ascribed them, did not know him; it could not be from the men, because their power had before been exerted without abuse. The Duke of Portland, for instance, had often served his majesty; first as lord chamberlain, which place he filled with high honour; then as lord lieutenant of Ireland; and lastly, as first lord of the treasury; and in each capacity, the noble duke had acted to the satisfaction of his sovereign. Would it be contended, that his majesty could be pleased only by one person? Let it be remembered, how many and how different the sort of men were, which he had at different times favoured. The Earl of Shelburne, who was at one time generally supposed to be disliked by the king, was at a particular period in favour. The right honourable gentleman also, who was once the last person likely to be in favour at court, had since been in favour, and had well repaid that favour! Why, then, was it to be supposed, that persons who had been once in his majesty's favour, might not be so again? There never had been so many peers made, Mr. Burke observed, as during -the present administration. He adverted to Mr. Rolle's declaration on a former occasion, that there had been persons created peers during the present minister's power, who were not fit to be his grooms, and made a variety of pertinent and pointed animadversions upon it; and yet, he remarked, that at the same time that the right honourable gentleman had made the largest use of this exercise of the royal prerogative, he would not permit a temporary exercise of it by the ministers of the regent. If, therefore, the committee put no period to the restriction, Mr. Burke said, it was directly against the principles of the constitution; and he asked, if no great men in this kingdom existed worthy of being distinguished, except those whom the right honourable gentleman had distinguished? He contended, that this was an affront to the noble young men of the kingdom, and he put several cases hypothetically of young men of noble families fit to be made peers. He took notice of the declaration of the lord chancellor in the house of peers, that the prince might indemnify himself by pro

mises, which he considered as an affront to the law, the landed interest, and the noblesse of the House of Commons. Mr. Burke went over Lord North's ground of argument, that the restriction in question would tend to support the House of Lords in a combination against the crown, and to encourage a faction in that House: - points which he urged with additional force of argument. In the course of his speech, Mr. Burke more than once, by the vehemence of his manner, caused an expression of laughter from the other side of the House. On one of these occasions he remarked, that gentlemen might laugh poor honesty out of countenance, but they would better prove their claim to respect, by answering his arguments.

The amendment was negatived without a division.

February 9.

THE House being again in a committee on the regency bill, the seventeenth clause was next read, vesting in her majesty the care of the king's person, and the government of the household. Lord North and others condemned the clause, on the ground of her majesty's having any share in the executive government. They reprobated the measure of dividing that power as unconstitutional and dangerous, and expressed their fears of its operating as a pernicious precedent. Mr. Pitt said, that the ground of objection to the clause was stated to be that of parliamentary influence; a ground which he would venture to say it was wholly unusual to take broadly and openly in that House; because, whatever might have been gentlemen's private opinions respecting that particular kind of influence, it never had been avowed to be necessary to government, till the Lords had thought proper to avow it that day. When it was said, that it was necessary to keep up the state and splendour of the regent, by decorating him with those external marks of the royal dignity, ought not the king's dignity to be kept up by such marks? Ought they, in the earliest moments of his majesty's illness, to be eager to strip him of every mark of dignity, in order to deck out the regent with unnecessary

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powers? He contended, that they ought not; and that it was their duty to manifest that they had not forgotten the respect and reverence due to a sovereign, who had, throughout his reign, proved himself the father of his people.

men.

