memory of his own individual acts, and of the means of his own justification. If the Legislature had consented to bury in oblivion the crimes of rebellion, was it too much to expect, that they who owed all to that circumstance, should also permit theirs to be forgotten? Was it too much to expect, that after twenty years, rebels themselves should forgive to the Irish Government the crime of having forgiven them? On this part of the subject, there was one circumstance which the personal delicacy of his noble friend, particularly with regard to one individual, had hindered him from mentioning. His noble friend, on the change of Government from Lord Camden to Lord Cornwallis, had made strenuous and successful exertions to screen one convicted libeller from the remnant of his merited punishment, and the House had that night witnessed the reward of those

exertions.

If the manner of introducing this personal attack has been extraordinary, the occasion on which it was brought forward was not less remarkable, nor less deserving of censure. Was there, he would ask, a single member in the House, not previously informed of what had been intended by the present motion, who would have supposed, from the notice given by the honourable and learned gentleman, that it was to be made the vehicle of a personal attack on his noble friend? Was there one member who could for a moment have imagined, that instead of a retrospect of the business of the session, and perhaps a general censure of the conduct of Ministers, he should be obliged to listen to a gross personal attack on one individual? An attack which, had not that noble person been fortunately enabled from recollection of circumstances to repel it, might have consigned him to a misconstruction of five months-to the obloquy of a whole recess during which he might have been held up to the contempt and abhorrence of his fellow

subjects. He would, however, do the honourable and learned mover of the Address the justice to say, that he had only sketched the outline, which the honourable members who followed him had filled up. But did it, or could it, enter into the mind of any man, that even if the avowed object of the motion had been (what it was not) to examine the conduct of His Majesty's Ministers of the present day, he should hear only an inquiry into the conduct of the Government of the year 1797 ? If no consideration of justice to his noble friend could have weight with gentlemen on the other side, was the conduct of the Government in Ireland (if that were to be made matter of inquiry) of such trifling import as to be thus introduced collaterally, and without any previous notice? Did gentlemen conceive that the conduct of successive Administrations in Ireland, twenty years ago, was of such notoriety, and so fresh in the memories of all, that facts and dates could be quoted as if they were the occurrences of the last month? If these matters, therefore, were to be discussed at all, were they not of importance enough to engage the attention of the House separately, and to be brought before them upon due notice and with due deliberation ?

He would admit, with the honourable member (Mr. W. Smith), that a reference to the affairs of Ireland, at the period alluded to, might afford a warning lesson to future Governments; but he denied that it was such a lesson as that honourable member inculcated. The example of Ireland did, indeed, show how cautiously the executive power should watch the slightest indication of an approach to that condition in which, for want of sufficient authority and protection in the state, man takes arms against his fellow man, in civil contest. It showed how promptly it was the duty of a Government to come forward on the first menace of such an alarm, with precautionary measures to insure

the public tranquillity. Had the subject been introduced at an earlier period of the present session, it might, therefore, have been useful in stimulating Parliament to adopt measures adequate to the suppression of rebellion in its infancy. But, except for such purpose, it would, he must confess, be difficult to conceive its utility. He knew no lesson of moral or political utility that could be derived from the contemplation of sufferings and inflictions that make the heart shudder-from exhibiting in detail those violences and cruelties, of which, whoever were the perpetrators, the nation must seek to efface from the feelings of this generation, and from the recollection of mankind (if possible) the sorrow and the shame.

He should now say a word or two on the proposed Address. In his opinion, were even all the matters that it contained in themselves unobjectionable, it would be a sufficient ground for its rejection by the House, that, professing to be a faithful review of the proceedings of the session, it omitted many most material transactions of the session altogether. Many, and those (he thought) the most remarkable of the decisions of the House, were wholly passed by. Was it not somewhat strange, for instance-did it not, he would add, show some want of respect to the noble lord (Cochrane) and the honourable baronet (Sir F. Burdett), his colleague, the members for Westminster-might it not disappoint, in a great degree, their hopes of future fame-that on the subject of Parliamentary Reform—that one great and important topic, on which they had bestowed so much of their valuable labour-the Address should be silent as the grave? Was it not wonderful that that interesting question, with speeches on which the House rung at the early period of the session, should now be thrown into oblivion, as if its honourable and learned advocate were ashamed of his halfadopted child? Surely the noble lord (Cochrane) and the

honourable baronet (Burdett) must deeply deplore that not even an allusion had been made to the countless petitions which they had the honour of presenting in favour of universal suffrage, and annual Parliaments. That fatal omission would be a sufficient reason for his (Mr. Canning's) voting against the present Address. He had no objection to a statement (call it address if you will) being made at the end of the session, as a review of the proceedings of Parliament, and as a counterpart to the speech from the throne; but it was quite essential to such an Address that it should contain an accurate review of those proceedings. Great care should be taken that if such a practice were to be established, the precedent should, in the first instance, be scrupulously correct. But what was the instance before the House? Could this Address be called a fair review of the labours of the House since the opening of the session? What was the business with which the session opened—and with what was it occupied day after day, week after week, and month after month, without respite or intermission ?With petitions for reform in Parliament-poured in by hundreds at the door, and raised in pyramids upon the table. These, though nominally for the same object, exhibited, nevertheless, that beautiful diversity by which the House was relieved in some degree from the tediousness of repetition. Of them it might be truly said—

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-Facies non omnibus una,

Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum."

Exactly alike assuredly they were not; but there was such a resemblance as well became the children of the same parent-the works of the same hand. There was in truth a wonderful sympathy in this respect between the most remote parts of the country; a miraculous conformity of

thought and action among all the sentient puppets in various and distant provinces, which were kept in motion by the skilful master of the show in town. The pulsations in the extremities responded with surprising regularity (by the intervention of the mail coaches) to the beating of the old heart in the centre. But all these important considerations seemed to have been forgotten by the honourable and learned member. When he took his Pisgah retrospect of the session and its business, gazing at it as a land of promise (which, however, had not been, and in the honourable and learned gentleman's sense, God forbid that it should become a land of performance), the honourable and learned gentleman, standing on the lofty eminence to which his imagination had raised him, had altogether overlooked that mountain of petitions which he and his friends had piled upon the floor. Was it possible that the noble lord or the honourable baronet could be contented to adopt an Address so defective? To recognize a portrait, of which the most prominent feature the very nose was left out? How was it possible to account for the fatal deficiency? The mystery was one which he believed it would puzzle the sagacity of even the worthy magistrate opposite (the lord mayor) to solve.

If he recollected rightly, Pope, or some earlier poet, had these lines,

"Authors lose half the praise they would have got,

Did but their readers know how much they blot ;"

and most applicable were they to the Address before the House. Judging from the many erasures, alterations, blots, and blurs, he should take it to be the work of many heads, and of many hands,—and it formed a singular illustration of the honourable and learned mover's notions of political