day of fasting, the bill would serve them in the place of a dinner. Instead of the grace, they should have the preamble. The board of works would be one dish, and the board of trade another. The noble lord would also find the humiliation that was befitting the day in that bill. He would find the provisions thereof sufficiently humiliating to those who sat upon the bench which he occupied in that House. In short, he would find the best employment for a day of fasting, prayer, and humiliation, in a bill calculated to abolish places, pensions, and sinecures, and retrench the extravagance of government. But he believed it was not on account of fasting, but of feasting, that the bill was to be delayed. It was not because Wednesday was the fast day, but because Thursday was the benefit day of Mr. Vestris, the French dancer. This was the true reaIt would be shameful to think of their constituents, or to think of their country, when Vestris was to dance! It would be dreadful to set about retrenchment and economy, when Vestris had advertised for a benefit! What was the salvation of a state compared with the interest of Vestris! In the piping time of peace, he said, he would dance as willingly as any of them; he was fond of pleasure, in a season of joy; but now his mind was occupied by more melancholy considerations than dancing. But to a great part of that House, a dance was a much more important object than a war; and the opera-house must be maintained, whatever became of the country. For his own part, he was no enemy to merit of any kind, either of the heels or of the head; and he had formed no design against Vestris, by moving for the second reading of the bill on the day of his benefit; but the treasury-bench had taken care of that interest which he had forgotten. He promised the noble lord then, that if he would procure his bill to pass, and the reform to take place, he would have no objection to make up to Vestris what he might suffer, by giving him the profits of one of the places to be abolished. Mr. Burke concluded with a serious appeal to the House against that abominable spirit of levity which thus drove them from

they in'

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e entertainments of a suit on the grave dig

a consideration of the bill wale by his motion, and divide

e amendment: Yeas 89: Noes 77.

February 26.

the day being read for the second reading of the

AKE desired that the Journals of the 6th of 80, containing the resolutions of the House, that fuence of the crown had increased, was increasing, sought to be diminished, might be read; they accordgly were so. He rose again and said, he should not for any more arguments then in support of the motion, having recently tresspassed so long on the attention of the House. He would content himself with only remarking, that if there should appear in the bill, on its being read, any little inaccuracies, not immediately defeating its general scope and tendency, such imperfections ought not to be adduced in argument against its commitment, for in the committee every requisite correction would be admitted. One of these obviously was, a clause for reducing the board of green cloth, and executing the dependent offices by contract, which being given up on all sides last year, should have been struck out of the bill, but had remained in it through inadvertency. This he should readily agree to alter in the committee, and he therefore hoped no gentleman would build an objection upon it. If the general principle of the bill was concurred in, every difficulty would vanish.

The motion for the second reading of the bill, brought on a great debate; if it was strongly opposed on the one side, it was no less ably and powerfully supported on the other: and the

division not only surprized many, but was more close than the minister himself expected. Mr. William Pitt, and the young Lord Maitland spoke for the first time in the House of Commons, on the present occasion, and were highly distinguished by their ability and eloquence in support of the bill. At the close of the debate,

Mr. BURKE rose, and in a speech of the most beautiful and nervous argument, in which his astonishing powers were warmed and roused by the debate, combated every assertion that had been made against the right, the expediency, or the advantage of the bill proposed. He did not omit any particular of the smallest consequence that had been advanced, and declared, that he now saw the firm establishment of that influence, which it had been his wish and object to diminish; and should consider the issue of this struggle as the triumph or the overthrow of parliamentary corruption.

The House divided at twelve o'clock on the second reading: Yeas 190: Noes 233. So it passed in the negative. It was then ordered, that the bill be read a second time upon that day six months.

THE BUDGET FOR THE YEAR 1781.

March 8.

On the 7th of March, Lord North opened the Budget for the year 1781; and on the following day, the resolutions of the committee of supply being reported,

Mr. BURKE said, he was sensible that the power and credit of government depended chiefly on the votes of sup ply, and that he had uniformly been cautious how he resolved to give his assent to any of the resolutions of the com

mittees of ways and means. But on the present occasion he must refuse it. He meant not to give a negative to the whole of the resolutions, but only to that respecting the douceur of a lottery ticket, which was a robbery of the public, ruinous to the people, and by no means necessary to the present loan which could be obtained without it. An honourable gentleman over the way had accused his honourable friend (Mr. Fox) who had opposed the loan yesterday, of proceeding upon premises which he had not proved. Surely, when it was shewn by his honourable friend that the terms were exorbitant, he had proved every thing necessary, and it was not his business afterwards to ascertain that better terms might have been procured, but that of the minister to shew the contrary. He was afraid that nothing would tend more to injure public credit, than to shew to the world, that it was not parliament but the minister who regulated the finances of this country. It was the idea that parliament had the state of the national finances laid before them, so that every man might see the state of the public debts, that supported so greatly the credit of the nation; and he was sorry to find, that while the enemy was beginning to adopt our mode, the ministers of Great Britain were convincing the world, that parliament had nothing to do with our taxes and loans, but to give their sanction, however contrary to their judgment, to the bargains of the minister, however extravagantly injurious to the public. The credit of parliament would sink, and consequently so must that of the nation. From all that had been said, he was convinced, not only that the terms were bad, but that the noble lord in the blue ribbon might easily have got better. It was a little remarkable, that the objections stated by his honourable friend, were uncommonly strong, and put with the usual ability of his honourable friend; but not one of them had been answered; he took it for granted, therefore, that no answer could be given. It remained, then, for that House to interpose and prevent the ratification of a bargain which was so obviously disadvantageous, that those who made it were

themselves ashamed of it, and did not even pretend to argue in its favour. With regard to the lottery, it was evidently so much money thrown away, because it had been undeniably proved that the premium was sufficiently large, without the profit on the tickets. That Lord North had made a bad bargain for the public, Mr. Burke demonstrated from various considerations, and particularly from this: that in the bargain with the money-lenders, allowance was made for the possibility or the chance of the fall of the stocks, but not for that of their rise. The noble lord himself had confessed, that the bargain he had made was a disadvantageous one for the public; and yet no minister in time of war ever negociated a loan in better circumstances. In the first place, it was agreed to take the lowest computation, and there were subscriptions for 24 or 25 millions, double the sum wanted, and surely this was a most decisive advantage in favour of the borrower. By this means the noble lord might have counteracted the selfish views of the men he treated with, by resorting to more reasonable men, if dissatisfied with the first that offered; or supposing the parties to be the same, still it was obvious, that men who had 24 millions of money to employ, would be more likely to take a reasonable interest than those who had only the sum wanted; for it was not to be supposed they would let so large a sum lie in the banker's hands, when they might get a premium of 5l. 10s. which the noble lord himself admitted to be a sufficient bonus.

In the second place, a minister in time of war surely could never negociate a loan with so much success, as when a peace was expected; and that was the situation in which the present minister stood, when he settled the bargain now before the House. Added to both these considerations, there was that of the commission of accounts alluded to by the noble lord yesterday, from which it appeared that immense sums were to be immediately brought into the public coffers; so that there was an immediate resort in case the loan had miscarried. With three such advantages as these, if a good bargain was not made, no possible circum