JUNE 18.

ADDITIONAL FORCE BILL.

The Chancellar of the Exchequer moved that the bill be engrossed.

Mr. SHERIDAN.-To the arguments, Sir, which have been urged in support of the measure before the house, the right honorable gentleman (Mr. Addington) who has just sat down has given such a full and fair reply, that I do not think it necessary to enter into the subject as I had otherwise intended. The objections to this bill have been so forcibly maintained by that right honorable gentleman, and he has put the subject upon such fair and constitutional grounds, that I should decline to trouble the house upon this occasion, if it were not for the observations of my right honorable friend (Mr. Canning), who has not confined himself to the bill under consideration, but has thought proper to introduce matter not strictly relevant, but yet of infinitely more importance than the bill itself—I mean my right honorable friend's allusion to the degree of confidence to which the present administration is entitled. My right honorable friend stated, that he was not disposed to adulation towards his right honorable friend who sits near him (Mr. Pitt) and for whom, no doubt, he entertains the most sincere respect and regard. I hope he will do me the justice to think, that I am equally incapable of adulation towards my right honorable friend on the same bench with me (Mr. Fox). I certainly am no flatterer, although in point of attachment to my right honorable friend, I will not yield to that which my right honorable friend on the opposite side can or does profess to feel for his right honorable friend beside him; with this difference, however, on my part, that my attachment to my right hon, friend on this side of the house is of a much longer standing-that it is the first, the strongest, and the only political attachment of my life. But my right

honorable friend disclaims adulation towards his friend, and, indeed, he seems to me to have had no occasion to do so, for he certainly did not deal in it; on the contrary, he has taken occasion to pronounce upon the conduct of his right honorable friend one of the bitterest satires that could be well imagined. My right honorable friend expresses his surprise that we who oppose this bill can contrive to co-operate, and that we can avoid quarrelling when we get into the lobby; but is it not equally, if not more a matter of surprise, that he can avoid quarrelling with some of his friends near him, to whom he has been so very lately in decided opposition, and particularly with the noble lord (Castlereagh) whọ appears now to have determined which of the "two strings" he should put to his bow? (A laugh.) If my right honorable friend will look at those about him he will find that the compliments and censures which he meant for the right honorable gentleman on the lower bench, (Mr. Addington), were applicable also to some of his present connections. Whatever praise or condemnation applies to the one, applies equally to the other, with this difference, that the compliment called forth by the retirement of the one from office, when the voice of parliament and the country called for it, is not deserved by the other, who still remain in power. Some part of the administration of the right honorable gentleman on the lower bench I most cordially approved, and his intentions in every instance I respected, because I firmly believed them to be pure and honorable. I esteemed the motives which actuated his public conduct, because I was certain of his disposition, whatever might be the sentiments of some of his colleagues, to govern the country upon the principles of the constitution. I know that his acceptance of office was a sacrifice, and I feel that his retirement from it was a triumph. But did my right honorable friend, I would ask him, mean it as a com.. pliment to the right honorable gentleman, that

immediately upon his retirement from office, he started into an open, manly, and systematic opposition; or did he mean it as an indirect sarcasm upon the conduct of his right honorable friend? Did my right honorable friend mean to say, that when the right honorable gentleman resigned his situation, he did not offer an insidious support to his successor; that he did not seat himself behind him for the purpose of availing himself of the first opportunity to push him out; that when a motion of impeachment was made against his successor, he did not attempt to suspend the judgment of the question, by the shabby, shallow pretext of moving the previous question? No! Such has not been the conduct of the right honorable gentleman, and the line he has pursued will be entitled to commendation. What are we to think, what can my right honorable friend say of that course of proceeding which I have described? a course which had nothing manly, consistent, or direct about it. In this conduct, however, my right honorable friend did not participate, and of course merits no part of the censure attached to it by every generous and liberal minded man. My right honorable friend has given credit to the right honorable gentleman for retiring from office before he was forced out by actual opposition, for taking the hint from parliament. If he be serious in pronouncing this laudable, what can he think of the six members of the late cabinet who still continue in office, who consent to act with, and even subordinate to, the very right honorable gentleman who so lately treated them with contumely and contempt? If the behaviour of the one be manly, how are we to estimate the other? how are we to judge of the situation of that noble lord, (Hawkesbury), whose conduct in office appears to have given such particular offence to my right honorable friend? But I derive some consolation from the language of my right honorable friend, for as he applauds so much the act of the right honorable

gentleman, in having resigned his office when parliament and the country seemed to wish it, when he had in this house but a majority of 37, I have reason to hope, that as his right honorable friend had only a majority of 28 on a former evening, which majority will, I think, be reduced this night, my right honorable friend will recommend to him an imitation of the gallant and dignified conduct of the right honorable gentleman on the lower benchthat he will advise him not to persevere any farther with such a mean, decreasing majority, after having lost the confidence of all the independent part of parliament and the country. My right honorable friend, indeed, states that he would wish to see an administration formed upon a broader scale, and in this declaration I really believe him sincere. If he considers what his right honorable friend now is, and what he might have been, I am pretty sure that such must be his wish. I am also sure that my right honorable friend delivers his real sentiment when he states that he feels himself in a post of danger. I believe that he considers the administration to which he belongs as not at all likely to last; and I will go a step farther, I believe that neither himself nor his right honorable friend really think that it ought to last; for they must be aware that it is an arrangement which has excited discontent and complaint through every part of the country. It is indeed an arrangement of such a nature that my right honorable friend thinks it necessary to offer something in the shape of an apology for the part he has taken in it. My right honorable friend has taken occasion in some degree to contrast his attachment to his right honorable friend at the head of administration, with my attachment to my right honorable friend beside me; but there is this difference between us, that I can never follow the same line as that which my right honorable friend has done this night, to excuse his acceptance of a high office under the administration of his right honorable friend. I

do not feel it necessary to enter into any justification of my attachment to my right honorable friend; for although I do not find him holding one of the first offices in the government, I find him surrounded with honor; for although I do not find him leading a cabinet, I see him followed by all that is independent in the rank, character, consequence, and population of the country. I see him restored to the friendship of all those good and great men, from whom he has, though he never ought to have been separated, or rather I see those personages restored to him. In a word, I have the happiness to observe the public character of my right honorable friend placed on a more exalted eminence than it ever before stood on. An attachment to him, therefore, it cannot be any other than a source of the most gratifying pride to reflect upon. My right honorable friend, in the course of the justification which he has attempted for his conduct in co-operating with his right honorable friend, has dwelt a good deal upon the happy event of the removal of what he termed the late ministers, but my right honorable friend seemed to forget that that removal was far from being complete. To be sure some of those, with whom my right honorable friend professed to have been dissatisfied, were removed. He was dissatisfied with the conduct of the department for foreign affairs, and therefore out goes Lord Hawkesbury; and sorry I am to perceive that that noble lord has put the seal to his own condemnation, that being charged with mismanagement and incapacity, he consents to be degraded in order to make room for another noble lord, who certainly has yet to prove his ability, who has at least no experience to recommend him. This removal must no doubt be a source of much mortification to those who may be intimately connected with the noble lord: but this alone was not enough to satisfy my right honorable friend, and to reconcile him to the administration. He disliked the Admiralty, and therefore that silly,