that there were other times, besides the two years in which I did visit
you, when I was not wholly without leisure for repeating that mark of
my respect. But I could not bring my mind to see you. You remember that
in the beginning of this American war (that era of calamity, disgrace,
and downfall, an era which no feeling mind will ever mention without a
tear for England) you were greatly divided,--and a very strong body, if
not the strongest, opposed itself to the madness which every art and
every power were employed to render popular, in order that the errors of
the rulers might be lost in the general blindness of the nation. This
opposition continued until after our great, but most unfortunate victory
at Long Island. Then all the mounds and banks of our constancy were
borne down, at once, and the frenzy of the American war broke in upon us
like a deluge. This victory, which seemed to put an immediate end to all
difficulties, perfected us in that spirit of domination which our
unparalleled prosperity had but too long nurtured. We had been so very
powerful, and so very prosperous, that even the humblest of us were
degraded into the vices and follies of kings. We lost all measure
between means and ends; and our headlong desires became our politics and
our morals. All men who wished for peace, or retained any sentiments of
moderation, were overborne or silenced; and this city was led by every
artifice (and probably with the more management because I was one of
your members) to distinguish itself by its zeal for that fatal cause. In
this temper of yours and of my mind, I should sooner have fled to the
extremities of the earth than hate shown myself here. I, who saw in
every American victory (for you have had a long series of these
misfortunes) the germ and seed of the naval power of France and Spain,
which all our heat and warmth against America was only hatching into
life,--I should not have been a welcome visitant, with the brow and the
language of such feelings. When afterwards the other face of your
calamity was turned upon you, and showed itself in defeat and distress,
I shunned you full as much. I felt sorely this variety in our
wretchedness; and I did not wish to have the least appearance of
insulting you with that show of superiority, which, though it may not be
assumed, is generally suspected, in a time of calamity, from those whose
previous warnings have been despised. I could not bear to show you a
representative whose face did not reflect that of his constituents,--a
face that could not joy in your joys, and sorrow in your sorrows. But
time at length has made us all of one opinion, and we have all opened
our eyes on the true nature of the American war,--to the true nature of
all its successes and all its failures.
In that public storm, too, I had my private feelings. I had seen blown
down and prostrate on the ground several of those houses to whom I was
chiefly indebted for the honor this city has done me. I confess, that,
whilst the wounds of those I loved were yet green, I could not bear to
show myself in pride and triumph in that place into which their
partiality had brought me, and to appear at feasts and rejoicings in the
midst of the grief and calamity of my warm friends, my zealous
supporters, my generous benefactors. This is a true, unvarnished,
undisguised state of the affair. You will judge of it.
This is the only one of the charges in which I am personally concerned.
As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall
mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse.
Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I
found all my reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the
man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the
distinguishing colors of my life, so as to leave nothing distinct and
determinate in my whole conduct?
It has been said, and it is the second charge, that in the questions of
the Irish trade I did not consult the interest of my constituents,--or,
to speak out strongly, that I rather acted as a native of Ireland than
as an English member of Parliament.
I certainly have very warm good wishes for the place of my birth. But
the sphere of my duties is my true country. It was as a man attached to
your interests, and zealous for the conservation of your power and
dignity, that I acted on that occasion, and on all occasions. You were
involved in the American war. A new world of policy was opened, to which
it was necessary we should conform, whether we would or not; and my only
thought was how to conform to our situation in such a manner as to unite
to this kingdom, in prosperity and in affection, whatever remained of
the empire. I was true to my old, standing, invariable principle, that
all things which came from Great Britain should issue as a gift of her
bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered against a
struggling litigant,--or at least, that, if your beneficence obtained no
credit in your concessions, yet that they should appear the salutary
provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung from you
with your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity. The first
concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled and stripped of the
parts which were necessary to make out their just correspondence and
connection in trade, were of no use. The next year a feeble attempt was
made to bring the thing into better shape. This attempt, (countenanced
by the minister,) on the very first appearance of some popular
uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the House, thrown
out by _him_.
