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the particular state of public business in Parliament. This I think it necessary to premise, lest observations on the proposition and speech of the right honourable gentleman may be misunderstood. The course of argument which has been pursued by the right honourable gentleman is this-that the country stands, both internally and externally, in a situation of extraordinary difficulty and even peril; a situation demanding all the attention which the most able and experienced minds can bestow upon it. I am very ready to admit that the internal situation of the country is full of difficulties; but they are not insurmountable. There is nothing in that situation which ought to lead us to despair. I admit also that it is impossible to look through the world without perceiving that there may be some latent and not yet unfolded grounds of foreign embarrassment, some distant chance that the exertions which have been made for the establishment and preservation of general tranquillity, however strenuous and ardent, may be frustrated at some period, more or less remote, by occurrences, difficult to foresee, and not possible to be guarded against. Who will undertake to say, that at this very moment some unperceived danger may not be gathering over the country? and when was there a moment in the history of the country at which such an undertaking could be confidently hazarded? In making these admissions, there

fore, I beg to be understood as not alluding to any specific circumstances of difficulty or danger; but merely as not opposing to the vague suppositions of the right honourable gentleman, any assurance that might be understood as intended to deprecate discussion, or to divest the right honourable gentleman's motion of the character and importance which he has assigned to it. Whatever may be the grounds, or whatever the amount of the apprehensions reasonably growing out of the present situation of affairs-in one thing I most cordially agree with the right honourable gentleman, that nothing could more effectually tend to preserve the tranquillity now so happily prevailing throughout the world, than an impression that we should not shrink from war in case of necessity. To this end it is unquestionably indispensable that our financial system should be sound. And to make it so, it is no doubt necessary to purge it of its defects, to repair its infirmities, and, above all things, to give such an ample and undisguised explanation of its real condition, as may render it perfectly clear and intelligible, not only to this country, but to the world. All this is as strongly felt by His Majesty's Government as by the right honourable gentleman; and the only matter of which they have a right to complain in respect to the present motion, is that it is brought forward prematurely, and, if not with the purpose, certainly with the effect, of

intercepting and anticipating that exposition of the whole of our system of finance, which it is the undoubted duty of the Ministers to bring forward, and which it is notorious that they will, in the course of a few days, submit to the consideration of Parliament. The right honourable gentleman has so timed his motion as to enable himself, whenever this exposition shall be made, to exclaim, "Aye, this flows from my motion; just as the inquiry into the affairs of the Bank was the consequence of my former notice." As to the origin of the inquiry into the affairs of the Bank, that question was disposed of at the time, and I will not now weary the attention of the House by re-arguing it but as to the financial statement, I can assure the right honourable gentleman, that nothing but the obvious necessity of first completing the investigation of the Committee on the Bank, and of determining the character of the future currency of the country, before any solid and permanent system of finance could be established, has prevented my right honourable friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, from proposing to the House the plan of finance which has been prepared, not merely for the present year, but for the whole period of peace, whatever may be its duration. My single objection, therefore, to the fairness of the motion is, that it endeavours to take from Ministers the initiative which belongs to them on this momentous subject; on which (as

the right honourable gentleman himself most justly argues) the whole view of the state of the country, external as well as internal, depends.

The right honourable gentleman has, however, avoided entering into any examination of the labours of the Secret Committee, or into the much agitated question respecting the currency, or into the details of our financial situation. In this abstinence I will imitate him: and having merely protested against the implication, thus unfairly conveyed in the motion, that the right honourable gentleman's interference (however great his talents in that line, or however laudable the application with which he has directed them to that object) was necessary to obtain for the House and for the country a prompt and full examination of our financial wants and means, I will proceed to follow the right honourable gentleman through the wider range and more general topics of his speech.

The right honourable gentleman appears to think that in consequence of the alleged exhaustion of our finances, opportunities have been lost of asserting the interests and vindicating the honour of the country. On this point the right honourable gentleman did not indeed express himself in very direct terms. He was contented to "just hint a fault and hesitate dislike." He just made the allusion, and left it to work its own impression. He said that two British subjects had been murdered under the forms of justice by

a general of the United States. The act was not characterized by the right honourable gentleman in terms of too strong abhorrence; but for what purpose was it thus alluded to in a motion for a Committee to inquire into the State of the Nation, unless for that of insinuating, that there had been something in the forbearance of the British Government which could not be accounted for but by a consciousness of absolute impotence? And yet the right honourable gentleman himself confessed his doubts whether, by the law of nations, the interference of the British Government on this occasion would have been justifiable. The right honourable gentleman's doubts are well founded. His Majesty's Ministers have not been the less diligent or the less anxious in their deliberations and researches, to ascertain whether, consistently with the law of nations, they could interfere, than if they had (as was the first natural impulse in every British bosom) made this country and America ring from one end to the other, with cries for redress. Let it not be imputed to His Majesty's Ministers that they alone, of all Englishmen, of all mankind, felt not the indignation at the act in question which it justly merited; that the moral guilt and baseness of that atrocious proceeding appeared to them in any other light than to the plain understanding of every rightminded individual; or that it would not have been easier, ten thousand times more easy as