Mr. BURKE said, that he must offer a few words on the astonishing assertions of the right honourable gentleman. To justify that panegyric on the sovereign which the right honourable gentleman had pronounced, he was called upon to bring him forth as a pageant, dressed up with useless splendour, to serve the purposes of ambitious The right honourable gentleman had asked, would they strip the king of every mark of royalty, and transfer all the dignities of the crown to another person? No, Heaven forbid, when the person wearing the crown could lend a grace to those dignities, and derive a lustre from the splendour of his household! But, did they recollect that they were talking of a sick king, of a monarch smitten by the hand of Omnipotence, and that the Almighty had hurled him from his throne, and plunged him into a condition which drew down upon him the pity of the meanest peasant in his kingdom-[Mr. Burke was called to order by the treasury-side of the House. The Marquis of Graham said, that neither the right honourable gentleman, nor any other man in that House, should dare to say the king was hurled from his throne. There being a general cry of "Take down his words,"] Mr. Burke rose again, and as soon as he had obtained a hearing, said, he would give gentlemen a full opportunity of taking down his words. He declared that he had been interrupted in the midst of a sentence, and that Scripture itself, so maimed and mangled, might be rendered blasphemy. But when it was said in their churches, that the king was afflicted for their sins, might it not be said, that he was struck by the hand of God? At a time when they were putting up their prayers in their temples to heaven to restore the king, prostrating themselves before the Deity, and declaring that it was in

ill, (which he thought had better not have been said) might he not have liberty to declare that Omnipotence had smitten his majesty? His illness was caused by no act of theirs; but ought they, at that hour of sickness and calamity, to clothe his bed with purple? Ought they to make a mockery of him, to put a crown of thorns on his head, a reed in his hand, and dressing him in a raiment of purple, to cry," Hail, king of the Britons!"

Mr. Burke censured the idea of giving the powers of the crown to one person, and its patronage to another; because, at a moment like the present, every precaution should be taken to preserve the safety of the constitution, and the lustre of the royal dignity unimpaired: but, was that the way to effect it? As the right honourable gentleman had planned the business, the government would be weak, enervated, and altogether destitute of dignity; there would be no mark of royalty about the regent for ambassadors to observe, and thence the country would stand degraded and sunk in the eyes of all Europe; and, however we might pass it over, and put up with the inconvenience among ourselves at home, the impression given of our government abroad was highly material. How would the king, on his recovery, be pleased at seeing the patronage of the household taken from the Prince of Wales, his representative, and given to the queen? He must be shocked at the idea, unless they supposed, what it was monstrous to suppose, that the king was a good husband and a bad father. An honourable gentleman had said, that they were not going to make a king. He was afraid they were. It was meant that the person who should represent his majesty, should not have the attendance which ought to accompany royalty. When had such a project been ever before practised as a separation of the royal dignity from the regal office? He put the case of a minor king, of seventeen years, and said, in that case, would not a regent be provided and invested with all the royal dignity of a king? He referred to the regency bills in the reign of George the Second, and the regency bill passed in the present reign, and contended,

that in both the full powers were given. He maintained also, that the royal family were noticed in each, whereas they were totally excluded from the present bill, and power of an enormous magnitude was taken out of the hands of the king's eldest son, and put into the hands of a person not of his majesty's blood. The regent was tied up from making peers; he was debarred from granting pensions and offices; he was restrained from exercising charities, bestowing bounties, or doing any one grateful office which served as a balance against the dreadful attributes of sovereignty. Where was he to get money to distribute bounties? Was he to take it out of his own privy purse, or the receipts of the little paltry duchy of Lancaster? To the queen the House proposed to be prodigal; to the heir apparent they had not given the least dignity in the world. What were they then doing? They were about to give a mock crown, a tinsel robe, and a sceptre from the theatre, lackered over, and unreal; and, at the same time, they rendered it necessary to tax the people, so that the prince's name should never be mentioned without some recollection which must excite unpopularity. The right honourable gentleman was to have 300,000l. influence when he went out. The right honourable gentleman thought the prince might do without influence, although he knew that he could not do without it himself. In former times, the way to popularity was by standing up in defence of the liberties of the people, but the right honourable gentleman was born for the age in which he lived; he took another road; his first object was, by some means or other, to get court favour, and having obtained indirectly a degree of power, he thought to gain popularity afterwards, if he could. The right honourable gentleman had contrived the bill to fortify himself when out of office. The separation of power from royalty must destroy the representation of this country, or the queen's government must destroy the regent's. His majesty might continue ill for twenty years, and then, what a state of anarchy, disunion, and difficulty, the divided government they were