What was the consequence? The whole kingdom of Ireland was instantly in
a flame. Threatened by foreigners, and, as they thought, insulted by
England, they resolved at once to resist the power of France and to cast
off yours. As for us, we were able neither to protect nor to restrain
them. Forty thousand men were raised and disciplined without commission
from the crown. Two illegal armies were seen with banners displayed at
the same time and in the same country. No executive magistrate, no
judicature, in Ireland, would acknowledge the legality of the army which
bore the king's commission; and no law, or appearance of law, authorized
the army commissioned by itself. In this unexampled state of things,
which the least error, the least trespass on the right or left, would
have hurried down the precipice into an abyss of blood and confusion,
the people of Ireland demand a freedom of trade with arms in their
hands. They interdict all commerce between the two nations. They deny
all new supply in the House of Commons, although in time of war. They
stint the trust of the old revenue, given for two years to all the
king's predecessors, to six months. The British Parliament, in a former
session, frightened into a limited concession by the menaces of Ireland,
frightened out of it by the menaces of England, was now frightened back
again, and made an universal surrender of all that had been thought the
peculiar, reserved, uncommunicable rights of England: the exclusive
commerce of America, of Africa, of the West Indies,--all the
enumerations of the Acts of Navigation,--all the manufactures,--iron,
glass, even the last pledge of jealousy and pride, the interest hid in
the secret of our hearts, the inveterate prejudice moulded into the
constitution of our frame, even the sacred fleece itself, all went
together. No reserve, no exception; no debate, no discussion. A sudden
light broke in upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and
well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches,--through the
yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No
town in England presumed to have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a
petition. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which
retained authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every
shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualification, denied
in theory, as it had been trampled upon in practice. This scene of shame
and disgrace has, in a manner, whilst I am speaking, ended by the
perpetual establishment of a military power in the dominions of this
crown, without consent of the British legislature,[48] contrary to the
policy of the Constitution, contrary to the Declaration of Right; and by
this your liberties are swept away along with your supreme
authority,--and both, linked together from the beginning, have, I am
afraid, both together perished forever.
What! Gentlemen, was I not to foresee, or foreseeing, was I not to
endeavor to save you from all these multiplied mischiefs and disgraces?
Would the little, silly, canvass prattle of obeying instructions, and
having no opinions but yours, and such idle, senseless tales, which
amuse the vacant ears of unthinking men, have saved you from "the
pelting of that pitiless storm," to which the loose improvidence, the
cowardly rashness, of those who dare not look danger in the face so as
to provide against it in time, and therefore throw themselves headlong
into the midst of it, have exposed this degraded nation, beat down and
prostrate on the earth, unsheltered, unarmed, unresisting? Was I an
Irishman on that day that I boldly withstood our pride? or on the day
that I hung down my head, and wept in shame and silence over the
humiliation of Great Britain? I became unpopular in England for the one,
and in Ireland for the other. What then? What obligation lay on me to be
popular? I was bound to serve both kingdoms. To be pleased with my
service was their affair, not mine.
I was an Irishman in the Irish business, just as much as I was an
American, when, on the same principles, I wished you to concede to
America at a time when she prayed concession at our feet. Just as much
was I an American, when I wished Parliament to offer terms in victory,
and not to wait the well-chosen hour of defeat, for making good by
weakness and by supplication a claim of prerogative, preëminence, and
authority.
