Commons of Ireland were to be present at Westminster in the persons of one hundred members elected on the old franchise. Provisions were also added to insure the reduction of the numbers of the overgrown Irish peerage. It was arranged that only one fresh Irish patent could be granted for every three that fell extinct. This rule was to hold good till the number was reduced to one hundred, which was to be maintained by fresh creations. It was also specially provided that Irish non-representative peers could sit in the House of Commons for English boroughs.

The first Parliament of the United Kingdom met January, 1801, without a General Election. The members of the Parliament then sitting for England were declared, by royal proclamation, to be members of the first Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which was to meet on January 22, 1801.

THE

CHAPTER XVII.

MEN AND DEBATES. (1760-1800.)

HE period of George III. ranks extremely high in the oratorical annals of this country. Seldom indeed has Parliament been adorned with such a galaxy of brilliant stars as those which coruscated in the political firmament at the close of the eighteenth century. It seems to the student almost like entering on a new and unknown country to cross the barrier which interposes its unsubstantial shape between the reign of the third George and that of his grandfather. There is no break in the political history, hardly any change of policy at first, and yet it is evident that the old era has given place to a new, that the age of Pitt and Pelham, Granville and Bath, Newcastle and the elder Fox, must be reckoned in the annals of the past. Pitt, it is true, remains, but how changed from the Pitt we used to know-his identity shrouded in the title of Chatham, his eloquence shrilling at times to mere bombast amid the dull decorum of the House of Lords, his brilliant genius ruined by disease, his own majestic bearing fallen to a wreck of insolence and pride,—

His whole political life during the years 1761-1770 was a grand mistake, and it was only when he again renewed the struggle in behalf of liberty, during the early stages of the American contest, that he appeared to become once more inspired with all the fervour of his youth. In 1774, he came down to the House to lead the Opposition on this question, and in the course of the debate he delivered one of his best known speeches. He dwelt with anxiety upon the importance of the contest into which the country had been plunged, and with indignation upon the measures which had provoked it. He declared that the Government's imperious doctrines of submission would be insufficient

to enslave their fellow-subjects in America. "This resistance," he cried, "to your arbitrary system of taxation might well have been foreseen; it was obvious from the nature of things and of mankind; and above all from the whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences and ship-money in England; the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English Constitution; the same spirit which established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties—that no subject of England should be taxed without his own consent. This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence." It was given to Chatham to die in harness, protesting to the very last his adhesion to those principles which had formed the polestar of his brilliant though erratic career. On the 7th April, 1778, the Duke of Richmond brought forward an address in which, after recapitulating the disasters which our arms had sustained in America, he moved that it was impossible to carry on the present system of reducing that country by military force. Lord Chatham listened with the deepest attention to the Duke's extremely able speech. He had come to the House wrapped up in flannel and supported by two friends; ill, racked with gout, emaciated, the shadow of his former self, he was there in his place to oppose with his last breath the idea of separation. When he rose to reply he was received with the deepest silence; the reverence and attention of the House was most affecting. At first he spoke in a very low and feeble voice, but as he continued his tones rose to the old pitch, and thrilled his hearers as he had never thrilled them before in that House. He looked like a dying man, and yet his very weakness was impressive in its supreme dignity. He reviewed the whole history of the American question and the fatal measures which had evoked it. He protested earnestly against the idea of separation. Never would he consent to deprive the offspring of the House of Brunswick of their fairest inheritance. When he had finished, the Duke, in reply, restated his opinion and the grounds which induced him to dissent reluctantly from the noble lord. Chatham listened

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with composure and attention, and when the Duke sat down again, made an eager attempt to rise, as if inspired with some idea; but his strength failed him, and he fell backwards. Instantly all was confusion. His friends pressed near to support him; his son sprang forward from behind the bar; the Lords, friends and enemies alike, all crowded round. Party enmities. were forgotten for the moment; every feeling was lost in the single thought that the greatest soul in England was passing slowly away, that never again would the hearts of Englishmen beat high at the stirring eloquence of Chatham. He was removed from the House in a state of insensibility, and died in four days.

Very different indeed was the career of Lord Bute-the minister of the king as Pitt was of the people. Inducted into the office of Secretary of State, and thence into the Premiership, without any natural abilities for the position, he was inevitably a conspicuous failure as a statesman. Nor was he an orator of any ability; his words came slowly amid long pauses, which gave rise to Charles Townshend's gibe of "minute-guns," and he never acquired the slightest control of Parliament. It is not singular that he resigned the administration after a year's experience of its thorny path, and retired to the private life which he was so eminently calculated to adorn.

His successor, George Grenville, a haughty dictatorial man of moderate ability, has been described as "a Speaker spoilt." He was essentially qualified to fill the Chair, both owing to his consummate knowledge of the forms of the House and the exquisite pleasure they afforded him. He would have made an excellent Speaker, but he preferred to become an inferior leader of the House under Bute, and later a blundering Prime Minister. He was an extremely tedious orator, and his best known speech is the one which he might have preferred not to be remembered by. It was during the debate on the Cider Tax in 1763Grenville replied to Pitt's attacks with the assertion that if the honourable gentleman objected to this particular tax, he was bound to tell them where else he would have taxes laid. "Let him tell me where," repeated the Prime Minister in a peevish whine several times, "I say, sir, let him tell me where." "Gentle

shepherd, tell me where," hummed Pitt in a tone that was a most felicitous imitation of Grenville's own, quoting a popular song. "If," cried Grenville in a transport of rage, amid shrieks of laughter from the House, "gentlemen are to be treated with this contempt At this moment Pitt, who was leaving the House in token of the utmost disdain, turned round and made a sarcastic bow to the infuriated speaker. The nickname of the "Gentle Shepherd" clung to Grenville in consequence for several years.

Foremost among the opponents of Grenville and Bute comes the name of John Wilkes, who, having aroused the indignation of the Grenville Ministry by his pungent criticisms on the King's Speech, was accused of a seditious libel and expelled the House (1764). This circumstance, comparatively unimportant in itself in a history of Parliament, led to ulterior consequence of great moment. Later, in 1768, Wilkes stood for Middlesex, was elected by an overwhelming majority, and claimed to take his seat. He was expelled again; was unanimously re-elected, again expelled, and once more returned to Parliament at the head of the poll. This time the Commons were determined to end the matter; and so, having solemnly expelled him again, they declared him incapable of ever sitting in the House. Moreover, though he had been returned by an overwhelming majority, they adjudged the seat to his opponent Colonel Luttrell, who had contrived to obtain some two or three hundred votes. This at once provoked a great outcry, for it was felt that ministers had done a grossly illegal and arbitrary act. The right of expulsion was undoubted, but expulsion did not create a disability, far less did it give the seat to Luttrell. The Ministry quoted the case of Walpole, but it appears doubtful whether Walpole's incapacity was grounded on his conviction of corruption or on the expulsion alone.

Wilkes was re-elected in 1774, and was allowed to take his seat by Lord North. After repeated motions on the subject, he finally succeeded in getting all the records of the proceedings against him expunged from the journals of the House.

Charles Townshend, who served in various capacities under Bute, Grenville, and Chatham, was a man of striking though very erratic genius. There appear to be considerable grounds for