The following Speech was delivered on the 13th of July 1830. It is believed to have mainly contributed towards Mr. Brougham's election as Member for the County of York, which took place a few weeks after.

SPEECH.

SIR,-In rising to bring before the House a subject more momentous, in the eyes both of this country and of the world, than any that has occupied our attention during the whole of a long protracted Session, I am aware that I owe some apology for entering upon it at so late a day. I know, too, that I am blamed in many quarters, for not postponing it till another season. But the apology which I am about to offer is, not for bringing it forward to-day, but for having delayed it so long; and I feel that I should be indeed without excuse, that I should stand convicted of a signal breach of public duty, to the character and the honour of the House, to the feelings and principles of the people, nay, to the universal feelings of mankind at large, by whatever names they may be called, into whatever families distributed, if I had not an ample defence to urge for having so long put off the agitation of this great question. The occurrences which happened at the commencement of the Session, and the matters of pressing interest which have just attended its close, must plead my justification.

Early in the year I had hoped that the Government would redeem the pledges which they gave me last Session, and which then stayed my steps. I had expected to

have the satisfaction of seconding a measure propounded by the Ministers of the Crown for improving the administration of justice in the Colonies, and especially for amending the law which excludes the testimony of slaves. That those expectations have been frustrated, that those pledges remain unredeemed, I may lament; but in fairness I am bound to say I cannot charge this as matter of severe blame on the Government, because I know the obstacles of a financial nature, which have stood in the way of intentions sincerely entertained, to provide a pure and efficient system of judicature for the West-India Islands. Until I saw that no such reforms could be looked for in that high quarter, I was precluded from undertaking the subject, lest my efforts might mar the work in hands far more able to execute it.

This is my defence for now addressing you at the end of the parliamentary year. But to imagine that I can hold my peace a moment longer, that I can suffer the Parliament to be prorogued, and above all to be dissolved, and the country to be assembled for the choice of new Representatives, without calling on the House for a solemn pledge, which may bind its successors to do their duty by the most defenceless and wretched portion of their fellow subjects, is so manifestly out of the question, that I make no apology for the lateness of the day, and disregard even the necessary absence of many fast friends of the cause, and a general slackness of attendance, incident to the season, as attested by the state of these benches, which might well dissuade me from going on. And now, after the question of Colonial Slavery has for so many years been familiar to the House, and I fear still more familiar to the country, I would fain hope that I may dispense with the irksome task of dragging you through its details, from their multiplicity so over

whelming, from their miserable nature so afflicting. But I am aware that in the threshold of the scene, and to scare me from entering upon it, there stands the phantom of colonial independence, resisting parliamentary interference, fatiguing the ear with the thrice-told tale of their ignorance who see from afar off, and pointing to the fatal issue of the American war. There needs but one steady glance to brush all such spectres away. That the colonial legislatures have rights-that their privileges are to be respected that their province is not to be lightly invaded -that the Parliament of the mother country is not, without necessity, to trench on their independence -no man more than myself is willing to allow. But when those local assemblies utterly neglect their first duties when we see them, from the circumstances of their situation, prevented from acting-struggling in these trammels for an independent existence-exhausted in the effort to stand alone, and to move one step wholly unable-when at any rate we wait for years, and perceive that they advance not by a hair's breadth, either because they cannot, or because they dare not, or because they will not-then to contend that we should not interfere-that we should fail in our duty because they do not do theirs-nay, that we have no right to act, because they have no power or no inclination to obey us-would be, not an argument, but an abomination, a gross insult to Parliament, a mockery of our privileges-for I trust that we too have some left-a shameful abandonment of our duty, and a portentous novelty in the history of the Parliament, the Plantations, and the Country.

Talk not of the American contest, and the triumph of the colonists. Who that has read the sad history of that event (and I believe among the patriarchs of this cause whom I now address there are some who

can remember that disgrace of our councils and our arms) will say, that either the Americans triumphed or we quailed on one inch of the ground upon which the present controversy stands? Ignorance the most gross, or inattention the most heedless, can alone explain, but cannot at all justify, the use of such a topic. Be it remembered-and to set at rest the point of right, I shall say no more-let it not once be forgotten, that the supremacy of the mother country never for an instant was surrendered at any period of that calamitous struggle. Nay, in the whole course of it, a question of her supremacy never once was raised; the whole dispute was rigorously confined to the power of taxing. All that we gave up, as we said voluntarily, as the Americans more truly said, by compulsion, was the power to tax; and by the very act which surrendered this power, we solemnly, deliberately, and unequivocally reasserted the right of the Parliament to give laws to the plantations in all other respects whatever. Thus speaks the record of history and the record of our Statute-book. But were both

history and the laws silent, there is a fact so plain and striking, that it would of itself be quite sufficient to establish the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.

I believe it may safely be affirmed, that on neither side of the water was there a man more distinguished for steady devotion to the cause of colonial independence, or who made his name more renowned by firm resistance to the claims of the mother country, than Mr. Burke. He was, in truth, throughout that memorable struggle, the great leader in Parliament against the infatuated ministry, whose counsels ended in severing the empire; and far from abating in his opposition as the contest advanced, he sacrificed to those principles the favour of his constituents, and was in consequence obliged to withdraw from the repre