all this systematic opposition to reform of every kind, seems to be both unnatural and unaccountable to ordinary understanding. It is allowed on all sides, that reform, economy, and retrenchment, are necessary, and some gentlemen on the other side, say, laudable; that the crisis of our financial condition requires, and the safety of the nation renders it indispensable. This is broadly admitted even amongst ourselves; and our constituents, with attention as vigilant, minds as masculine, and judgments as correct as any within these walls, petition for it and demand it at our hands, in the express terms of the abolition of sinecures, unnecessary places, and improper pensions. These objects, though controverted by the treasury bench almost as much as if there were not any applications on the subject, form the very essence and substance of various resolutions at public meetings and of petitions to this House. Where then could the Committee more properly begin with retrenchment, than in the discontinuance of these odious payments, called sinecures, which have long been a disgrace to our establishments; are wholly an abuse of the supplies especially voted for, and exclusively consecrated to the safety, the honour, and dig. nity of the empire and the payment of which ought never to have been tolerated. If the House refuse this abolition and reform, so obvious and so very reasonable, look to the consequences; the hopes and expectations of the people must vanish for ever, and give place to despair; it must teach them to believe, that much and plausibly as their representatives and trustees amuse them with the prospect of economy and reform, they mean to deceive them and resist every species of it. I have resolved to exonerate myself by giving the Committee these my sentiments, that it may not be forgotten that I have protested against the consequences, and exerted my endeavours to avert them. But this resistance to the fair expectations of the public, does not, in my opinion, terminate the mischief, which from the sentiments of his Majesty's ministers this night, manifestly threatens to be infinitely more extensive and calamitous; and I draw the most alarming conclusions from their conduct, comparing it with his Majesty's uniform speeches from the throne, to relieve the burthens of the country, and to spare his people; and the more especially, in that benevolent, but most memorable speech from the throne with which

the no popery administration commenced its desperate and deplorable career in 1807. In that speech, after emphatically calling the attention of both Houses of Parliament to a system of rigid economy, his Majesty was pleased most graciously to conclude in these unqualified and endearing words, "that his Majesty had no cause but that of his people." Now, Sir, when I recollect these gracious benevolent and famed declarations of his Majesty from the throne, which his ministers are in duty and allegiance bound to act up to and fulfil, as to the tenor of their commission, and the line of their office; and witness nothing on 'their parts or in their measures and conduct, but a direct, undisguised, and systematic counteraction of his Majesty's intentions towards his subjects: when I witness a scornful and deaf ear uniformly turned to the necessities of the people urgently claiming relief; combining these facts with the means lately taken by his Majesty's ministers to obstruct and to prevent petitions and humble statements of the grievances felt by his subjects, claiming his royal interposition and protection, being constitutionally presented to the throne; I can only form one obvious conclusion, that his Majesty is kept in ignorance of, and does not know, the calamitous condition to which his ministers have reduced his empire, that he does not know, that his ministers have studiously defeated his royal intentions towards his subjects; and that they have formed an unconstitutional system on which they are acting to keep the sentiments, and prayers, and growing distresses, of his attached people, and the accumulating difficulties of the country, so entirely from his knowledge, as to deprive the nation of all hope of his benign interposition. I repeat, that these various combinations fully authorise the conclusion, that his Majesty is studiously kept in the dark as to our growing distressess, and of the precarious condition to which the stability and tranquillity of the empire is thus reduced. And thus believing, I feel, or I would not express it, that it becomes the imperative duty of this House, from which they ought not to shrink, to ascertain the fact; to remove all unconstitutional obstructions, and to re-establish that dignified constitutional communication between a beloved sovereign and his affectionate people, as shall assure the people, that they still live under and enjoy the paternal protection of his Majesty, and shall restore confidence, to

the country-that confidence, which has hitherto excited energy in the people, produced strength to the empire, splendour to the monarchy, and jurisdiction and stability to every one of its very important manifold institutions that confidence, which, under the various struggles of our ancestors, to place the personal freedom of the subject, and the security of personal property, under the exclusive dominion of the law, formed the British constitution itself!!!

I have only one point more, and I shall make my humble thanks to the Committee for their attention. The point to which I allude, respects the debates which lately occupied the House on the subject of petitions, addresses, and popular proceedings in and out of this House.-(Question, question!) The Committee need not be alarmed, for I shall be very short in what I have to say; and that in explanation of my own conduct in the House; and indeed, I shall shew that it was a portion of their time justly due to me. They will do me the honour to recollect, that during the whole of the late discussions on these popular topics, I have not taken any other part, than contenting myself with uniformly marking and recording my sentiments by the votes which I have given. I have uniformly voted in defence of the popular rights, because, I believe and feel, that they were just and undoubted rights, and that therefore it is my duty to support them. I have been more than once privately asked, by some members uniformly voting on the other side of the House, who had observed this my line of conduct, the reasons for it? I will now endeavour to give the same explanations to the Committee as I gave to those gentlemen; that I thought and felt that the people, as the constituent body, inseparable from ourselves as their deputies; that we belonged to them and they to us; and that if a separation once took place, we must be extinguished, but that they would still exist with the united powers and strength of constituent and representative; that as they had right, and it was their interest and province occasionally, to instruct their deputies, they must have a right to petition, to remon strate, and fairly to take broad, extensive, and commensurate exceptions to our conduct; and that, in the constitutional exereise of their rights, while they do not exceed, in latitude and strength of expression, the unchecked latitude and