Instead of requiring it from me, as a point of duty, to kindle with your
passions, had you all been as cool as I was, you would have been saved
disgraces and distresses that are unutterable. Do you remember our
commission? We sent out a solemn embassy across the Atlantic Ocean, to
lay the crown, the peerage, the commons of Great Britain at the feet of
the American Congress. That our disgrace might want no sort of
brightening and burnishing, observe who they were that composed this
famous embassy. My Lord Carlisle is among the first ranks of our
nobility. He is the identical man who, but two years before, had been
put forward, at the opening of a session, in the House of Lords, as the
mover of an haughty and rigorous address against America. He was put in
the front of the embassy of submission. Mr. Eden was taken from the
office of Lord Suffolk, to whom he was then Under-Secretary of
State,--from the office of that Lord Suffolk who but a few weeks before,
in his place in Parliament, did not deign to inquire where a congress of
vagrants was to be found. This Lord Suffolk sent Mr. Eden to find these
vagrants, without knowing where his king's generals were to be found who
were joined in the same commission of supplicating those whom they were
sent to subdue. They enter the capital of America only to abandon it;
and these assertors and representatives of the dignity of England, at
the tail of a flying army, let fly their Parthian shafts of memorials
and remonstrances at random behind them. Their promises and their
offers, their flatteries and their menaces, were all despised; and we
were saved the disgrace of their formal reception only because the
Congress scorned to receive them; whilst the State-house of independent
Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the ambassador of
France. From war and blood we went to submission, and from submission
plunged back again to war and blood, to desolate and be desolated,
without measure, hope, or end. I am a Royalist: I blushed for this
degradation of the crown. I am a Whig: I blushed for the dishonor of
Parliament. I am a true Englishman: I felt to the quick for the
disgrace of England. I am a man: I felt for the melancholy reverse of
human affairs in the fall of the first power in the world.
To read what was approaching in Ireland, in the black and bloody
characters of the American war, was a painful, but it was a necessary
part of my public duty. For, Gentlemen, it is not your fond desires or
mine that can alter the nature of things; by contending against which,
what have we got, or shall ever get, but defeat and shame? I did not
obey your instructions. No. I conformed to the instructions of truth and
Nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a
constancy that became me. A representative worthy of you ought to be a
person of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions,--but to
such opinions as you and I _must_ have five years hence. I was not to
look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place,
along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on
the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no
use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. Would to
God the value of my sentiments on Ireland and on America had been at
this day a subject of doubt and discussion! No matter what my sufferings
had been, so that this kingdom had kept the authority I wished it to
maintain, by a grave foresight, and by an equitable temperance in the
use of its power.
The next article of charge on my public conduct, and that which I find
rather the most prevalent of all, is Lord Beauchamp's bill: I mean his
bill of last session, for reforming the law-process concerning
imprisonment. It is said, to aggravate the offence, that I treated the
petition of this city with contempt even in presenting it to the House,
and expressed myself in terms of marked disrespect. Had this latter part
of the charge been true, no merits on the side of the question which I
took could possibly excuse me. But I am incapable of treating this city
with disrespect. Very fortunately, at this minute, (if my bad eyesight
does not deceive me,) the worthy gentleman[49] deputed on this business
stands directly before me. To him I appeal, whether I did not, though it
militated with my oldest and my most recent public opinions, deliver the
petition with a strong and more than usual recommendation to the
consideration of the House, on account of the character and consequence
of those who signed it. I believe the worthy gentleman will tell you,
that, the very day I received it, I applied to the Solicitor, now the
Attorney General, to give it an immediate consideration; and he most
obligingly and instantly consented to employ a great deal of his very
valuable time to write an explanation of the bill. I attended the
committee with all possible care and diligence, in order that every
objection of yours might meet with a solution, or produce an alteration.
