honourable gentleman opposite to him (Mr. Pitt). He was extremely glad, he said, to find that right honourable gentleman had professed himself an advocate for order.

Mr. Chancellor Pitt called Mr. Sheridan to order. He submitted it to the Committee, whether, when the question was with respect to the order or disorder of the right honourable gentleman, the honourable gentleman (Mr. Sheridan) had a right to digress from that question?

Mr. Sheridan said, the right honourable gentleman who was out of order, spoke to order. He said, if there were any design to overturn the constitution, it was the duty of that House, and particularly of that right honourable gentleman, to endeavour to follow up the idea, and to prepare, in a fair manly way, for the discussion. (Mr. Sheridan was going on, when he was called to order by Mr. Orde.)

Mr. Sheridan thought it his duty to interrupt the right honourable gentleman whenever he spoke on that question. He had been stating matters which he thought required a separate discussion.

Colonel Phipps called Mr. Sheridan to order.

Mr. Chancellor Pitt said, whenever any body conceived the right honourable gentleman was out of order, they got up and interrupted him. The only way to bring this to a point would be to move, that it was disorderly for him to advert to the French constitution in the present debate. He said he himself could not interrupt him, unless he was convinced he was out of order.

Mr. Burke again submitted to the Committee whether he was orderly or not. He desired to proceed no further without taking the sense of the House upon it. When he spoke of a design that was formed in this country against the constitution, he said, he spoke with all the simplicity of a member of parliament. He did not imagine there were any plots, but he had a knowledge or conviction of them. Mr. Burke complained that his friends had not used him with candour. He said, if they reluctantly forced

him to take a regular day, he should certainly do it, provided they gave him a regular parliamentary call to do it.

Mr. Grey said, he certainly did not mean to shrink from any thing he had before stated. He did not know he could call upon the right honourable gentleman to bring forward the measure, but if the right honourable gentleman knew of any design, it certainly was his duty to mention it.

Mr. Burke asserted that there was such a design, so far as could be collected from the conduct of certain persons in the country, to put us out of love with our constitution. If he was called on regularly, he should certainly make good his charge.

Mr. St. John called Mr. Burke to order a second time. He should think it necessary to take the opinion of the House on his conduct.

Mr. Burke said an attempt was now made, by one who had been formerly his friend, to bring down upon him the censure of the House: it was unfortunate, he said, for him sometimes to be hunted by one party, and sometimes by another. He considered himself to be unfairly treated by those gentlemen with whom he had been accustomed to act, but from whom he now received extreme violence. He should, he said, if the tumult of order abated, proceed in the account he was going to give of the horrible and nefarious consequences flowing from the French idea of the rights of men.

Lord Sheffield spoke to order. Whatever might be said by gentlemen on the other side of the House to the contrary, his lordship declared he was convinced that the right honourable gentleman was disorderly, and would move, "That dissertations on the French constitution, and to read a narrative of the transactions in France, are not regular or orderly on the question, that the clauses of the Quebec Bill be read a second time, paragraph by paragraph." Mr. Fox seconded the motion.

Mr. Chancellor Pitt was glad of the motion, as it reduced the debate to something like order. He said he considered the introduction of a discussion on the French constitution to rest on discretion and order, which were two distinct things: he explained their difference, and said, for his own part, he would use no vehement language, nor any word that might give umbrage: not conceiving, however, that the right honourable gentleman was disorderly, he should certainly give his negative to the motion.

Mr. Fox said, he was sincerely sorry to feel that he must support the motion, and the more so, as his right honourable friend had made it necessary by bringing on, in so irregular a manner, a discussion of a matter by no means connected with the Quebec Bill, in a manner which he could not help thinking extremely unfair, but which he must consider as a direct injustice to him. If the right honourable gentleman's argument over the way with regard to order was to obtain order, it was a mode of order that would go to stop every proceeding of that House, especially in committees. It was proper to debate the principle of a bill in the second reading of it; and referring to matter that might be analogous, much latitude would be required. The Quebec Bill had been read a second time, and was decided. If gentlemen, therefore, when a bill was in a committee, would come down and state in long speeches, general answers to all possible objections, to clauses that might be proposed, but were never meant to be proposed, debates might be drawn to any imaginable length, and the business of the House suspended at the pleasure of any one of its members. The argument which some gentlemen might possibly move, that the chairman leave the chair, was applicable to every clause, and to every stage of the bill in the Committee; and if on that account every species of volunteer argument was to be held in order, it would be impossible for business to proceed. His right honourable friend, instead of debating

the principle of the bill, in any stage, which was usual, had come down, not to debate the clauses, but to fortify misrepresentations of what he had said in a former debate, which his right honourable friend did not even hear. Order and discretion in debate had been said to be distinct; with him, Mr. Fox declared, they never should be separate. Where the distinction lay he could not see, for he always conceived that order was founded on discretion. He was not in the habit of interrupting any gentleman on the point of order, because, unless the deviation from it was strong indeed, more time was often lost by calling to order, than by suffering gentlemen to proceed: but if he saw any discussion attempted to be introduced in a way not merely irregular, but unfair, he felt himself obliged to endeavour to stop it. Much had been said on the present occasion, of the danger of theory and the safety of practice. Now, what had been the conduct of the gentleman who looked on theory with abhorrence? Not to enter into a practical discussion of the bill, clause by clause, and to examine whether it gave, what it professed to give, the British constitution to Canada; but, having neglected to have done his duty, and attended the proper stage of debating the principle, to enter into a theoretical inquiry of what the principle ought to be, and a discussion of the constitution of another country, respecting which it was possible that he might differ from him. If this were not manifest eagerness to seek a difference of opinion, and anxiety to discover a cause of dispute, he knew not what was; since, if they came to the clauses of the bill, he did not think there would be any difference of opinion, or at most but a very trifling one. If the right honourable gentleman's object had been to debate the Quebec Bill, he would have debated it clause by clause, according to the established practice of the House. If his object had been to prevent danger apprehended to the British constitution, from the opinions of any man, or any set of men, he would have

given notice of a particular day for that particular purpose, or taken any other occasion of doing it, rather than that on which his nearest and dearest friend had been grossly misrepresented and traduced. That at least would have been the course which he himself should have taken, and therefore what he naturally expected from another. The course which his right honourable friend had chosen to take was that which seemed to confirm the insinuation urged against him, that of having maintained republican principles, as applicable to the British constitution, in a former debate on the Bill. No such argument had ever been urged by him, or any from which such inference was fairly deducible. On the French revolution he did indeed differ from his right honourable friend. Their opi nions, he had no scruple to say, were wide as the poles asunder; but what had a difference of opinion on that, which, to the House, was only matter of theoretical contemplation, to do with the discussion of a practical point, on which no difference existed? On that revolution he ad. hered to his opinion, and never would retract one syllable of what he had said. He repeated, that he thought it, on the whole, one of the most glorious events in the history of mankind. But when he had on a former occasion mentioned France, he had mentioned the revolution only, and not the constitution; the latter remained to be improved by experience, and accommodated to circumstances. The arbitrary system of government was done away; the new one had the good of the people for its object, and this was the point on which he rested. This opinion, Mr. Fox said, he wished the time might come to debate, if opinions of his were again to be made the subject of parliamentary discussion. He had no concealment of his opinions, but if any thing could make him shy of such a discussion, it would be the fixing a day to catechize him respecting his political creed, and respecting opinions on which the House was neither going to act, nor called upon to act at all