strength of expression which we were uniformly in the habit of using amongst ourselves, than which nothing could be stronger, in the unbounded and almost uncontrouled freedom of debate, in what is termed parliamentary language, that their addresses ought not to be deemed exceptionable; that I could not draw that wide distinction of language between the constituent and representative, because the one was within the House, and the other was without the same House, which is the house of legislature, specially and exclu sively appropriated to the third estate of the empire, consisting of the whole of the people; and that I had oberved that the petitions and addresses deemed the most exceptionable, were, in fact, not more than repetitions and quotations of proceedings and speeches in the House. On these grounds, I had so voted; but, that perceiving the tide of the House otherwise strongly set in, and followed by many of my hon. friends on this side of it, who had been, some three times, and others four and five times as long a member as myself, I did not think it became me promptly to oppose my reasoning to theirs, on conduct which they alledged they had so long witnessed. But, from the most mature reflection since, I was now fally satisfied, that the House had mistaken its way, and had departed from the ancient constitutional course, by intercepting and obstructing the free exercise of those ancient privileges of the people, from which the very existence of the House itself, and their own privileges and authorities, had been derived, and erected, and which must be held, as sacred by, and as dear to, the country at large, as the privileges and existence of that House itself. But, (continued the hon. member,) let the House endeavour to explore the real causes and motives of these various petitions, addresses, resolutions, and remonstrances. I believe and feel they do not by any means proceed from any imputed or imaginary instigation by individuals; on the contrary, I believe the truth to be, that individual leaders had nothing to do with them, except by involuntary adoption, the effect of feeling and suffering.-I feel and believe that the House must be so persuaded, or blind to the state of the nation; that discontents pervade the whole nation to a more alarming degree than ever before known; and that the whole country is in a state of great irritation on account of the severity of the burthens of taxation,

an

and the rigid, coarse, and unfeeling manner in which the payment of taxes had been inforced. Popular individuals are continually changing. One is paramount in public estimation this year; another was paramount last year; and a third, now no more, was the paramount favourite with the populace the year preceding. This popularity, I have observed, was generally of very short duration, and was constantly fluctuating. But, the discontents of the nation have long been maturely, and are continually, growing into stability their existence seems to be perpetuated, as may naturally be expected, with their cause and the root of their cause; viz. taxation, and the constant and perpetual growth of taxation, to amount, which now forbids (under the system of the present ministers) all hope of diminution or relief for at least many generations to come, however industriously the nation may have been deluded to think otherwise, from the operations of the sinking fund. And this irritation to discontent is not a little strengthened and inforced, by the people having long been persuaded, and now knowing full well, that these taxes, thus exacted from them, have not been honestly applied to state purposes, but have been profligately and wantonly dissipated and abused, and that every public office and department of the state, from which a report has hitherto been Jaid on the table of the House, exhibits indubitable testimony in confirmation of these opinions. Be it as it may in point of extent, with such documents before the House and the public, it would be idle and false to assert, that the public opinion was without foundation. Hence, the manifest cause of the present discontents. These discontents I can only compare to a hidden or half smothered fire, ready to break out and rage, and attach itself to any kind of conductor; a match, a piece of paper, muslin, or any other tangible point of attraction coming within the possible reach of its impatient, indiscriminating, and devouring influence. In this condition, I considered these discontents to be, when the late and extraordinary question, now likely to undergo discussion before one of the law tribunals of the kingdom, was hastily dragged forward, agitated, and decided by this House. And I feel that all the subsequent popular agitations and meetings in the metropolis, their resolutions, addresses, petitions, and remonstrances, have been nothing more

than the consequences of the pre-existing grievances, only suddenly bursting forth as to a convenient rallying point, which chance had thus unexpectedly presented to them. On this reasoning, and subscribing to the influence of it on my mind, I think it would have been wise and right to have received those petitions of the people; and on this additional ground, that if they had been attended with no better success than the popular harangues and debates in their behalf in this House, which from the bad promise and complexion of this night's debate, resisting the very moderate reform contended and petitioned for, would most indubitably have been their certain and devoted fate ;these aliedged violent and alarming petitions, like the still more violent debates of this House, might by this time have become a dead letter, and the agitation of the public mind have subsided, at least, for this sessions: whereas, by rejecting them, and more especially in the scornful manner in which I feel they have been rejected, the public irritation has been furnished with additional provocation, and the rejection has excited such an additional degree of dissatisfaction, as the House must apprehend would keep the contest and the agitation of the country alive-such an agitation, as the rejection of the very reasonable proposition before the Conimittee, to abolish disgraceful sinecures, will not be calculated to dissipate. I again contend for the entire and instant abolition, and will not consent to any substitute or modification; which I repeat can only be felt by the country as a mockery of their very reasonable expectations.”—Mr. Moore concluded by again imploring the Committee to be steady and faithful in performing their duty to their constituents by insisting on removing all unnatural obstruction to the dignified, honourable and constitutional intercourse, coeval with the existence of the constitution between the sovereign and the people. He reminded the Committee that the object and end of all governments and associated communities was the happiness of the governed; of the people at large; that the people of the united empire were anxiously looking to them as their trustees for relief

that the throne of every monarchy should be planted in the hearts of its subjects, an end easily obtained, as the people, always ready and willing to make every necessary and even generous sacrifice, conditioned only that they shall not