BOOK the male adults in the kingdom be estimated at XIX. so low a number as three millions, is not more 1793. than the two hundredth part of the people to be represented.

"Your petitioners complain that the right of voting is regulated by no uniform or rational principle.

"Your petitioners complain that the exercise of the elective franchise is only renewed once in seven years.

"Your petitioners thus distinctly state the subject-matter of their complaints, that your honorable house may be convinced that they are acting from no spirit of general discontent, and that you may with the more ease be enabled to inquire into the facts, and apply the remedy."

After a very accurate statement of the exten sive mischiefs arising from these sources, they add Your petitioners must now beg leave to call the attention of your honorable house to the greatest evil produced by these defects in the representation of which they complain, namely, the extent of private parliamentary patronage an abuse which obviously tends to exclude the great mass of the people from any substantial influence in the election of the house of commons, and which, in its progress, threatens to usurp the sovereignty of the country, to the equal danger of the king, of the lords, and of the

commons.

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Your petitioners are confident that, BOOK in what they have stated, they are supported by the evidence of facts; and they trust that, in 1793. conveying those facts to your honorable house, they have not been betrayed into the language of reproach or disrespect. Anxious to preserve in its purity a constitution they love and admire, they have thought it their duty to lay before you, not general speculations deduced from theoretical opinions, but positive truths susceptible of direct proof; and if, in the performance of this task, they have been obliged to call your attention to assertions which you have not been accustomed to hear, and which they lament that they are compelled to make, they intreat the indulgence of your honorable house."

Whoever reads this celebrated petition, and still retains the opinion that the parliamentary representation of this kingdom needs no reform, may be regarded as in a state of mind far beyond the reach of facts or of argument. The allegations of the petition were dwelt upon by Mr. Grey with great eloquence and ability; and all the chief speakers in the house took part in the debate, which was protracted to the unusual length of two days. Mr. Pitt opposed the motion for referring the petitions to a committee, upon the plausible pretext of the danger which would, at the present crisis, be incurred by what

BOOK he styled a change in the constitution: holding XIX. up in terrific prospect the events which had re1793. cently taken place in France, though between

the political situations of the two countries there existed not the most distant analogy. It could not escape notice, that although Mr. Pitt, from the commencement of his political career, pledged himself never to lose sight of this great object, that perfidious minister had, since hist accession to power ten years since, made only one feeble effort for its accomplishment and he had moreover opposed, almost invariably and with effect, every liberal measure which had from time to time been brought forward in parliament for the extension of the general system of constitutional liberty; demonstrating, by this means, the necessity of that radical reform which he now professed so vehemently to deprecate. The house at length divided, the votes being 41 for, and 282 against, referring the petitions to a committee.

A motion equally unsuccessful with every preceding one was made by Mr. Fox on the 17th of June, that an humble petition be presented to his majesty to restore to the nation the blessings of peace. "We had at this time (Mr. Fox observed) gained all the ostensible objects of the war, particularly by putting a stop to the aggrandisement of France, and repelling

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her attacks upon our allies the Dutch. Where BOOK then was the necessity or policy of pursuing the war in conjunction with the Germanic powers?" 1793. Mr. Pitt, highly elated with the recent successes of the confederate arms, disdainfully asked, "whether it was the design of this motion that we should content ourselves merely with the relinquishment of the conquests so unjustly made by France, without obtaining either indemnity for past injuries, or security against future ones? It would be strange if we should do that at the commencement of a most successful war, which could only be advisable at the conclusion of the most disastrous one." Mr. Burke also vehemently exclaimed against every proposition or overture tending to reconciliation, and explicity avowed his opinion, that while the existing system continued, peace with France was totally inadmissible. The motion being negatived by a vast majority, the mover prophetically declared that the ministerial policy would drive France to become a military republic.

prorogued.

On the 21st of June (1793) the king prorogued Parliament the parliament. In his speech on this occasion his majesty noticed "the rapid and signal successes which had, in an early period of the campaign, attended the operations of the combined armies; the respectable and powerful force which he had been enabled to employ by sea and land; and

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BOOK the measures which he had concerted with other powers for the effectual prosecution of the war ; 1793. all of which afforded the best prospect of a happy issue to the important contest in which we were engaged."-But events unfortunately proved that infallibility is not one of the prerogatives of royalty.

On the 10th of January (1793) the parliament of Ireland was convened at Dublin by the earl of Westmoreland, lord-lieutenant of that kingdom, the situation of which had for some time past been gradually growing very critical. The sanguine hopes of emancipation which the Catholics, who constituted three-fourths of the whole population of Ireland, had indulged at the time of the military convention at Dungannon in the year 1783, had been quickly extinguished; for it manifestly appeared that the whole body of the Protestants, those who were the most zealous for, as well as those who were most violent against, the cause of parliamentary and political reform, were almost equally hostile to the Catholic claims. The earl of Charlemont himself had, in the strongest manner, discountenanced them; and the Catholics, in despair, seemed to abandon their project. But on the first splendid success of the revolution in France, all their former expectations revived with increase of vigor; and the liberal and noble principles of government, promulgated by the