them, he was not prepared to go the length of the measures that were to be grounded upon it. The object of these measures were to turn out the present ministers, and to reinstate the late ministers. He should not agree to any proceeding for that purpose, because, though the late ministers should be replaced in their former situations by any machinations of party, it was impossible that they should possess the same degree of his majesty's confidence as before; or that they could compose the same strong government as they had when they came into office. Though the public was aware of the splendid talents which they individually possessed, yet it was impossible that the same firm reliance could be placed in their measures as heretofore. The new ministers were untried, and ought to have an opportunity afforded them of shewing how they could conduct the affairs of the country. He thought that they should have a trial, and that their merits should be be decided upon by their measures. At all events, he trusted that they would give an earnest of their principles of administration to the people of Ireland, by carrying into full effect the laws as they at present existed in that country. Lord Boringdon did not mean to negative the resolution, of the noble lord (Marquis of Stafford), but before he should sit down, proposed to make a motion that should get rid of it, by relieving the House from coming to any decision upon it. No one of their lordships, he was sure, was prepared for the first part of the resolution, which therefore took them by surprize: and he was prepared to say that no parliamentary ground had been laid for it, Some allusions had been made to a cabinet minute, which was not regularly before them, and to the speech of a member of that House. Now the unrecorded speech of any noble lord was not a sufficient parliamentary docu ment. But the latter part of the resolution contained a direct censure upon the public conduct of the king. He was not at all surprised that the noble lord at the head of his majesty's late government, had applied for permis, mission to make the communication which he had given to that House, neither that his majesty, conscious of the purity of his own motives, had given that consent, nor that the House had allowed such communication to be made; yet there were many noble lords who thought with him, that that noble lord ought to have been stopped in his progress. A sacred barrier had been, in this ins stance, broken down, and the practice should have been arrested and not suffered to be drawn into precedent. He contended, that his majesty's present ministers had not given any pledge whatever upon any subject, nor would the present resolution, if agreed to, be binding upon them. In the beginning of last century a resolution had passed that House, declaring those enemies to their country, who should make peace leaving Spain or the Indies in the pos session of a Bourbon. This resolution was not binding upon the queen or her ministers, and a peace was afterwards concluded, leaving both to a branch of that family. He readily acquitted his majesty's late ministers of any intention to force his majesty's conscience, much less to obtain his consent to their measure by fraud; but he would not absolve them from the charge of negligence and inattention, which in private life would be considered an aban donment |