Sir Francis was educated at Westminster school; and after having spent some time at the university, he made a tour of the continent about the year 1790. He was at Paris at an early period of the late revolution, and remained there a considerable time, but regarded the important and rapidly changing events of that epoch, as they would strike the eye of an uninterested spectator, rather than with the attention of a politician. It is true he sometimes attended the National Assembly, and the clubs that were distinguished at Paris, but it is equally certain that he felt little or no interest in the topics of discussion that agitated the breasts of the contending parties. We are not able to ascertain the exact period of his return from the continent, but in the year 1796, he was, through the interest of the Duke of Newcastle, returned a member of parliament for Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire. From that period to the present, he has been indefatigable in the performance of all those duties which attach to a member of the British Legislature. He has not been contented with merely attending in his place on all important occasions: he has himself, and sometimes almost alone, agitated questions involving the dearest interests of his fellow-citizens.

One of the first acts of Sir Francis's political life was an open, avowed, and unreserved declaration of his sentiments, as a friend to a reform in the Commons House of Parliament. At one of the most respectable and numerous meetings ever held in London, Sir Francis very readily took the chair, and

in an animated speech declared his opinion on this subject, and his resolution to pursue it by every legal means.

We cannot attempt to follow this gentleman in all his parliamentary career, short as it has been, because, in a work of this kind, sufficient latitude cannot be allowed to enter into the detail: we must be contented to draw a sort of outline, by collecting some of the more prominent features which have distinguished his conduct.

Sir Francis had not long been seated in St. Stephen's Chapel before he avowed himself, in the most unequivocal manner, a friend of the rights of the people. He enlisted under the banners of freedom, and declared an open hostility to every act inimical to the liberties of Britons. Upon almost every question relative to the late war, he joined issue with the ministers, exposed the weakness of their measures, the futility of their attempts to subjugate France, and the certain disgrace which must inevitably attend the prosecution of their schemes. The speech which he delivered on the third of January, 1798, in the House of Commons, on the assessed taxes, was replete with argument and sound reasoning: it shewed that, notwithstanding the youth of the orator, it was the result of deep thought, and sound political principles. In answer to the minister, who called upon the country to make any and every sacrifice for the purpose of continuing the war, anticipating certain success if the house would be liberal in its supplies, Sir Francis said, in a spirited tone :

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"We seem to imagine that we have only to assemble within these walls to devise ways and means for extracting large sums of money from the country; then we are told our embarrassments will be relieved, and our enemies will be dismayed.

"But, Sir, we must first cleanse away those foul corruptions which the present minister has carried beyond any former example; which unnerves every heart and every arm, and deprives us of that vigour and courage, once characteristic of this now degraded nation.

"Sir, money is not the sinew of war. If money were as allpowerful as most persons, in spite of experience, continue to believe; I say in spite of experience, for the whole tenor of history serves to prove the contrary, the extravagance of our own minister must have entitled him to every advantage; and the people of France would long since have been exterminated.” Francis then enumerated the methods by which the money raised from the people was squandered away; and concluded with saying: "It is not on account of the heavy pressure which this mode of raising supplies must occasion: it is not on account of the unjust and tyrannical principle of the bill now before you: it is not on account of the waste and extravagance of government, enormous as it is, that I now raise my voice against granting the supplies demanded by the minister: it is because I never will, at any time, or under any circumstances, become an accomplice in the guilt of supporting a system, which, if it can be supported, and is to be persisted in, must eventually destroy the freedom of the country."

In the following June, Sir Francis had an opportunity afforded him of standing forward the avowed friend of the liberty of the press. A bill was brought into the house for regulating the publication of newspapers, &c. which was opposed by the leading members of opposition as a dangerous innovation. Sir Francis regarded it as only part of a plan which had been going on for many years, and which would ef fcctually

fectually undermine all that was valuable in our excellent constitution as it was settled at the Revolution:

"A good and free government," he said, " had nothing to apprehend, and every thing to hope from the liberty of the press. But despotism courted shade and obscurity; it dreaded the scrutinizing eye of liberty; and if an arbitrary-disposed prince, supported by an unprincipled minister, and backed by a corrupt parliament, were to cast about for means to secure such a triple tyranny, no means better could be devised than the bill on the table.

"The present ministers endeavoured to frighten us into measures, holding out the dread of a revolution, whilst themselves were the greatest, and the only revolutionists from whom we had any thing to fear; from whom we had suffered much, and had still more to expect. They had already completed a great revolution, not in favour of, but against liberty. He then reminded the house of the unconstitutional measures daily introduced, one of which he could not forbear mentioning; the infamous practice, by which the whole law of imprisonment was changed, of sending men to those Bastiles which disgraced the country; those private prisons, where, under pretence of regulations, punishments were inflicted apon men as illegal as they were cruel. And what were those regulations so called? To keep men in dismal, heart-sickening solitude, to feed them on bread and water, and that scanty too; tp sentence them to hard labour, exacted by stripes, at the will, perhaps, of a merciless jailor. If this were not tyranny, it was impossible to define the term. It was natural for such a government to complain of the press; it was part of that revolution which had been brought about, and which the present bill would secure; the seeds of which had long been sown, and the effects had been foreseen by the wise Lord Chatham, who had warned the country of the danger and magnitude of the evil. But ministerial corruption blinded the nation then as it did now; and there was reason to fear it would end, as that great statesman foretold, in the subversion of our old, free constitution, and the esta blishment of a German government."

From this period we may date the commencement of Sir Francis Burdett's steady opposition to that system of confinement which seems to have been unknown in our land till within these few years.

Sir Francis was not contented with reports that might be exaggerated; he was not satisfied with assertions made by interested persons, he himself visited and made himself acquainted with all the internal economy of those prisons. He saw the sufferings of many, and compassionated their distresses; unwilling, however, to trust to the evidence of his own senses alone, he invited several respectable gentlemen, both in and out of parliament, to visit with him the prison in Cold Bath Fields; and having so done, and collected what he considered to be the most irrefragable evidence, that the treatment of prisoners in that place was accompanied with a severity, which neither humanity nor policy could justify, he called the attention of parliament to the subject again and again.

In the debate on renewing the suspension of that great bulwark of British liberty, the Habeas Corpus Act, after having animadverted upon it as unnein the existing state of public affairs; as a meacessary sure to which no wise administration would resort, but upon the most urgent occasions; as a measure which more than every other tended to render insecure all that was valuable to a nation, who had been accustomed to boast of their liberties, and the speedy administration of justice; he called the at

tention