The speeches of ... William Pitt in the House of commons [ed. by W.S. Hathaway].

December 8, 1796. THE report of the committee of Ways and Means was brought up, and the resolutions were read a first time. On the motion for their being now read a second time,

Mr. Fox, in very animated language, urged the attention of the house to the circumstance of ministers having granted £1,200,000. to the Emperor of Germany without the consent of parliament, upon which he dwelt for a considerable time.

Mr. Pitt replied to his observations:

Those, who never before had an opportunity of hearing the speeches which the right honourable gentleman has been accustomed to pronounce, and of observing the line of argument which he has been accustomed to employ upon every public question which has been agitated in this house, would certainly have supposed, upon the present occasion, that this day, for the first time in his life, the right honourable gentleman had felt real alarm for the liberties and constitution of his country, and for the first time a point had occurred, so intimately connected with the preservation of their political rights, that in the event of a decision hostile to the opinion which he holds, it is to be vindicated by nothing less than an appeal to the people. But it has happened to those who have often had occasion to attend to the right honourable gentleman, to have heard the same danger represented, and the same consequences applied. It is not once, twice, or three times that the right honourable gentleman has reprobated with the same emphasis, stigmatised with the same epithets, and denounced as pregnant with ruin to the liberties of

VOL. III,

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