he thought the resolution already annulled. If the noble lord thought otherwise, let him name a day, and he would be ready to go into the question with him upon a resolu tion of censure upon his majesty's ministers for the recal. · Lord Pollington said he should support the amend ment. General Hope thought it was severe language to hold, that a man should be twice punished for the same offence. Mr. Croker spoke for some time with much animation; he principally directed his argument in answer to Lord Howick and Mr. Grattan, and concluded with saying, he should support the original motion. Mr. Stewart said a few words on the propriety of no longer retaining on the journals resolutions criminating Lord Melville, after he had been acquitted by his peers.. Mr. W. Smith supported the amendment. Mr. Ryder began by observing, that he had been par ticularly anxious to catch the Speaker's eye, in order to set an honourable gentleman (Mr. W. Smith) right, who had charged the chancellor of the exchequer with having taken office, under Mr. Pitt, at a time when he had reason to be lieve it was the intention of Mr. Pitt to bring forward the catholic question. If the honourable gentleman had been a member in the last Parliament, he would have known that that charge had been made before, and contradicted. The fact was, that, upon Mr. Pitt's proposing to his right hon ourable friend to continue attorney general, he had distinct ly stated the necessity he should be under of opposing the catholic question, if ever it should be brought forward, and his apprehension that his opposition, while holding that situation, might be embarrassing to government; and, in point of fact, he did not accept the office till he had been assured that Mr. Pitt was so far from having any intention of agitating the question, that he should himself oppose it, if agitated by others. Mr. Ryder said he was glad to take the opportunity of answering the insinuations thrown out by the late ministers, in the course of the debate, particularly by the noble lord (Howick), as if their conduct, upon the catholic question, had been precisely the same with that of Mr. Pitt. So far from agreeing with them upon that point, he was persuaded, that, however gentlemen might differ in their opinion of the conduct of ministers, whether they approved or condemned it, at least they must all agree that in every important feature of that transaction, their conduct conduct had been directly the reverse, not of that which we believed Mr. Pitt would have adopted under similar cir cumstances, but of that which we knew he had actually pursued. And what made the variance more extraordinary was, that this catholic question was not one upon which his majesty's late ministers differed with Mr. Pitt, but one upon the general substance of which, they were agreed. It was the opinion of Mr. Pitt, that, after the union with Ireland, a greater share of political power might be granted to the catholics, under such guards and restrictions, however, as would, in his judgment, rather add to, than diminish the security of the protestant establishment; but, when he found that that measure could not be proposed in parliament, with the consent of the king, he would not propose it all; he never stated it to be a measure of indispensable necessity, and then (as in the late transaction, upon what principles had never been explained) consented to withdraw it, and yet remained in power. He did not cling to office; he did not wait to be dismissed; he voluntarily re signed; he never arraigned (and for the first time since the Long Parliament, in the reign of Charles I.) the personal conduct of his sovereign at the bar of Parliament and of the country; on the contrary, with a magnanimity of mind, of which no trace could be found, in the conduct of his majesty's late ministers, he submitted to every species of misrepresentation and calumny, rather than give an explanation which might by possibility be construed into a reflection upon his royal master; and, when he found, at length, that his majesty's conscientious scruples were insurmountable, and the general sense of the country against the measure, he declared, in his place, that while those impediments remained, he never would consent to agitate the question, much less propose it; because the agitation of the question, under those circumstances, instead of promoting harmony, would produce discord; and aggravate the mischiefs which he was desirous to remove. The contrast was as melancholy as it was complete. The event, however, had justified his prediction. The agitation had not promoted harmony, it had produced discord. But whatever heat, whatever mischief, had arisen from that discussion, (and no man deprecated that heat, and that mischief more sincerely) it had been owing to those who made the discussion necessary. He (Mr. Ryder) was not surprized, that when those who, by a wanton, uncalled uncalled-for, and unnecessary agitation of a question most interesting to the feelings of this people, found that they excited a spirit of resentment against their measure, and against themselves, that those, who by so doing, had called forth that feeling, and the expression of those sentiments, should be anxious to ascribe to any thing but to their own : precipitancy, absurdity, and folly, the resentment and indignation of which they were both the cause and the object. It had, therefore, been represented, both in and out of that House, by the late ministers and their partizans, that the agitation which had existed, had been owing either to the besotted ignorance of bigotry, fit only for the dark ages, or to the desperate wickedness of factious politicians, or to the hypocritical sycophancy of court intrigue. The sentiments which had been excited by the conduct of the late ministers, were the natural sentiments of the English subject, attached to his king and to the constitution of his country: and to ascribe their creation to any other influence was an impotent effort to deceive the people, and to distract their attention from the true. cause and the circumstances connected with it. It was the discussion of the question which had produced that agitation in the public mind; an