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Mr. Canning said, that the general prac- | tice of the House precluded the possibility of admitting the present motion. It could be proved from many instances, that the splendour of the service was not enough, unless it came within a certain description of service. The eminent services of the cavalry preceding the battle of Corunna, were not thought worthy of that distinction, because they could not be recognized as having been engaged in the battle itself. The passing of the Douro was another very brilliant achievement, which, however, did not come within the precise description of service that called for the thanks of parliament, and a gallant officer still bore the painful but honourable marks of his personal bravery in that action. He need scarcely add that he meant general Paget. There had been an out-of-doors notion, as if there had been in any quarter a wish to undervalue the services of sir R. Wilson-this was altogether a mistaken notion; the words of lord Wellington in his dispatches, where he calls that officer "an able partizan," had been complained of; but the word partizan had not been made use of as a term of reproof, it was merely in a co-operative sense. He trusted the motion would be withdrawn.

General Tarleton agreed that the services of sir R. Wilson were highly meritorious, and had been extremely useful to the country. They had been more instrumental, he was satisfied, in producing the retreat of the enemy than any other services which had been rendered. There were reasons, however, that made it difficult to pass a vote of thanks of that House for services of the description now alluded to, and withdrawing the motion, he thought, would be the handsomest mode of proceeding, after the declaration which had come from all sides, as to the merits of the gallant officer. The term partizan, be contended, was not one of disrespect. It implied a general in miniature, who, from being at the head of all his own services, was most likely to acquire a general knowledge. He agreed with sir W. Erskine that this was the best field in which to train a general. He was satisfied that sir R. Wilson would not be long in rendering additional services to the country, and that he would be one of the first to receive the thanks of the House.

Lord Castlereagh was of opinion, the services of sir R. Wilson in Spain and Portu gal, had proved corroborations of his mili

tary character. He could not see, however, on what ground the House was to get the better of its general and establish ed rule in such cases, or how it could depart from it usual course. The services alluded to were not of that description for which the House had been accustomed to vote its thanks. There was, however, another reason why, he conceived, the House could not agree to the motion; he was not an officer in our service, but in that of the Portuguese government at the time, and he was not aware that a British parliament had ever thought itself entitled to vote thanks to a subject of this country who was employed in the service of a foreign state. There could, he confessed, be but one opinion as to the services of sir R. Wilson, and the zeal displayed by him on the occasion referred to. He had also the additional merit of forming a corps, which in the particular circumstances of Portugal, might greatly contribute to the service of the country. He was convinced, however, that the gallant office would be the last person to feel gratified by the House departing, where he was concerned, from its usual practice. He trusted the hon. member would withdraw his motion, satisfied, as he must be, that on the merits of sir R. Wilson there could be but one feeling in the House.

Sir James Hall said, to his mind the circumstance touched on by the noble lord, as an additional reason for not concurring in the present motion, arising from sir R. Wilson's not being actually in the service of this country at the time, operated the other way. It might be an apology for a departure from the usual forms of the House. Such a proceeding might have the effect of rousing the spirits of men from whom much might be expected. If the hon. mover chose to per severe, he should, at least, not stand single.

Mr. Hutchinson felt gratified at the declarations made on all hands, as to the merits of his gallant friend. As, there fore, he could not get the House to go with him all the length he wished, he was content to take what he could get, and should, therefore, agree to withdraw his motion.

[TREASURER OF THE POST OFFICE IN IRELAND.] Sir John Newport brought forward a motion founded on the 9th Report of the commissioners for inquiry into offices in Ireland, as to the superannuation of the late treasurer of the post office in

Ireland on his full salary, after having held the office for eight years, during no part of which time had he discharged any of the duties of it. This the report stated to be a violation of the rule laid down by the Irish House of Commons, limiting the services of persons superannuated with their full salaries to those who had served 25 years; and the hon. baronet concluded by moving, That the late treasurer of the post office in Ireland, had no fair claim to such superannuation; that the, allowing him to retire on his full salary, was a departure from the salutary rules laid down by parliament, and a dereliction of the principles of economy to which they were pledged.

Mr. W. Pole argued that this office had been a sinecure, and was abolished, as was usual in such cases, with the full salary, an efficient office being substituted in its stead. This therefore was not in the nature of a superannuation. He concluded by moving the previous ques tion.

The motion of sir J. Newport was supported by Mr. Whitbread, sir S. Romilly, Mr. Grattan, Mr. P. Moore, Mr. Giles, Mr. M. Fitzgerald, Mr. Barham, &c. And the previous question by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. R. Dundas, and the Solicitor General, &c.

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[LINCOLN'S INN BENCHERS MR. FARQUHARSON'S PETITION.] Mr. Sheridan 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

Mr. Windham 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.

Mr. Sheridan 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.

The Speaker 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.

Mr. Windham. Sir, I have a motion to make.

Mr. Sheridan. 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.

The Speaker. 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.

Mr. Windham 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.

Mr. Sheridan 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 con

sideration 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, how ever, 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.

The Attorney General 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. Mr. Windham 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.]

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 Mr. Stephen said, that his connexion and intellectual character of every indiwith the society of Lincoln's Inn, of vidual candidate for admission, without which he had had the honour of being branding the class of fellow subjects to a member for 35 years, might alone have which he had belonged. There was not led him to take a part in the debate; but in this case, therefore, such an apology, a particular consideration, known to ma- as necessity or strong reasons of public ny gentlemen around him, and of which convenience might afford, for a general he should probably put the House in pos- rule of exclusion. Was it then the prinsession before he sat down, called on him ciple of this regulation that persons who more strongly to express his sentiments had any time written for a periodical press on this occasion. He hoped nothing that and not written gratuitously, were, as might fall from him would be construed such, universally unworthy of admission into any disrespect towards the benchers into an honourable profession? a reproach of Lincoln's Inn; he felt for them col- in which Johnson and Hawkesworth, lectively, and as far as their characters Steele and Addison, would have been inwere known to him, individually too, cluded, was surely more likely to reflect the most unfeigned respect. Among disgrace on its authors than its objects. them he could reckon some of his earliest He was at a loss for the distinct views on and most intimate professional friends; which such a prejudice against persons and he believed that men of more liber- writing for newspapers could be founded ality of sentiment could not easily be Was it supposed that persons of that desfound. But he must nevertheless freely cription were always destitute of educa avow his concurrence in the views of the tion and liberal sentiments, or were, right hon. gent. who made this motion, in point of origin and connections in life, and declare, that he thought the regula- if those were material circumstances, unfit tion in question highly illiberal and un- for the society of gentlemen? Without just. He doubted not it must have pro- admitting that writing for the periodical ceeded from some hasty feelings, and press, though a man's original occupation, would on due consideration be revoked. and however long persevered in, would To fix a stigma upon a whole class of men, constitute any disparagement, cases might by shutting against them indiscriminately be put, in which, from accidental circumthe door of a liberal and honourable pro- stances, a gentleman, originally destined fession, open to all the rest of their fellow to the profession of the law, might have subjects, was, in his judgment, quite been driven to engage in such an employunjustifiable, unless there were something ment as a resource for his immediate subin the common description which belong-sistence, and continued in it, perhaps, but ed to them, that implied of necessity an universal unfitness for that profession; or unless their exclusion by any other and faiter 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,

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

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have described, on such an occasion. 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 conti nued 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. alas! no more; but this he would say of him, that no man he ever knew in his very

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 conse. quences, 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 selfcomplacency 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

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