I entreated your learned recorder (always ready in business in which you
take a concern) to attend. But what will you say to those who blame me
for supporting Lord Beauchamp's bill, as a disrespectful treatment of
your petition, when you hear, that, out of respect to you, I myself was
the cause of the loss of that very bill? For the noble lord who brought
it in, and who, I must say, has much merit for this and some other
measures, at my request consented to put it off for a week, which the
Speaker's illness lengthened to a fortnight; and then the frantic
tumult about Popery drove that and every rational business from the
House. So that, if I chose to make a defence of myself, on the little
principles of a culprit, pleading in his exculpation, I might not only
secure my acquittal, but make merit with the opposers of the bill. But I
shall do no such thing. The truth is, that I did occasion the loss of
the bill, and by a delay caused by my respect to you. But such an event
was never in my contemplation. And I am so far from taking credit for
the defeat of that measure, that I cannot sufficiently lament my
misfortune, if but one man, who ought to be at large, has passed a year
in prison by my means. I am a debtor to the debtors. I confess judgment.
I owe what, if ever it be in my power, I shall most certainly
pay,--ample atonement and usurious amends to liberty and humanity for my
unhappy lapse. For, Gentlemen, Lord Beauchamp's bill was a law of
justice and policy, as far as it went: I say, as far as it went; for its
fault was its being in the remedial part miserably defective.
There are two capital faults in our law with relation to civil debts.
One is, that every man is presumed solvent: a presumption, in
innumerable cases, directly against truth. Therefore the debtor is
ordered, on a supposition of ability and fraud, to be coerced his
liberty until he makes payment. By this means, in all cases of civil
insolvency, without a pardon from his creditor, he is to be imprisoned
for life; and thus a miserable mistaken invention of artificial science
operates to change a civil into a criminal judgment, and to scourge
misfortune or indiscretion with a punishment which the law does not
inflict on the greatest crimes.
The next fault is, that the inflicting of that punishment is not on the
opinion of an equal and public judge, but is referred to the arbitrary
discretion of a private, nay, interested, and irritated, individual. He,
who formally is, and substantially ought to be, the judge, is in reality
no more than ministerial, a mere executive instrument of a private man,
who is at once judge and party. Every idea of judicial order is
subverted by this procedure. If the insolvency be no crime, why is it
punished with arbitrary imprisonment? If it be a crime, why is it
delivered into private hands to pardon without discretion, or to punish
without mercy and without measure?
To these faults, gross and cruel faults in our law, the excellent
principle of Lord Beauchamp's bill applied some sort of remedy. I know
that credit must be preserved: but equity must be preserved, too; and it
is impossible that anything should be necessary to commerce which is
inconsistent with justice. The principle of credit was not weakened by
that bill. God forbid! The enforcement of that credit was only put into
the same public judicial hands on which we depend for our lives and all
that makes life dear to us. But, indeed, this business was taken up too
warmly, both here and elsewhere. The bill was extremely mistaken. It was
supposed to enact what it never enacted; and complaints were made of
clauses in it, as novelties, which existed before the noble lord that
brought in the bill was born. There was a fallacy that ran through the
whole of the objections. The gentlemen who opposed the bill always
argued as if the option lay between that bill and the ancient law. But
this is a grand mistake. For, practically, the option is between not
that bill and the old law, but between that bill and those occasional
laws called acts of grace. For the operation of the old law is so
savage, and so inconvenient to society, that for a long time past, once
in every Parliament, and lately twice, the legislature has been obliged
to make a general arbitrary jail-delivery, and at once to set open, by
its sovereign authority, all the prisons in England.
Gentlemen, I never relished acts of grace, nor ever submitted to them
but from despair of better. They are a dishonorable invention, by which,
not from humanity, not from policy, but merely because we have not room
enough to hold these victims of the absurdity of our laws, we turn loose
upon the public three or four thousand naked wretches, corrupted by the
habits, debased by the ignominy of a prison. If the creditor had a right
to those carcasses as a natural security for his property, I am sure we
have no right to deprive him of that security. But if the few pounds of
flesh were not necessary to his security, we had not a right to detain
the unfortunate debtor, without any benefit at all to the person who
confined him. Take it as you will, we commit injustice. Now Lord
Beauchamp's bill intended to do deliberately, and with great caution and
circumspection, upon each several case, and with all attention to the
just claimant, what acts of grace do in a much greater measure, and with
very little care, caution, or deliberation.
