XIX. land's me memorial of lord Aukland to the States Gene- BOOK ral; and made, in the course of his speech, a quotation from Vattel, who says, that nations 1793. at war ought carefully to abstain from all harsh lord Aukexpressions of hatred, animosity, or contempt, of morial. each other.'"This rule of policy and decorum," he said, "had been totally neglected by the noble lord. But the indecency of his late memorial was by no means its worst feature: it disclosed a principle of war entirely new in the history of mankind, viz. that we were entitled to take upon ourselves the execution of the Divine vengeance, and, if applied in its full extent, some millions of men must be put to death before we could negotiate for peace. To infer the righte ousness of the cause in which we were engaged from the partial success we had obtained, was impious and presumptuous. We should be at least silent till we saw the termination of hostilities. Vengeance was the prerogative of the Divinity, to whom alone it ought to be left-a prerogative too high and dangerous to be arrogated or exercised by a being so limited in his powers and capacities as man.' He concluded with moving an address to his majesty, expressive of the displeasure of the house at the memorial in question; and stating, that the minister who presented it had departed from the principles on BOOK which the house had concurred in the measures for the support of the war. XIX. 1793. Mr. Pitt entered into an elaborate defence of lord Aukland, and uttered a vehement invective against the Convention. He asked whether it was any crime to desire that such enormous de linquents might be detained, in order to be delivered up to a competent tribunal of their own country, at a period when a counter-revolution appeared so likely to take place. In the course of his speech the minister maintained, in high and lofty terms, the right of Great Britain to repel the unjust attacks of France-to chastise and punish her; and to obtain indemnification for the past, and security for the future. The motion of Mr. Sheridan was, in conclusion, rejected by a vast majority of voices. Some time after this, lord Aukland being returned to England, a resolution was moved in the house of peers by lord Stanhope, importing "that the meaning and intention of the said memorial was to bring the French Conventional commissioners delivered up by Dumouriez to trial, in order to put them to death." His lordship styled the memorial an infamous, horrid, and diabolical paper; and said, that if the resolutions he should move were carried, he should think it his duty to proceed against lord Auk Lord Grenville took up BOOK XIX. land as the author. the defence of lord Aukland with violence, and declared that the memorial was framed in the 1793. spirit, if not in the letter, of the ambassador's instructions: and he moved an amendment, pronouncing it conformable to the sentiments of his majesty, and consonant to those principles of justice and policy which it became the honor and dignity of the nation to express. Aukland vindicated his own memorial, and avowed it to be his opinion, " that those who caused the death of the king of France were murderers, and that murderers ought to be brought to justice." And the amendment of lord Grenville was carried without a division. Lord the East pany pro As the charter of the East-India Company Charter of would expire in the year 1794, it was the wish India Comof very many enlightened patriots that the trade longed. to the East Indies should be thrown open, and their system of commercial monopoly for ever destroyed. But Mr. Dundas, in the present session, completely extinguished all hopes of this nature by bringing in a bill, which soon after passed into an act, to renew the charter for twenty years, upon terms which varied little from the existing regulations. On the 2d May, Mr. Grey made his pro- Mr. Grey's mised and celebrated motion for a reform in reform in motion for a XIX. -1793. sentation. BOOK the representation. Many petitions were previously presented to the house, tending to the same object, but, for the most part, by the obthe repre- noxious mode of universal suffrage and annual parliaments,---the moderate reformers being almost universally converted into alarmists. That this popular plan of reform would be unattended by those terrible consequences which have been so generally apprehended is extremely probable; but the odium under which it had the misfortune to labor was a sufficient reason for the judicious to abandon the idea of it. But the circumstance most remarkable in these petitions was, that the majority of the petitioners claimed the adoption of this plan upon the principles of the duke of Richmond, as a matter of absolute abstract right, and not upon any mere ground of national utility and policy. Nothing certainly can lead to more absurd and dangerous consequences than the admission of a claim of this nature; or, indeed, to suppose that any political right can exist which does not originate in political utility but there is good reason to believe, that though the petitioners, in consistency with their principles, could not ask less than they imagined to be their undoubted and indefeasible right, they would, for the most part, have been well satisfied with such a moderate and temperate XIX. melioration of the present system as would have BOOK sufficed to attain the chief practical purposes of parliamentary reform. The petition from Sheffield was signed by no less than 8000 names; from Norwich, 3700; from Birmingham, 2700; from London and Westminster, 6000. But the most remarkable by far of the petitions of this day was that framed by the Society of the Friends of the People, and presented to the house by Mr. Grey. It was of such length as to take up near half an hour in reading; containing a most masterly recapitulation of the abuses of the present parliamentary system of representation, expressed in very dignified and correct language; and praying the house for an effectual reform of these abuses, in animated terms, without specifying any particular mode of redress. "Your petitioners complain (say they) that the number of representatives assigned to the different counties is grossly disproportioned to their comparative extent, population, and trade. "Your petitioners complain that the elective franchise is so partially and unequally distributed, and is in so many instances committed to bodies of men of such very limited numbers, that the majority of your honorable house is elected by less than 15000 electors, which, even if 1793. |