CONTENTS THIRD VOLUME. Page DEC. 8, 1796. Debate on the second reading of the report of the committee of ways and means MR. PITT'S PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES. 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 vindi cated 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 the country, measures, which it has been thought necessary to bring forward, and which the wisdom of parliament has thought proper to adopt; nor is it now the first time that the right honourable gentleman, and those who sit near him, have made a stand behind the last dike of the constitution. It is not the first, the second, nor the third time, I repeat, that upon points which a great majority of the house and of the country deemed to be connected with the preservation of their dearest interests, the right honourable gentleman has raised the cry of alarm, and has affected to see the downfall of the constitution, and the destruction of our liberties. Not many months even have elapsed since the right honourable gentleman stated with the same confidence, and urged with the same fervour, that the liberties of England were annihilated, and its constitution gone, if certain bills then pending passed into law; laws under which, I will venture to affirm, that a vast majority of the people of this country agree that the sub stantial blessings of their free government have been preserved, and the designs of our real enemies have hitherto been frustrated. Nay, not many hours have elapsed since the right honourable gentleman gave a two month's notice of his intention to move the repeal of those acts which he once represented as a grievance under which he could not sleep. There is, indeed, something striking, something peculiarly singular, in the manner in which the new constitutional light has broken in upon the right honourable gentleman. This declaration of mind, which has infused so deadly an alarm into the mind of the right honourable gentleman, this declaration by which the constitution is annihilated, was made yesterday! This declaration is admitted to have been made in a way the most clear and distinct, indeed so clear as to magnify the danger, and to aggravate the offence. This declaration, which he now feels to be so fatal to the liberties of the country, so repugnant to the principles of the constitution, as to render it incumbent upon him to make it the ground of an extraordinary proceeding, and the reason of signal animadversion against me, did not yesterday strike him as of so much importance as immediately to call him |