agitation, which the success of the measure might perhaps have led into danger ous violence; but which, in defeat, he confidently trusted would tranquillize and compose. But what right had the noble lord to impute this cry to his majesty's ministers ? In this vehemence to make the charge, he seemed entirely to have forgotten upon what proofs it was to be founded. As long as the accusation, which was brought against them, was loose and indefinite, not warranted by any proof, unsupported by any evidence, depending upon the mere assertion of political hostility, it could only be met by a denial as general, but as positive, as the charge. There was only one discussion, in that House, upon the subject, upon the noble lord's moving for leave to bring in the bill. On that occasion, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer had taken the opportunity of delivering his sentiments shortly upon the subject, in his place, in the House, and he repeated the same opinion in his address to his constituents, when he offered himself to their choice. Now, unless it was meant to contend that that short address, which contained nothing more than the expression of the same sentiments, which he had uniformly expressed, expressed, whenever the question of the Catholic claims had been discussed, produced such miraculous effects all over the country, he knew of nothing which had been said or done, by any one of his majesty's ministers, to give a colour for a pretext to justify the assertions of the noble lord. Oh but the speech of his right honourable friend! would the noble lord point out the passages in that speech which were calculated to excite a ferment in the country? If a temperate remonstrance against the evils which were conscientiously felt as likely to arise from any measure proposed in Parliament, was to be imputed to an intention to excite popular commotion, to what a state were we reduced! What became of the freedom of specch in that House? What a death-blow to the first privilege of Parliament! Were we to sit in silence to hear measures proposed which we thought objectionable, supported by principles going far beyond the measure itself, and justifying the most dangerous innovations, without daring to offer our sentiments upon them, lest the doing so, even with calmness and moderation, should be ascribed to an attempt to raise a cry? And who were those who took a lead in supporting that doctrine, and urging that charge? The very men whose whole political conduct had been little else than a continual attempt to raise a cry, when ever they thought there was a possibility of succeeding in it. How far their present doctrine was in unison with their practice; whether they had been very scrupulous about the time or the occasion of pürsting their object; let those decide, who remember that, at a moment when a rebellion was raging in Ireland, those gentlemen thought it not inconsistent with their public duty to declare, in full Parliament, that the rebellion itself, and all the miseries of Ireland, were owing, not to French intrigue, or to do mestic treason, but to the abuses of government, and the corruption of the legislature of Ireland; though the in trigues, and treasons, were proved to be the main operafive causes of those calamities, by the confession of the intriguers and traitors themselves; to the loyalty and good principles of one of the most distinguished of whom, Mr. O'Connor, several of those gentleman bore testimony at Maidstone. Mr. Ryder did not assert that they really. meant to add fuel to those flames which were then deso lating Ireland; but no man would deny, that if they had such objects in view, they could not have adopted means VOL. I.-1807. M better better calculated to promote them. Who that remembers the tendency of the language and conduct, which those gentlemen thought it became them to pursue, when the treason and sedition bills, (those necessary measures of precaution, to check the progress of revolutionary principles in this country) were in their passage through this House, their abuse of Mr. Pitt, of the administration of that day, most particularly of that distinguished member of it, the late Secretary of State for the war department (Mr. Windham) whom they charged with a nefarious conspi racy to stifle the liberties of the country, and to erect a despotism upon the ruins of our free constitution; who that recollected those times, and that crisis, in our his tory, but must admire the consistency of those ge tlemen, who now gave you to understand that when a new and important measure was brought into parliament, relating to a subject which did not yield in interest or importance to any that was ever discussed in that House, any decla ration, however temperate in its terms, or an opinion, adverse to the measure they supported, was disgraceful, and scandalous, attributable only to factious moives, and calculated only to raise a cry? But if the noble lord persisted in his opinion; if he would debar others from the use of that privilege which he and his friends had so often abused, would he condescend to tell them what line they ought to have pursued? Perhaps he would say they ought to have seceded. There indeed they should have had his authority to quote, his example to plead, in their justification; and if they had followed his advice, if they had abandoned their first parliamentary duty, if they had deserted their post in the hour of danger; if they had seceded, and if they had accompanied their secession by the patriotic declaration, that they seceded in order to prove to the country, that Parliament did not speak the sense of the nation; if they had afterwards given vent to their political spleen, in inflammatory harangues, at public meetings, at clubs, and in taverns, the imitation would not have been less correct, or the resemblance less accurate. He (Mr. Ryder) was equally surprised not at the sorrow and the re-. gret, but at the resentment which the friends of the noble lord, at the head of the late government, had shewn at those indications of the popular sentiment which we had recently witnessed. Many of those who now heard bim might remember the general indignation of the coun try |