I suspect that here, too, if we contrive to oppose this bill, we shall
be found in a struggle against the nature of things. For, as we grow
enlightened, the public will not bear, for any length of time, to pay
for the maintenance of whole armies of prisoners, nor, at their own
expense, submit to keep jails as a sort of garrisons, merely to fortify
the absurd principle of making men judges in their own cause. For credit
has little or no concern in this cruelty. I speak in a commercial
assembly. You know that credit is given because capital _must_ be
employed; that men calculate the chances of insolvency; and they either
withhold the credit, or make the debtor pay the risk in the price. The
counting-house has no alliance with the jail. Holland understands trade
as well as we, and she has done much more than this obnoxious bill
intended to do. There was not, when Mr. Howard visited Holland, more
than one prisoner for debt in the great city of Rotterdam. Although Lord
Beauchamp's act (which was previous to this bill, and intended to feel
the way for it) has already preserved liberty to thousands, and though
it is not three years since the last act of grace passed, yet, by Mr.
Howard's last account, there were near three thousand again in jail. I
cannot name this gentleman without remarking that his labors and
writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has
visited all Europe,--not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the
stateliness of temples, not to make accurate measurements of the remains
of ancient grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art,
not to collect medals or collate manuscripts,--but to dive into the
depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey
the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of
misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend
to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the
distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original; and it is
as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery, a
circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labor is felt
more or less in every country; I hope he will anticipate his final
reward by seeing all its effects fully realized in his own. He will
receive, not by retail, but in gross, the reward of those who visit the
prisoner; and he has so forestalled and monopolized this branch of
charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by such acts
of benevolence hereafter.
Nothing now remains to trouble you with but the fourth charge against
me,--the business of the Roman Catholics. It is a business closely
connected with the rest. They are all on one and the same principle. My
little scheme of conduct, such as it is, is all arranged. I could do
nothing but what I have done on this subject, without confounding the
whole train of my ideas and disturbing the whole order of my life.
Gentlemen, I ought to apologize to you for seeming to think anything at
all necessary to be said upon this matter. The calumny is fitter to be
scrawled with the midnight chalk of incendiaries, with "No Popery," on
walls and doors of devoted houses, than to be mentioned in any civilized
company. I had heard that the spirit of discontent on that subject was
very prevalent here. With pleasure I find that I have been grossly
misinformed. If it exists at all in this city, the laws have crushed its
exertions, and our morals have shamed its appearance in daylight. I have
pursued this spirit wherever I could trace it; but it still fled from
me. It was a ghost which all had heard of, but none had seen. None would
acknowledge that he thought the public proceeding with regard to our
Catholic dissenters to be blamable; but several were sorry it had made
an ill impression upon others, and that my interest was hurt by my share
in the business. I find with satisfaction and pride, that not above four
or five in this city (and I dare say these misled by some gross
misrepresentation) have signed that symbol of delusion and bond of
sedition, that libel on the national religion and English character, the
Protestant Association. It is, therefore, Gentlemen, not by way of cure,
but of prevention, and lest the arts of wicked men may prevail over the
integrity of any one amongst us, that I think it necessary to open to
you the merits of this transaction pretty much at large; and I beg your
patience upon it: for, although the reasonings that have been used to
depreciate the act are of little force, and though the authority of the
men concerned in this ill design is not very imposing, yet the
audaciousness of these conspirators against the national honor, and the
extensive wickedness of their attempts, have raised persons of little
importance to a degree of evil eminence, and imparted a sort of sinister
dignity to proceedings that had their origin in only the meanest and
blindest malice.
In explaining to you the proceedings of Parliament which have been
complained of, I will state to you,--first, the thing that was
done,--next, the persons who did it,--and lastly, the grounds and
reasons upon which the legislature proceeded in this deliberate act of
public justice and public prudence.